I am sitting in my hiking shorts, smelling of campfire. My pockets are heavy with a smooth piece of rose quartz and the headlamp I used to light the fire before the sun rose this morning.
I am filled with a combination of gratitude and bewilderment for a weekend spent with an incredible group of women.
As soon as we gathered around the campfire on our first night together, I knew they had as much to offer me as I had to offer them. We spent our time wandering through old growth forest, sharing food, engaging in deep and searching conversation, making offerings to the forest, listening to our intuition and tapping into our creativity, swimming, hiking in the dark, watching stars and lighting sparklers.
I know it will take me some time to process everything that happened at the reWILD retreat this weekend, but there are a few things I know for sure.
Despite the the glow of traffic lights and computer screens,
the manufacture of our nourishment
and the pavement smothering the grass;
Despite the medicalization of our moon cycles,
despite the taming of our birthing processes,
and the way our bodies have become objectified, nullified, loathed, feared and hypersexualized,
women are wild.
Because the waters of our body still lean into the full moon, we are still the water-keepers
Because we practice dying every month and yet bring forth all life, we are still the creation-keepers
Because we circle, and because we tend, we are still the community-gatherers.
We are still the nourishers. The wisdom-bearers. The heart-led warriors.
We are still wild.
I know this to be true:
Reconnecting with Mother Earth is one of the primary tasks of
modern-day feminism
of reclaiming the sacred feminine
and of finding authenticity and alignment in your life.
Among the trees and near the ocean and toes-in-grass is where we are fed.
It is where we are most powerful.
It is where our rising begins.
How can you reWILD?
Related
The Becoming Podcast has been on a short hiatus while I focus on writing my book, but oh what a comeback episode I have for you!
This month, I spoke to Toko-pa Turner, who many of you may know as the unofficial patron saint of many of my circles and gatherings because of the sheer number of times I’ve quoted from the wisdom of her book, Belonging.
Toko-pa is a Canadian author, teacher, and dreamworker. Blending the mystical teachings of Sufism in which she was raised with a Jungian approach to dreams, she founded The Dream School in 2001, from which thousands of students have graduated. She is the author of the award-winning book, Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, which explores the themes of exile and belonging through the lens of dreams, mythology, and nature. This book has resonated for readers worldwide, and has been translated into 10 different languages so far. Her work focuses on the relationship between psyche and nature, and how to follow our inner wisdom to meet with the social, psychological, and ecological challenges of our time.
Here’s some of what Toko-pa and I talk about in this episode:
> The dream that changed Toko-pa’s life, causing her to question her career and, ultimately, her identity
> How we can court our dreams to support us during times of radical transformation – and the reasons so many of us have a hard time remembering and working with what shows up in our dreamscape
> Toko-pa’s perspective on the message of Belonging after the divisiveness our society has experienced in the years since it was published
> What happened for both Toko-pa and I when we fell out of belonging from the ideologies of the “wellness world”
> How to build community when you’re under-resourced
> “The Big Lie” when it comes to belonging, and how we can reclaim a sense of belonging to the greater family of things, as Mary Oliver so famously wrote
Show Notes
Toko-pa’s Website
Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home, Toko-pa’s book
The David Abram video about animism mentioned in the interview
Toko-pa’s self-guided program, Dream Drops
Companion, the program that accompanies Belonging
Also, while you’re at it, if you enjoy The Becoming Podcast, I would be so grateful if you would rate and review, and even subscribe to it on iTunes. That goes a long way to helping more and more people find and benefit from hearing these interviews! Thank you so much!
