embracing my Wild Woman

i’m a cheetah, not a house cat

Tigress by Gillian Lahav

Musings on being myself, speaking truth, and being okay with being disliked.

When I first heard about the concept of a Wild Woman, I pictured some archetypal earthly goddess, in tapestry and cloth that barely clung to her body, foraging through a field, with her hair in braids and her body lean and limber, in resonance with the earth in a way that feels like a far cry from the city girl self I currently embody as I type these words rapidly on my laptop in a coffee shop.

I have come to realize, though, that this image is just one kind of Wild Woman, and that the way we all embody our Wildness is different (see: my recent essay on being a domestic goddess, which is also a form of our Wildness, our inner nature, despite what the theoretical liberation of women has tried to convince us of.) The concept of the Wild Woman is, at its core, about being yourself — uninhibited. It is about an attunement to your desires, needs, opinions, instincts, intuition. Unattuned to what people are going to like or dislike about you, ferocious and free, in a way that you can only be when you are not tending to everyone around you before checking in with yourself (which is the opposite of what our conditioning as women points us towards).

I remember this scene from the second Avatar movie where the mother (spoiler!!!) loses her eldest son in this dramatic battle, and the guttural scream she let out was so piercing, so pure, so Wild — I had literally never heard anything like it before. It stopped my world for a moment. Yet it felt so true, so natural, so obvious once I heard it. Like: of course that is what losing a child would sound like in the heart of the Wild Woman. That scream is our nature.

It is not the first time I remember Avatar giving me a taste of what a true Wild Woman must be like; I remember watching the women in the first movie wail in anguish when (spoiler again) the mother tree got cut down. They cried as though it was their own flesh being cut into. I felt the wildness of their cries, the lack of inhibition in their grief, the authenticity of their connection to the earth, to what they loved, tended to, care about, drew wisdom from.

This isn’t exactly the natural Wildness I feel most potently runs through me. As much as I love to tell myself that I am a deeply embodied creature, I am also a Wild Woman of the Mind. I love knowledge, thinking, writing, reading, intellect-ing. I used to think this was a problem, that maybe I just needed to Transcend and not think so much all of the time, but I have come around on this. I have realized that my way of thinking, of writing, of seeing, of naming — is part of my Wildness. That the Wildness I resonate with in other women, is this complete lack of censorship in how they express themselves.

It’s a hard thing to describe; I simply know it when I see it. The Wild big sisters that come to mind when I think of this expression are Gabi (of @sighswoon) who speaks her truth regardless of who will understand it and how it will land with others — though of course it lands beautifully because everyone wants to be seen and heard in this wild, uninhibited way we feel afraid to express ourselves, Riva (@rivatez) who names what she sees even if it is going to clash with the views of those who cling to their ideas and beliefs tightly and tribally — giving a public voice to ideas and realities most often discussed in private, and my dear friend Sophie (@lovesophieburns) whose fire and ferocity is something you must experience in person to fully Know, though her videos where she spills feminine wisdom into the world virtually do pretty good justice to her energy, too.

These are women that, when I see their names come up, I know that whatever I see will be coming straight from them. From their minds, souls, hearts — not from who they think the world wants them to be. Not from the desire to please, agree, be liked and approved of just to feel worthy. What they are doing is embodying a Wildness we rarely get to witness, because embodying it is scary for most of us. It is risky, dangerous, confronting. But worth it, I think, if it means truly expressing yourself. And, in the right settings with the right people around you to support and hold you through the act of expressing freely, it is also safe to be a Wild Woman.

I have only recently come to the awareness of just how much I have been censoring myself, how much I tend to others before speaking freely myself.

Instead of speaking from my heart and letting the words come out smoothly, I tend to make sure everyone has the context and qualifications they need to understand me, to land what I am saying in their worldview, to ensure they do not feel isolated by my words.

But this hyper-sensitivity to others can easily dilute my message, making it harder for me to Just Be Me.

