Aspire Magazine: Inspiration for a Woman's Soul.(TM) Dec/Jan 2018 Aspire Mag Full Issue: Taking Time fo | Page 34
the world needs our darkness as much as it
needs our light.
From the time we are girls we learn to shut
down our natural and intermittent inclination
to run into the dark void of nothingness. Idle
hands, after all, are the devil’s playthings.
Who knows what the wild child might do if
her imagination were left unbridled? The
technologies of woman taming are as old as
dirt, my love, and the most sinister of these
has been the strategic condemnation of the
Still Woman. Remember that when I say
“wild,” I do not mean out of control; rather,
I refer to the freedom of both stillness and
doing, a sacred liberation that was slowly
taken from us when we were young. The
wild is your human way of relating to the
life-force that is beyond human but wholly
natural.
Little girls are kept wild when their caregivers
affirm their right, and affirm it often, to be of
the world. A good deal of preparation for the
battle of adolescence is necessary in order
for children of all genders to psychologically
survive the woundings that will inevitably
occur. Particularly for those who do not
neatly match our culture’s presented image
of normalcy, the survival skills required
are immense, with the suppression of the
wild a common response to the threat of
abandonment. During adolescence, we
fear looking or acting out of alignment with
what our peers have deemed acceptable.
We conform in order to belong, in order to
keep from being left behind, with every act
of perceived rejection driving the wild self
deeper into the shadows of our psyche.
It is beyond terrifying, I know, to crack
wide open the shell that has been layered
so thickly around us by so many years of
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snickers, eye rolls, turned backs, insults,
and punishments. Hear me when I tell
you that you are not who they say you
are, and the greatest gift you can give
to the global community is to be fiercely
authentic. Unlearn the mechanisms of
control that keep you believing that you
must keep going no matter how loud your
heart-voice is screaming for rest. Reclaim
your wild rhythm, and awaken your Witch
consciousness; she is sleeping, small body
curled with the petrification that comes of
allowing ourselves only small movements
these past years. Wake her now. Wake her
up, and let her show you the way home.
I see you now, my Sister-Witch, ear pressed
against the door, hearing the call of your wild
nature like a gut-born drumbeat. The ping-
pat of raindrops, the mother wolf’s howl, the
songs of birds you cannot name: All these
things have been nested in your soul since
you were a young girl. Remember now.
Excerpted from the book Woman Most Wild: Three Keys
to Liberating the Witch Within. Copyright
©2017 by Danielle Dulsky. Printed with
permission from New World Library — www. Read
Online!
newworldlibrary.com.
Danielle Dulsky - Danielle, author of Woman Most Wild, is an artist,
yoga teacher, energy worker, and founder of Living Mandala Yoga
teacher training programs. She leads women’s circles, Witchcraft
workshops, and energy healing trainings and lives in Phoenixville,
Pennsylvania. Find her online at www.LivingMandalaYoga.com.
www.AspireMAG.net | December 2017 / January 2018