Screaming at the moon. Loving a wild woman

The other night I screamed at the moon. I fell to my knees and felt the earth dig into my skin. I looked at mother moon who’s cycles drive and move me like the beat of my own heart, I opened my mouth and let my scream rip the air. For a moment the cicadas stopped their chatter and everything grew still as if to make space for the sound I was sending into the sky. And when my scream was heard, the cicadas breathed a sigh of relief and began to drone into the heat again.

I am a wild creature… sometimes mother, sometimes warrior Kali, sometimes maiden, sometimes crone. There are a lot of us out there, us fierce creatures. You have seen us rattling cages, healing wounds, dancing naked in the rain, running screaming through our lives wearing combat boots and ball gowns, ingesting life in huge primal bites as the blood of our ancestors runs from our mouths. We make love to our divine selves and to others as we wrap our legs around our lovers waists throw our head back and howl at the moon. We live our power by owning our femininity and celebrating the fact that we bleed and that our wombs ache and create all life.

I was not always a wild creature. Once I was domesticated. I lived in a beautiful house with shiny things and made the bed in the morning. I always said please and thank you and always did what my owners wanted me to. I lived in fear of making them angry, and made sure that whenever my natural wildness started to ooze through the cracks, that  I would run into the woods climb trees and cry on the rough bark. But I couldn’t hide the way I danced a little too hard, sang a little too loud and played with the moss in the thickets of trees while I talked to the sky and made teacups from acorns. My owners saw these things and knew and tried to domesticate me even further. Like most domesticated creatures, I didn’t understand that I could just let my wildness overtake me. Like most domesticated creatures, the only way I could remember  my essence  was to be thrown out into the wild. For my house to burn down to the ground. For my owners to let me know that I would never be domesticated enough no matter how hard I tried to do what was expected of me.

No one talks about why wild women become wild. No one talks about how these exotic creatures come into being. No one talks about it especially the wild creatures themselves; because it is far too painful.  But I will now tell you the truth  of how we learned to howl at the moon and dig in the earth and dance with our souls. A lot of us came into being because we created ourselves from the ashes of our lives. When we were turned into the wild because we weren’t ever going to be good enough, domesticated enough, our houses burned to ground….and we were left with nothing. That moment in a wild woman’s life is when the awakened creature rises up out of the ruins.That is when our wildness emerges, and we learn to stand, dance, sing, dress, cry…on our own. We realize that it’s ok if its in our nature to rattle cages, run naked in the rain, grow our hair long and love our bodies. We give ourselves permission to feel our wombs move in tune with the cycles of the moon, to reach out with compassion and love all other creatures with abandon, to hold our head up with pride at the things we have made with our will, our aliveness and our deep connection with all things around us. We know our power and we start to recognize our ancestors. We remember songs and stories told in secret to other wild women around the fire, and we tell them to each other. We know in our hearts that “we are the granddaughters of the witches they could not burn.” We hold others like us close, stroke their hair and speak our secret language to them to soothe their sad hearts. For though we are beautiful, exotic creatures that seem to be made of stardust, blood, sex and magic, we are very often sad and so often scared.

Why are we sad? Because building yourself from the ashes of your life does not come without a price. We remember that we had houses once, before they burned to the ground. We remember that we were not what we were supposed to be, and that we were told that we weren’t good enough…and though we would never change who we are now and how loud we scream and how much we love….we still built our new houses on the ashes of the old.

A wild women is like a stallion. It is the stallions power,exotic beauty and pride that make it so astounding, but it is and will always be wild. You need to approach it gently and show it with infinite patience, love and kindness that you are safe….and that you will never, ever, try to tame it. It will make up its own mind to do what it needs to do and in payment when it loves you and trusts you it will be forever. Wild women are like that as well. Once we trust you, we will love you with the full extent of our soul. Once we love you, we will hold your hand when you need to stay on the ground and clap our hands and laugh with joy when you need to let go to fly. We will never try to put you in a cage, because we know what it feels like to be domesticated against one’s will. We will howl at the moon and make love with you with abandon- moving your body into spaces with ours that can not be defined with words. We will see your divinity and lovingly remind you of it when you have forgotten. But you need to be patient with us, know that we may break free and run before we trust you enough to stay, to know you are safe, to give you our world, before we lay our head on your chest and let you stroke our hair and speak our secret language to us to soothe our sad hearts.

There will still be times when our wildness becomes too much  to bear and we will run into the woods, climb trees and cry onto the rough bark. There will still be times when we fall onto our knees and scream at the moon, making the cicadas stop and listen. There will still be times when our eyes grow distant and we become sad because we remember that once our houses burned to the ground. Just wrap your arms around us, pick us up and tell us you love us. Turn on the music and dance too hard and sing too loud with us. Remind us that we are not alone in our wildness. We will always make sure that you know that you are not alone in yours….and that wildness is freedom, joy, life.