WHAT DREW ME TO THE WILD SIDE

What drew me to the wild side?

What got me here, deeply entrenched in the salty earth of my being, of life, of living, of loving, of creating and swimming in my heart?

I like to think that an ambush of Tigers came racing through the rain forest to find me. They had been looking long and hard and one at a time they had sniffed me out of my domesticated hidey-hole. They could smell the bleach and windowlene of the ‘nice’ girl and it sent them crazy!  There were many, not one.

One Tiger that drove me into the wild woods was shame. Shaming is probably the worst feeling one can have of isolation from a crowd, a group or a tribe. It is said that one would actually go away from the tribe to die if they were shamed as they could not survive without the others. That memory is still wired in us and I believe in our culture today even sugar-coated as adverts for make up or hair products, life insurance and being a ‘good’ person.

After I left two partners in a row (one to whom I was married) I experienced group ‘shaming’ in the community tribe. Something about this profoundly ripped me apart at the time. The looks in the street, the cold remarks at the village market, the hushed voices on entering a room, the gritted teeth smiles. It actually took me a while to figure it out, what in the chemistry had changed in my environs? I had offended others idea of me and a line had been drawn. As a deeply sensitive being, I was so shocked at this stone throwing, woman to woman, man to woman, when actually nobody knew my real reasons for leaving. That was my path to walk, but the tribe makes it their own business, it creates ‘safety’ in the ranks through a common enemy. The papers are full of it.

I fled, as injured animals do. I reacted by cutting myself off. I didn’t feel like socializing anymore, I didn’t want to see anyone. I lived out of the way in my cottage and got into the deep rhythms of day and night, sun and rain, light and dark. It was a journey into a dark night inside that, at the time, I had no idea would lead me right into the heart of my wild self. At times I didn’t know what was happening any more, it came with great fear, panic attacks and terror, fear of the unknown.

My Tigers came for me, they tore my cottage door down and the descent into the machinations of my makeup as a woman, a human, a soul began. I followed the beat of my own heart deep into the ground and uncovered every gory detail, the worst culprit of the rejection, the abuse, the abandonment and shame I had ‘suffered’ was eventually revealed as none other than myself.

That was over 5 years ago now and the road has been winding with turns of ecstasy and depths. The one thing that has remained however is the absolute realization of the human necessity to love oneself. Not in that new age way we may think, not to be ‘nice’ to ourselves, but to love ourselves with all our heart and as Kamal Ravikant says, ‘as if your life depended on it’ because in truth, I believe now that  it really does. To love ourselves into a crystallization that as Caroline Myss says, does not shut other people out but dissolves the very things we have feared, the rejection, the humiliation, the wrong-doing on contact with the bare-naked-exposing fire dance of our existence.

Life took me back to the forest inside, the untouched thundering rivers and sources within that waited for me to return, to come home, to kneel and kiss the red earth of my heart. The day I found it was the day I rose like a phoenix above every heartbreak, every ‘failure’, every expectation, every ‘should do’ and ‘you're meant to’, every disappointment, every grief and loss and every abandonment.

Is it a work in progress? Always.

What does it look like? It just looks like a life, nothing extraordinary perhaps on the outside, but something on the inside that is free, untamed and unafraid of its wildness.

Is life perfect now? It’s perfectly alive, it’s perfectly magical and that’s enough for me. I am enough and that in itself is the biggest achievement. I am not afraid of my Tigers anymore.

I teach to remember, I teach to point the way, to help you not run for cover when your Tigers come for you, which eventually they will. And when they do, we will not be afraid, we will embrace them and let them tear down all that is not us, all that is not love.