To be wild is not to be crazy or psychotic. True Wildness is a love of nature, a delight in silence, a voice free to say spontaneous things, and an exuberant curiosity in the face of the unknown..
In 2006, I got the idea for my very first “untraining” program, “Freeing The Wild Woman Within.” I put together a smorgasbord of fun activities and ran it at the local educational center for six weeks.
It filled right away and was a lot of fun. And that program led me to create many more over the next 16 years. I’ve given them to small groups, corporate groups, women’s groups, business groups, on-line, in-person.
The origins of that first transformative program can probably be traced to “The Women Who Run With The Wolves,” a book recommended to me by a cool, older colleague a few years prior. She knew I disliked my job at that time and suggested I read it.
Totally changed the trajectory of my life, which was headed towards soul stifling over-domestication. I’d never read anything like that book in my life and didn’t even know other ways to go through life existed.
I entered elementary school wild and imaginative and full of life and my teachers didn’t like that. They wanted conformity and obedience and quietude. Only my second grade teacher, who went on to open a Montessori school seemed to understand me and what i brought to the elementary school table.
Yikes, other than him it was a horrible match most years. Plain painful.
The good news was that we didn’t have to spend 4 hours after school during homework or organized sports — something else I wasn’t a good fit for because I simply did not want to be organized by someone else.
Instead, I galloped through the woods on my horse with my other horse friends. Some of the trails went down and up hills with jumps on them. It was high-speed at times, but lots of fun and pumped up my bravery every time I did it.
I loved the woods and nature and all things wild.
This presented a problem not only in school but also later in work. Instead of cultivating wildness and all the awesome things that go with that, they cultivated the opposite and all the unawesome things that go with that.
I watched the clock tick away the precious minutes of my life.
Fortunately, I was laid off and that opened up doors I didn’t realize I had the power to open, like my own business. School had groomed me to work for others rather than for myself.
It was hard the first couple of years because the kinds of skills one needs to be an entrepreneur — boldness, courage, inventiveness, risk-taking, independence, setting boundaries are not cultivated in school or traditional work places.
I had to learn to re-cultivate them in myself and by doing do I reconnected with my wild self. Thank god, she had not died inside, but just gone into hiding.
Once set free, my wild side saw life as a forest filled with all things magical and adventurous and possible.
If you’d like to get more in touch with your own wild side, I’d suggest reading “Women Who Run With The Wolves.” The book has many chapters with different messages — something for most everyone.
Then you might go on a hike with your phone turned off and not turn it on until you get back to your car.
Oh, and express your opinion to someone face-to-face. On-line is easy. In person, is more challenging.
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Feel More Alive,
Giulietta