Or perhaps it hasn’t been that hard and really, you know that life is good and you are grateful and it’s not entirely heavy. But there is an undeniable feeling of disconnect. Of distance. Of separation from self and purpose. Close enough you should be able to touch it, and yet – for some reason you cannot. And the frustration of this dips and loops and causes confusion and fatigue.

I see you, and I know these spaces. Intimately.

I have come to refer to my essential self, my innate center, the pulse and spark and beat that is wholly me – as my wild heart. It beats steady and true. It is untamable, unbound by expectation, unconstricted by rules and regulations. This is my way of naming and knowing that piece of myself that is unchanging and true. My compass and guide. The space I return again and again.

And it is true that, in the course of living this life, I have lost my wild heart – my connection to self – again and again. Perhaps this is also true of you.

It may also be true that you believe that you’ll never find your way back.

But what if your wild heart is not truly lost or gone or missing?

What if it is simply that in order to survive you closed the door, locking it tight or ramming it shut or hiding the whole thing behind a brick wall so you wouldn’t be reminded of it or tempted to go looking when it was not safe or wise to enter. And over time that door became obscured by debris and covered in tangled vines and perhaps you even forgot it had ever been open.

But what if making your way back to your wild is not a complicated affair – not as complicated as we would make it, at least. Sometimes it is simply a matter of finding the portal that clears the path, the one that lets the door swing wide open – intentionally and yet without force.

So all that is needed then is to walk through, into the light that pulses with remembrance, and reunite with that which has been denied.

It is true that most of the time your wild heart – which is to say your truest essence – is closer than you think.

25 portals to your wild heart

1. In the music, the low base, hip spin of the downbeat. In the lyrics that take you home. In the melody that sounds exactly like freedom.
2. In the way that as the day has settled into night and the house is finally quiet and the candles throw your shadow against the wall, casting the curves of your body as art formed of darkness and light.
3. In the darkness when no light remains and suddenly everything is finally seen, full and whole and holy.
4. Under the moon, with only her as your witness, bare feet on wet grass, and the spin and the howl and the hands clasped in unspoken prayer.
5. In the wilderness where a tangle of trees and mossy forest floor whisper and the wild things blink their eyes in the darkness to silently welcome you home.
6. In solitude. In silence. In becoming and belonging wholly to yourself, responsible to and for no one else.
7. In the ocean. In her pounding surf and relentless force and eternal return, in the salt and wet of her – the baptism of the way she brings you to a state of almost painful aliveness.
8. In the unknowns. Inside of the questions for which there are no answers and yet you could write novels without trying – because the question itself holds that much.
9. In the strength of allowing the questions to hold that much.
10. In the liminal spaces. The in-between. The worlds between here and there where all is suspended.
11. In the heat and sweat and salt of desire. In the space where body meets body and it all slip-slides into everything and nothing, all at once.
12. In the contradictions. The hard and holy. The grit and grace. The juxtapositions and the paradox and the things that shouldn’t be but are – and in the breathtaking beauty of this.
13. In community. In tribe. In a village of souls who see and honor and know. Who lift and hold. In the gathering around the campfire, where the pain slips away in favor of the music and the dancing.
14. In truth spoken after long silence. In the reclamation of voice, the throat chakra set free, the deep knowing finally said aloud.
15. In boundaries held – the hard spoken no that is the deepest honoring of self. In the holding of this, even in the face of hurt or misunderstanding or loss.
16. In the harsh acceptance of unmet want. In the grief that drives you to your knees and the love that lifts you back up again.
17. In the forgiveness. Not of him or her or them or the wider world. In the way you extend that toward yourself, and say yes. self – I love you. Yes, I honor you. Yes, I forgive you. For all of it. You did what you had to do, and it was the best that you could. Now, let it rest. It is time to rest. The time for penance is over.
18. In the yes delivered clear, full-throated and honest. The holy yes that ushers in all that has been longed for and everything that has been waiting for you.
19. In the spaces where wholeness is chosen over goodness.
20. In the discovery that you already have all that you need and even more, all that you want.
21. In the demand. The requirement. The statement of this is what I need and I will not settle for any less. Not ever again.
22. In the burning and in the rising. The fire of initiation and the forging and the ashes and rubble and collateral damage. And in the painful forming and uncurling of wings, the stretching and tentative first attempts at flight. And then the soaring, high and free.
23. In the revolution. In the hand painted signs lifted over heads and the marching and the chanting and the solidarity and the spilling into the streets in righteous anger.
24. In the surrender. The acquiescence. The laying down the weapons and walking away from the battle. Because the fighting is over and it is now time for peace.
25. In the words. Always, always in the words. The words that flow like honey from lips or that scrawl messy on page or click rhythmic from fingers onto keyboards. Not just the pretty and purposeful words – no. The raw and the gritty. The dark and unholy. The words that drip like hot wax onto waiting skin.

