“Wild woman are an unexplainable spark of life. They ooze freedom and seek awareness, they belong to nobody but themselves yet give a piece of who they are to everyone they meet. If you have met one, hold on to her, she’ll allow you into her chaos but she’ll also show you her magic.”
― Nikki Rowe
What does it mean to be a wild woman?
To me, it means believing in yourself so much that you are not afraid to stand alone. However, you know that even while standing alone, you’re still deeply connected.
We all aim to be a part of something. We want to experience real connections with others, but not at the cost of our authenticity, freedom or power. So, how do we do this? How do we stand alone and be wild while trying to be connected at the same time?
We learn to acknowledge our feminine and face our shadows.
While spending time with seven beautiful women, all searching for their wild side, at the Reawakening Winter Yoga and Holistic Healing Retreat hosted by Malaika (The Nomadic Oasis) we learned how to embrace our wild side.
Malaika spoke about the Feminine within us all, and how if we don’t acknowledge her, she starts to create chaos in our lives which can manifest into disease, ailments or illness such as depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, stomach ulcers, and so on.
The Feminine
“She exists as our wisdom layer. She represents everything that is not logical, she is feeling based, she is our intuition, all that is beyond illusion, the inner knowing; truth. She is the Moon. The underworld; our unconscious. Dark light. The deep space within. An altered state of consciousness. The realm of feeling; the realm of the Soul. She is the unknown. She holds your past – all that is holding you back. Your feminine nurtures the life of your Soul. She is what makes you feel ALIVE. She is the giver of life, and just as she gives life she is capable of destroying life.”
The Nomadic Oasis Reawakening booklet.
The Masculine
“We need our inner masculine to engage with or enter into our feminine. He is all that is logical, structured and orderly in the world. He represents reason. The future. He is how we make manifest in our world. He is the mind. Our ability to intuit our inner wisdom. He is the Sun, he is active, he wants to know, he is discipline.”
The Nomadic Oasis Reawakening booklet.
Finding the balance with your wild side
The feminine energy is suppressed in this masculine dominant world we live in. We are taught to not cry, feel emotions, or dream too big, and live in a highly stressed society with everything moving extremely fast. We need to know or be prepared for everything and there is no time for the act of just being, or exploring the unknown.
I love how Malaika explained it, if you let steam into the air it will just evaporate into the air. But if you push that steam into a steam boiler, it can move a whole train forward. The steam represents your feminine energy, it has so much power and is free. The steam boiler represents your masculine energy, it stands for structure. Without the masculine energy the feminine energy will just evaporate and fly around. The masculine is necessary for us to manifest our creative, free-spirited side into the world.
Your feminine does not need much, she just wishes to be acknowledged. Your feminine demands a level of self-love and self-respect. By acknowledging your feminine you discover your wild side, your deepest desires and your intentions in this world.
Your shadow
“What you don’t own about yourself, owns you”
Your shadow is all the parts of your psyche that you suppress, misunderstand, judge, reject, and shame in yourself. It’s our job to face our darker sides. It takes courage to engage with our shadow or the dark truths within us.
However, we need to acknowledge our shadow, to meet our fears and allow ourselves to process whatever awakens within these fears. We set ourselves free from these shadows by owning them because we learn to recognise them, and by doing so we can work on improving them.
I’ll give an example; If an extremely jealous person does not recognise and acknowledge their jealousy their behaviour can start to push people away without them really understanding why. But, if they start to own their jealousy, they can recognise it, they can learn what triggers it and how to take control of it before it takes control of them.
The shadow is not bad, it plays a great part in being human and it teaches us a lot about ourselves. The only time the shadow is disempowering is when we do not honour its existence or ignore it.
Be brave to find your wild side.
I’ve just finished reading the book Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, by Social scientist Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW. In this book, Brené talks about how we should be brave to step into the Wilderness – a place where we know that we still belong to humanity, but we are not afraid to speak our truth.
I’d love to end this article with a paragraph from her book as I feel it’s so relevant.
“Belonging so fully to yourself that you’re willing to stand alone is a wilderness – an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching. It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. The wilderness can often feel unholy because we can’t control it, or what people think about our choice of whether to venture into that vastness or not. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it’s the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand”