I have been practicing embodying this Wildness in myself, and in the process have noticed just how much I am shrinking to please others, tiptoeing around someone else’s emotional state to act like I agree when, in fact, I do not. I notice now that I leave all of those moments with a sting, a subtle sensation that I contracted myself to make someone else more comfortable, at the cost of my own self-expression. At the cost of saying (or at least trying to discover) what was actually true.

All of these moments are such minor betrayals of self. So small you might not notice them if you aren’t paying attention, but over time they compound towards a real eclipsing of the Wild Woman. Eventually, we numb the nerve endings of our instincts, our intuition, and lose our sensitivity for what we truly believe, because we are in such a rhythm of tending to others, of creating the space for others to pierce through the world with their perspective, their Wildness, their light, while we keep ours in the shadows.

Because it is scary to let the Wild Woman run free. For me at least. I feel things so incredibly deeply. And the idea of upsetting someone else with my perspective is hard to stomach, in part because I know that I will feel whatever discomfort I may inflict on them as though it was inflicted on me.

But I am learning that the pain of self-betrayal, of not letting my Wild Woman have the oxygen she needs to thrive, is much more taxing than enduring the risk of hurting someone’s feelings with the truth.

In Women Who Run With the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés speaks of the instinct-injured woman; the woman who does not trust herself, or who did once and was punished for it. A woman whose instincts, whose deep, intrinsic, inexplicable wisdom—her inner Knowing—has been injured to the point of ineffectiveness, of unreliability, or at least, the felt sense that she can no longer rely on her own sense of what is right. I can see how easily one can arrive there if you relentlessly pound your instinct with fear, doubt, a deaf ear, criticism—with indifference. Eventually you lose that part of yourself, you let your Wild self wither. You injure your intuition.

I do not want this fate, so my focus now is on strengthening my instincts rather than assaulting my Wild Woman senses with fear and doubt.

In this process of letting my Wild Woman move more freely — which, in my case, looks like being more opinionated, expressive and uninhibited in conversations where I would have previously censored myself — I am also learning the bounds and impact of her power.

I recently had an experience of my Wild Woman (very mildly) injuring someone, and then feeling the pain I had caused in that moment.

I have been trying to say what what feels like the truth in most situations, even when it is confronting and uncomfortable (for me or the person opposite to me), because I had been compensating in the other direction for the longest time, leaning and shying away from expression when all I really wanted was to simply Say What I Think.

In this particular moment, I was succeeding in this aim, speaking so unencumbered by my typical emotional attunement to others that I over-stepped, went a little bit too far, got a little too caught up in my own expression. I went a little bit too wild for what the moment called for — making assertions, assumptions, and judgements that were not totally welcome. My friend (gently) called me out on this, and gave me the feedback that I was coming off a little bit too strong, confident, assertive, and even a little judgemental.

This piece of (unexpected) feedback struck such a tender part of myself, that it cut through my entire psyche, down to a core wound that had been controlling my behaviour for as long as I could remember. It hit me in the heart of this people-pleasing-maiden-self that always wanted everyone to like her, to make everyone around her feel great, to take care of others’ emotions, to protect everyone from their feelings—who viewed that as her responsibility… instead of noticing and speaking what she felt, instead of handing the reins over to my Wild Woman, allowing her to self-express. The people-pleasing-maiden had spent so long suffocating my Wild Woman, trampling over her desires, needs, and opinions for the sake of pleasing others, that in this tender, new moment of letting my Wild Woman speak through me, and having this fear that kept her caged up for so long materialize in front of me in my friend’s reflection: that my expression was too strong, that I was coming across as overly confident, that I was pressing too hard with my energy…

Now, this felt like the ultimate initiation into my Wildness.