The words that shape the stories you once thought untellable. The words that are received and held and known and lifted by people you once called stranger. The words that stack one on the next on the next until they begin to form themselves into the story that changes the course of all things. The words that don’t just unlock the door, or swing it wide open – the words that blast off the hinges and knock down the walls until your wild heart floods your entire being with light and energy and freedom.

In the end, it is always the words that bring me home. The words that unwind the chains and break open the locks. The words that return me to myself, to my wild heart, to the truth of my being.

Tell me, is this also true for you?

If it is, grab paper and pen. Find a quiet sliver of space. Sit down and get ready to write yourself free.

The post 25 portals to return you to your wild heart appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

Writers are often an introverted group, preferring the company of words to people, but that creative fire — left to its own devices — can burn itself out rather quickly.

You know what I’m talking about. We call it writer’s block. Frustrated Artist Syndrome. The whole overdone trope of the artist pacing in his slovenly garrett tearing his hair out — full of angst and unable to write or paint or make music. And always alone.

But here’s the thing. Writers — artists, musicians, creative beings — we gather. Somehow we pull away from our art and we dust ourselves off and we emerge into the outside air. And then we find each other. Introverted or no, there’s a magnetic force in play that brings creatives together. Over and over, through the ages.

We find one another because we need one another.

Deeply.

unknown photographer, vintage snapshot print, July 1915

Leonard and Virginia Woolf and their contemporaries — renowned intellectuals, artists, philosophers and other early 20th century badasses — formed the London based Bloomsbury Group — creating works that had long reaching impact on literature, economics and feminism.

The Saturday evening literary salons at Gertrude Stein’s 27 rue de Fleurs welcomed that Lost Generation of post-war Parisian expats that included Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Joyce and Matisse into ‘a haven for the sacred sparks of insight visited upon humans…Stein’s apartment was a church with art as the divine matter.

And perhaps the most famous of these magnetic creative gathering points — The Chelsea, in New York City. To read it’s list of residents — Dylan, Bukowski, Joplin, Miller, Mapplethorpe, Ginsberg, Warhol, Cohen, Kerouac is to take a deep dive into the exploding literary and music scene of the 50’s and 60’s — an unintentional artists colony smack dab in the middle of Manhattan — a legend around every corner and more stories than the walls will ever tell.

All of these wildly talented artists convened in these spaces and places because they needed each other. Needed to be fed by the convergence of ideas and passion and creativity. To be supported. To find understanding — to discover others whose demons would play nicely (or at least creatively) with their own.

I need this. You need it too.

You know you do. Even if you look at that word that I keep using — Writer (With-A-Capital-W) and think… “that’s not me. I’m not a real writer”. Quiet that voice — right now. You’ve got a desire to write and a pull to the story — of course you do, or you wouldn’t be here.

And if you are putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard or joining letters into words and words into sentences in the quiet safety of your own mind, then you, my dear, are a Writer.

And I would be willing to bet that you feel that hunger to gather with others. To find that tribe. To discuss. To dive deep. To drink. To dance. To seduce the muse. To be understood. To be uplifted. To join your fire to their fire and all of our fire. To burn. To rise. To create. Together. En masse.

In community.

Because you need it. To maintain the spark. To fuel the flame. To keep burning and burning and burning until your story can be born. Because when creatives gather? That is exactly what happens. Watch out. That combined creative fire? It’s magnified for all.

