“Once you fall in love with yourself, their game is over.” ~ Alamir Guard
Are you a free spirit surrounded by domesticated comfort-junkies? Is your adventurous soul bursting at the seams of your comfort zone? Has your independence grown away from co-dependence into interdependence? Then you may be a wild woman.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés laid down the foundations for this female archetype in Women Who Run With the Wolves. Alison Nappi wrote an epic poem titled, A Wild Woman is Not a Girlfriend, She is a Relationship With Nature.
Here, we will break down five specific signs that you may be a wild woman, not a girlfriend.
1.) You are a courageous vulnerability:
“In the end, I want my heart to be covered in stretchmarks.” ~ Andrea Gibson
There’s a wild woman in every woman, whether she’s aware of it or not. It may just require a deeper vulnerability to discover it. As such, courage is the first virtue of the wild woman. As Maya Angelou said, “Without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
As a wild woman, you realize that deep vulnerability is the key to courage. It is for this reason that you are willing to become a pulsing vulnerability. First, for yourself. And second, for others. Your vulnerability is a mighty beacon that lights up the path into the wild. Between worlds you shine, warm and ethereal.
You are willing to painfully stretch into growth. Even if it means stretchmarks. Even if it means awkwardness with culture. Even if it means you will be branded as a witch.
2.) You are Mother Nature incarnate:
“With the wild nature as ally and teacher we see not through two eyes but through the many eyes of intuition. With intuition we are like the starry night, we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes. The wild woman is fluent in the language of dreams, images, passion, and poetry.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés
You are the personification of Mother Nature. You are Baba Yaga, the old wise woman, fierce and cunning. You are Fox Medicine, outfoxing yourself sometimes, and persistently practicing resurrection. You are every woman, and every woman is you.
The only thing that supersedes your cultural manifestations are your natural manifestations. You are a human rewilder, reestablishing and integrating the lost relationship between Nature and culture.
You are the mighty Shakti (womb) that the seed of Shiva (cosmos) plants itself. You are the flowering jouissance of the human condition. You are all that is soft and sought after, but you know how to be responsible with such power.
You realize that the only teacher greater than Mother Nature is Pain. It is because of this intuitive understanding, and through your ability to adapt and overcome, that you are able to transform pain into power, and then share it with your lovers.
3.) You are an unapologetic lover who restores the wild in others:
“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.” ~ Edgar Allan Poe
Scarlet letters be damned! You are a healthy sexual being and you are not afraid of expressing yourself sensually. Haters gonna hate, but lovers gonna love, so it doesn’t really matter what the haters think. You’re a lover par excellence, and the world is better for it.
You love the way nature loves, with neither pity nor rancor. Honest and open, your love is agape with Agape-magic. The prudes cringe. The killjoys attempt to kill your joy, but you just flip them a bird and a smile and carry-on with your bad-ass grace that has the power to topple overreaching thrones and haughty high horses.
You cannot be tamed. Your seduction is the world’s resurrection. You coyly coo, “If you want to be torn apart, come in. Be broken open and devoured. Be set ablaze in my fire. I will not leave you as you have come: well dressed, in finely-threaded sweaters that keep out the cold. I will leave you naked and biting. Leave you clawing at the sheets. Leave you surrounded by owls and hawks and flowers that only bloom when no one is watching.” (Aubrey Marcus)
4.) You realize that women are more powerful than men:
“She conquered her demons and wore her scars like wings.” ~ Atticus
You realize that the sexes are not equal, and they never have been. Generally speaking, women are more powerful than men in every way but one: physical strength. And even then, women can handle more pain than men can.
Forget about money, possessions, military might. These are fragile and pretentious powers. True power is the ability to create and sustain life. And no animal creates life more powerfully than the female human animal. All women are beholders of this prolific power.
But you understand what most people do not. There’s a flip-side to this coin: “with great power comes great responsibility.” It is because women are more powerful than men that they must be more responsible than men. This doesn’t mean that men don’t need to be responsible. It just means that a man’s responsibility is secondary, while a woman’s responsibility is primary.
You are here to teach other women how to be more responsible with their power, despite the lesser powers of men.
5.) You are a primal source of “Deep Knowing”:
“Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés
You understand that women have deep, intuitive thought that most men lack. You have access to another system of knowledge that few men ever develop – what Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls the “Deep Knowing.” This is probably because women are closer to nature and cosmos due to their monthly cycle.
The Deep Knowing is an energy that speaks a language older than words. It is between worlds, vibrating at a frequency that requires nurturing intuition and holistic sensitivity to decipher.
It’s in the wild, where Truth and Mystery grow together, robustly entangled. It’s in the water. It’s in the air. It’s in the plants. Anyone close enough to the underlying essence, to the interconnectedness of all things, to the rhythmic Earth-beat pulsing its mighty interdependence, can feel it, singing a song in an ancient voice that precedes humankind.
As a wild woman, as a woman who runs with the wolves, you are deeply in tune with the Earth-beat. You are a woman of two worlds: nature and culture. With a moon-eye and an earth-eye, you consistently bridge worlds. The moon is your guide as well as your sacred ally, shining light into darkness while the rest of the world sleeps.
And so you shine as well, unleashing the wild woman hidden in your sister’s collective heart. It’s the primal shape that waits in the seed of who they are, gestating and waiting to grow and spread its wings against a future sky.
Image source:
Wild Woman by Palvi Demon
Wolf/Woman
Old Wise Woman