I realized that all of the warnings we were given as young girls were, in fact, correct. That people might not like this Wild energy in us. That it would rub many the wrong way. That people would call us too loud, too expressive, too confident, too assertive, too Wild. That we probably could be more liked and desired if we were a little quieter, sweeter, prettier, softer. But I had done those things and I was bored of them. I realized in this moment, as painful as it was to hear this reflected back at me, that I was also okay with evoking this reaction in someone every once in a while, if it came as an unintended side effect of embracing my Wild Woman. Of letting myself speak freely, of not censoring myself around the people I love and trust.

There was a wisdom in the feedback too, of course, around knowing who I am talking to and identifying the right containers to let my Wild Woman out of her cage (I have also been in situations where I wasn’t ready to be a container for someone’s Wildness and it can feel like a lot! So I completely understand where it was coming from). I integrated the feedback as a useful reminder to notice when I am in a setting where someone needs my softness, and to let the Wild Woman within know that she would be best unleashed elsewhere, somewhere where she doesn’t need to worry about pressing too hard or running too far or being too much of Herself.

But in this moment, she was injured, lashed for being who she was, for expressing without inhibition, and I sensed that my job was to tend to her. To protect her instincts from scarring.

A past version of myself would have instead reacted to this feedback by telling myself that I could never let myself express this freely, because look: this is what happens! People will think that I am too passionate, intense, confident, assertive, loud… too “much.” This past version of me would have responded by going excessively far in the other direction, doing whatever I could to make this person like me, trying to convince them that I was sweet, actually. That they were mistaken, that I wasn’t really that wild, that I just had a moment! That I won’t come across as too strong anymore! That I am so soft-spoken and sweet and timid, see??? That look, I can be receptive, quiet, unassuming. That I am not usually that confident or stubborn or insistent, I promise!!! But ultimately — none of that is true; I am all of those things. I am stubborn, sometimes over-confident, assertive, direct, skeptical, discerning, sometimes even judgemental in my shadow form. And I know those things about myself, so why try and hide or worse—deny them? I didn’t want to, so I chose differently this time.

I felt like this initiation was a moment to grieve the part of me that used to manipulate me into doing whatever I needed to do to yield a positive social result — approval, acceptance, desire, reverence.

I could suddenly sense how this chapter had now closed. How in this moment, this reflection took me somewhere else. Instead of into people-pleasing, caring-for-others mode, it took me inwards. I felt and processed the pain I might have caused that person, in my own psyche. I felt into it. I embraced the sensitivity it evoked in me, but instead of reacting from that place, instead of over-compensating and trying to correct it, I simply took care of myself. I nurtured both parts of me - the part that feels deeply for the pain I can cause when my Wild Woman goes too far, and for my Wild Woman herself, who felt the Wildness in her shamed.

Bend to the Light by Gillian Lahav

Like a jungle cat, I am fierce, slow, methodical, swift, beautiful, soft. But in the moments where my Wildness comes out, I can get aggressive, defensive, ferocious, and dangerous. And if I want to give my Wild Woman the reins to share her gifts with the world — which I DO! — then I must accept that sometimes I will need to tend to other, to myself, to the wounds she can cause when she bites too hard.

I have had a recurring vision of myself as a cheetah since I was young. As a wild, fierce animal who moves with shocking speed, void of inhibition. Who lays around most of the time and flows slowly, gently, sensually. But has the capacity to close in on prey, to move more viciously than most. I have known that this is my Wild nature, that this lives inside of me, quiet most of the time, enjoying the jungle light on her soft coat, but every now and then, she might pounce if something crosses her the wrong way, her wild instincts dominating her soft exterior. And I’m learning to be okay with that duality in myself; I’m learning to love the Wildness in me for all of its expressions.

Because I would rather learn how to wield her power, how to tame her ferocity through trial and error, through letting her feel through the pain she causes when she goes too far, through letting her lick the wounds she inflicts on herself or someone else, than to put her to sleep, to kill her aliveness, and to turn her into a tame, spayed, domesticated house-cat, out of touch with her authentic hunger, her wild instincts, her ferocity, and her Bite.

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Related essays: a duel of inner goddesses, reclaim your nature, letting myself be seen, have you noticed that rule is arbitrary?