You need this. And we need you.

When my, ’Wild Heart Writing’ course launched a few years ago I watched as the women and men in that space formed their own version of what Hemingway and Bukowski and Woolf claimed for themselves so long ago.

Though this wasn’t a decrepit hotel in Manhattan or a ritzy salon on Paris’ Left Bank — simply your typical Facebook group — we created community. We formed a tribe. We showed up as ourselves, raw and vulnerable and lit from within with the power of what was being created. Not just words and stories and ignited hearts — but a swirling force of creative energy — far greater than any one of us could have created alone. We lifted and legitimized and most importantly of all we saw each other. Fully.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

Several years later — the community, and the sharing and the combined creative fire — it continues to burn.

And let me clarify one thing. I did not create this community. I created a course that helped weave common threads among strangers. The birth of the community was alchemy and mystery and full on magic. The creative community creates itself, and it grows itself and it becomes through the sheer force of that much passion in one space. It is inevitable and it is necessary and it is a thing of great beauty and love.

“We know that community is sacred. The fire where we gather, sharing our stories, tending to the light and release, is where we resurrect ourselves and remember ourselves. It’s where we die and labor ourselves anew. It is a holy place where we see with tender eyes and let ourselves be fully seen. The sweet honey loving of the Wild Heart Writers so naturally calling out what they liked and loved about another’s writing was beautiful. I find myself still posting here because it feels like a home for my wild heart and wild words to come and be real and revealed. Even though the course is over, I truly hope the writing and the group has just begun.”

Winter Session participant, Tulasi Adeva

Soon we begin again. Welcoming another group of creatives and soul searchers and wild hearts. Opening our arms to another collection of those who know that the best way to find yourself, is to get lost in the wild, and then write your way back home. Growing the writing community that started by the most perfect sort of serendipity.

I would love, more than anything, if you would join us — to make this commitment to yourself and your writing community, to be welcomed into our tribe of Wild Hearts.

I’m positive Hemingway and Fitzgerald would totally have my back on this one.

Xo.

Jeanette

“The Wild Heart Writers space allows me to feel alive and connected to my own wild heart and all the beautiful, messy, raw, honest, amazing pieces of me I see in all of you…You give words to the deepest truth inside me, that I don’t have. I give understanding to you that is true and real and known. You inspire me. I risk showing up. We expose our nakedness and see our common humanity”

Winter Session participant, Kathy Whitman

The post Do you need a creative community? appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

“Being tame is what we’re taught: … put the crayons back, stay in line, don’t talk too loud, keep your knees together, nice girls don’t…As you might know, nice girls DO, and they like to feel wild and alive. Being tame feels safe, being wild, unsafe. Yet safety is an illusion anyway. We are not in control. No matter how dry and tame and nice we live, we will die. And we will suffer along the way. Living wild is its own reward.” SARK.

You did. I did. We all do.

We speak our needs. Cry our hurt. Kick and scream our anger. Sing our joy.

Do you remember it?

Do you feel that tingle way down low when i remind you – does that rooted memory of your innate wild spirit whisper back – yes – i am still here?  

Do you feel the stirrings of spaces inside you that have been shoved down, made quiet, pushed back?

Do you remember a time when you were free? When your heart beat steady with pulse of sun and moon and tide and you could dive under the waves and fly higher than the trees and always come back home. When you were one with dark rich earth and the green of all that is alive and the creatures that move unseen in the dark.

When you knew the truth. In your bones.

And you knew when it came down to it you were just like those wild things, you were kin to the storm and you rose with the sun and spun circles around the earth.

That when it came right down to it, you had no owner.  No captor.  

In all the ways that really mattered, no matter what they said, you belonged only to yourself.

Somewhere deep inside of us, we are always that.

Somewhere, deep inside of you, i know that you know this is true. No matter how distant or how separate or how impossible it feels right now.

Because somehow, somewhere – you forgot.  Or you were tricked, convinced otherwise by a culture that benefits from your compliance. Or you lost that wild heart of yours accidentally, without even noticing she was gone.  

