Yesterday I had my first-ever spiritual reading. I sat with a highly-intuitive, deeply profound woman who spoke to me of what I could and should expect in the year ahead – through totems, animals, and crystals. She spoke to me about all the influences and powers that are magnificently present in my life to both protect and advise. And she spoke to me about my own voice – what my own self wants me to hear, know, trust, and believe.
Before you discount my experience (if, in fact that’s your initial tendency), let me just say that I get it. I’ve been a skeptic of these types of things most of my life. My faith heritage has taught me to fear such “knowing” and because of such I’ve not given it much credence or thought. More on this later in another post. For now, I hope you’ll keep reading.
Though what she said to me was hugely significant I want to speak about her: her wisdom, her wildness, her deep knowing, her trust of her own voice, her roar. It was beautiful, magical, captivating, and called to something deep within me.
In being her wise, wild, and deep-knowing self, she showed me that I am just like her. I can and must trust what I know. I can and must speak what I know. I can and must roar.
We are sisters, this wise/wild woman and me – bound by something powerful, something that precedes our own knowledge and experience of time.
That said, there is a difference. I don’t always believe, trust, or choose these truths. The harmful, wounding result for me and others? I misplace my identity as wise and wild. My deepest voice stays a whisper when it should be a roar.
Why?
As I rode home with two other wise/wild women friends of mine, we asked this question. We talked of our deepest voices, the know-that-we-know-that-we-know places within us that get silenced, covered up, shoved down, mistrusted, and completely hidden. We acknowledged that sometimes what we hear is frightening, disruptive, unsettling – for ourselves and for others. Sometimes, no, often what we most deeply know is not cloud-with-a-silver-lining type stuff. It’s meaty, significant, life-changing. It’s a full-on roar that we’re afraid to let out and our deepest voice goes unheard. We become tame.
Not coincidentally, I’ve been reading an amazing book: Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.
When women hear those words [wild and woman], an old, old memory is stirred and brought back to life. The memory is of our absolute, undeniable, and irrevocable kinship with the wild feminine, a relationship which may have become ghostly from neglect, buried by over-domestication, outlawed by surrounding culture, or no longer understood anymore. We may have forgotten her names, we may not answer when she calls ours, but in our bones we know her, we yearn toward her; we know she belongs to us and we to her.
This is our deep knowing, our wisdom, our wildness. This is our voice. And it should be a roar!
So many things I’ve yet to explore and think about in all of this, but for tonight I just want to say (no, roar) these words:
I am a wise and wild woman.
I have a deep knowing.
I trust what I hear.
I will speak.
I will roar.
Cover your ears, or don’t.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
We will not be covering our ears here. We can handle the roar. We welcome it.
Enjoy the Women Who Run. Absolutely essential reading.
Looking forward to more on these topics.
~Claire
Claire´s last blog ..National Popcorn Day
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Claire.
No ear covering here! Way too important to hear the message unmuffled.
Nicki´s last blog ..Lights on but Come Over to Amber’s
So appreciate the megaphone invitation, Nicki. Thank you!
Roar on~ these words are so close to what I’ve been walking in my life the past month. It’s nourishing to read about your journey and pull strength for my own.
Thank you for speaking your truth and helping other women to speak ours.
Jess
So grateful to hear this, Jess. ‘Encourages me to keep doing, writing, being, roaring! ‘Appreciate you.
Will you offer a roar retreat ronna (3r’s) or (R cubed)?
-yes, numbers mean something and I would be one who would attend this type of retreat.
-thanks mucho for living…and speaking into our four-footed nature!
Thank you my dear, number-seeing friend. Oooh. A Roar Retreat with Ronna? I LIKE IT!!! We should talk and plan (with my Citrine close by!!!)
I’m not sure how wise I’ve been, but certainly I’ve been called “wild” in my life. I also remember wanting to make Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman,” my theme song. Unfortunately, I was too scared to follow the advice, trying to maneuver through the maze of cultural and familial expectations.
I think it is in the wildness we live in youth that we women become wise in our golden years…and we learn that the wildness wasn’t such a bad thing in the first place.
“I am woman, hear me roar…and I know too much to go back and pretend!…Oh, yes! I am wise…wisdom from the pain..Yes, I’ve paid the price, but look how much I’ve gained. I am strong! I am invincible! I am WOMAN!”
Coral´s last blog ..It Starts with Finding Your Passion
Love this, Coral. Yes: wildness is something we had at birth and slowly (if not quickly) found it to be too dangerous, too unwanted, too misunderstood. The work of our lives is to regain our innate wisdom, our innate wildness, and then be, do, ROAR!!!
ahh, cpe – clarissa pinkola estes. how i love her voice – her words and her speaking voice. spent 1 night a week for 6 weeks online with her throgh soundstrue.com, and her voice is mesmerizing. and fortifying. i, too, am a tenacious student of different ways of knowing, (i see the book by that title on your bookshelf.) and have come to believe that the wise women are the ones who, know that not everyone will understand or embrace what they have to say and yet they roar anyway. am enjoying my time on your blog. there’s so much here that resonates. thank you for taking the time to roar.
whollyjeanne´s last blog ..knots
I am immediately going to soundstrue.com! I cannot get enough of that woman but don’t seem to have enough time in a day to read more and more! It’s like sacred text, really…bits and pieces I soak in every night. And yes, “Women’s Ways of Knowing” – another important staple in a woman’s library! We’re totally trackin’ Jeanne!!
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