The rules I grew up with were never meant to serve me.  

 

I am rebuilding the world on my own terms. It’s a “controlled burn,” but do not mistake me, I am burning it to the ground. The assumptions I was given at birth and the structures that have empowered them at my expense over the years have got to go.

 

But this is not where my story began. 

 

My current life is so different from the one that I led even five years ago. It has taken me half my life to figure out that all the tension and stress that had become so normal to me that I didn’t even realize it was there, was caused by living in forced captivity. I did not know that I was not free.

 

For much of my life, I followed “the rules.” I studied hard, did well in school, pursued a conventional career, got married, and bought property. But by my mid-thirties, I realized that I was depressed. I was going to bed each afternoon just to “get through it.” 

 

Soon afterward I began the journey that I now think of as the process of “becoming wild.” I began, unconsciously at first, to de-couple from the narratives around what a woman can and cannot do. Later, I started to reflect on the narratives I had been surrounded by, and had internalized, about what it means to be a woman in our world. The answers I found troubled me AND led me into transformation. 

 

While many cultural barriers to “success” for women have been removed—such as unwanted pregnancy, child-rearing, lack of access to education, and the need for physical strength, to name a few—a powerful barrier still resides within our minds. We have seen our mothers and grandmothers “do” womanhood by putting everyone else first, for generation after generation. This pattern broadcasts a specific message loud and clear: “Women are meek, mild, nurturers, and weaker vessels. Our value is in what we give to others.” I had certainly been receiving and internalizing this message. 

 

To step out from behind the idea of “what a woman is” is the most enormous leap.

 

As I faced and questioned these beliefs, something within me was already transforming. 

 

What began to flicker in me after those months of depression was a tiny spark, which became a flame, and then a thought I hardly dared to think:  

 

“What if it were possible to be front and center in my own life? What would living be like then?”


 

I was thirty-five when I had that thought. I am now fifty-two. Becoming wild is a process…

 

When coaching found me, I was forty-five. Through it, I discovered that we are not our thoughts, beliefs, values, or behaviors—and that we can change every single one of them if they aren’t serving us. From this new vantage point, I set about rearranging my model of the world. 


 

What, then, are you left with when you uproot generations-old social structures that no longer serve you? The answer, I found, was “the wild.” A “Wild Woman,” to be even more specific. Over the last seven years, I have systematically removed every conditioned belief I have found within myself. I have become a Wild Woman. There are many definitions of this archetype. This is mine.

 

A Wild Woman: 

 

• Has an independent mind

• 
Is a leader

• 
Works outside of the system and gathers her fellow Wild Ones

• Takes up the space she needs in a way that is in balance with her environment

• Rejects “power over” and embraces “power with” and “power to”

• 
Holds generative, co-creative space in support of herself and others

• Believes that her life has value and meaning and that how she “does life” matters

• Stands in her power, empowering those around her in the process

• Is fearless and totally authentic

 

We need her. All of us—men, women, and those outside of the gender binary. This is my mission: empower “Wild Women.”

 

Old, oppressive systems got us to where we are today.

 

And we as women+ are now being called to break free. 

 

For the sake of the earth and everyone on it.

 

Are you ready to break free and Become Wild?