And so your wild heart, she went into hiding. Tucked away behind books, or in shoeboxes crammed with old memories and older pain. Hidden inside messages of too much and not enough. Painted behind layers of shame and doubt and loathing.

Your wild heart may be hidden inside the fractured shells of past lives.

Or deep within the echoed expectations of others.

Underneath that pile of unmet dreams.

In the silenced loud and in the stifled, not permitted and yet righteous anger.

In the child trauma, where so much was taken from you.

In the silence of all the words you have been unable speak.

Within the covers of that tattered journal, where truth was finally spilled.

In the song that finds you, again and again and haunts you sweet and true.

Tucked between the ribs of old lovers and that ragged sigh of a space where teeth met bone.

Closed in boxes shoved to the back of closets or grown dusty in attics.

Between the lines of that letter, the one you read until the page was tattered. The one that will always be your undoing.

Hot and tender and raw in the unmet need for skin against skin and the want of your holy body.

At the junction between this life and that one, where past and present and future meet and the road forks and you made an impossible choice.

Slipped inside the line that lives between goodness and wholeness and the sliver where they become one.

And she is right here. Today. As close as your breath. 

Yes, wherever your wild heart is hiding – she is still there.  And she wants to be found.

I promise you, she wants to be found

Because you see, your wild heart is the truth of you. And you are the truth of your wild heart.

And if you don’t yet know it, let me remind you:

Forget what they told you. You are love child of a passionate affair between goddess and universe. You were born of a steamy forbidden heat and you were made for the cyclone of unadulterated wholeness. You are a daughter of delight. You are the unconstrained mother of all. A fierce warrior. A wicked priestess. Your roots twist into this earth. Your spirit rises in glorious asana.  You let loose with the howl of the wilderness you’ve held tight all these years.

You are wild.

Do you hear me?

You are wild.

Your heart is wild. Your soul is wild. Your spirit is as wild as the howl that has been building in your chest, ready to open the locked door of your rib cage.

Your urge to run – fast and hard and long – to places where you are unknown and unseen – so that you can finally take up all the space you need.  

That is your wild.

Your craving for quiet. For candles and darkness and the presence of what is most holy to you.

That is your wild.

The voice that tells you to leave, that your highest good can not be served here. The knowing that tells you to run to her – because her arms are the only home you’ve ever needed. The sound of the waves and the wind you feel tangling your hair when you are nowhere near the ocean and the air is entirely still. The sound of your laughter, pure unadulterated joy. The heat and longing and need of your skin and bones and center. The spiral and spark, deep in your belly that reminds you there is more. The way your knees hit the ground and your shoulders quake and you feel the loss of everything that has gone away. Your refusal to compromise what you know to be true.

Your resonant yes.

Your holy no.

Your sweet seduction

Your siren song.

Your agency. Your autonomy. Your surety of self.

Your movement through doubt and ache and fear.

This is your wild.   

This is your home.

And no matter how many times you lose your way, your wild heart remains. Waiting, always, for you to return.

When you hear her whisper, that small rise within – she is calling to you. And if you listen, and answer her call, she will help you create a map to trace the path back.

You can dance your way or paint your way or fuck your way or yell or scream or sing or pray or run or dive or write.

There are a million true paths. All of them within your reach.

Take a deep breath now. Close your eyes. Get steady. Get real steady. Feel yourself rooted to the earth and rising to the heavens. Now go in and go out all at once. Become and disappear. Stretch out your hands, palms up and ready to receive.  

Do you feel it? Right beneath your ribs? Do you feel it pulsing, red and ready?

Call it to you now, all the way home.  Feel the heat and solidity. Feel the want and divinity. Feel the pull of the tides and the wild, wild moon. Hear your howl.

Now open your eyes.

It is time to begin again

Wild this time.

*******

Do you, like me, know you have a wild heart? And do you, like me, lose connection with it through the whirl and swirl of life?

If your answer is yes, please consider joining me on a journey back home as we step into sacred space together for 30 days of questions and prompts aimed at taking us back to that wild heart of us – which is our one true home.

The space is already filling with open minds and pounding hearts and sacred mystery.

And having you there, wild heart open and ready to write, would make it even more holy.

Please join us.

Sign Up Now

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