Oh, they have claimed to.

Perhaps, in the beginning, they have wanted to believe that it was so. Wanted to think that that they were capable of such a love.

But always, in the end, they have tried to tame the wolf of me, to keep her small and safe and contained.

They have all, in the end, been afraid of the heat of her fire.

Know this: To tame a wild thing is never an act of love. It is an act of containment, of force. A call against nature and instinct and the primal force of the shadows.
Consider this your warning:

I am calling things forth now. I am claiming space and defining territory. I am defining my own agency and ownership of body. I am rooting in ritual and rising in power.

So if you come to me now – if you want to love me – you must first listen:

Do not try quiet my voice.
Do not attempt to soften my edges or tame my prowl.
I am inhabiting my wild.
I am encompassing the dance.
I am no longer burning down.
That time is over.
I am the white hot ignition.
I am starting the fire.
I am rising like flame.

You want to come with me? Then step closer to the heat. Meet me in the sliver of space between passion and truth where all is white hot and even the shadows are dancing.

Meet me there, the the heart of the wild, with your naked skin and and your own hallowed heat.

And know this: If you want to love a wolf – you’d best be ready to hear her howl.

The post To Tame A Wild Thing appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

Darling, it has been such a long journey.

An epic quest. No such thing as stillness and complacency for you. There never has been, has there?

No. You’ve always been made for bigger things that that.

You know it’s true. You never were like the rest of them.

The ones whose peripheral vision never saw past the nearest horizon. The bloom where you’re planted, stay close to home, safety-first, keep the same friends and the same job and the same habits – forever and ever amen.

No, not you.

Your restless rose up early. Teased you every time you felt that far-away wind tangle through your hair.

You were always called elsewhere. A daydreamer. A wanderer. An explorer of worlds nobody else could see. Long before you could leave you learned the limitlessness of your own mind. No geographic boundaries or sensible borders for you. You were made to move.

You’ve always followed the pull of your wild heart. For you there is no other way.

Lost and found. Found and lost. Souls like you know that they are really just one and the same.

Over and under and around and through. Barefoot and dirty. Among strangers or in the center of the vast alone. Traversing foreign lands and barefoot dirt country roads or the farthest reaches of your brilliant mind.

You wild and beautiful vagabond. You’ve wandered and you’ve searched and you never stay still for long – no matter what the outside world has seen and believed.

You are a universe unto yourself. You know no borders, swirl through the liminal spaces, live on the edges and dance in the margins and croon under the moon. You have no fear of the wild – for the wild is your second home.

This is how you were born, this is the way you’ve known and named your own self.

Because you were made for that restless wind. You were made for the trail into the shadows and the pathway straight into the blinding light. You were made for the cavernous depths of night and sunrise over the mountain and the crash of ocean against shore.

You know how to pack light. The second nature knowing of moving on and beginning again. No, you’ve never shied away from that.

And you are being called now, just as you are always called – into motion, into the wild, into the wind.

Into the truth and into the grit and the light and the wide-open world.

But this is different. Not like all the other times.

Sometimes you can search for so long that you lose track of the one place that matters the most.

Home.

It is time to go home.

Home to the earth that named you. Home to the ground that flows with that which brought you to life. Home to the root, to the heat, to the core of it all.

Home to yourself.

This is not about home on the map. Not about where you were born or raised. Not about where anyone lives or where the good jobs are or where you’re expected to turn up eventually. Not about the lover who weaves words into the heat of desire. Not about ties that bind or anything that feels like obligation or giving up or giving in.

It’s not about staying or leaving or anything in between.

It may not even be about movement at all, not the way most people think of it.

No. This time, you are called home to yourself. You are called to integration. To the point of intersection. To completion. To the center of the paradox and the white heat of your own knowing. You are called to a claiming of place and space and intention and desire.

And even if you don’t yet know who or where or what that home is, you will be guided on your journey and you will know, with absolute clarity, when you arrive.

This is just the way of things.

So look around you now – at all you’ve collected on your many journeys. Take stock, give thanks. These are the things that have brought you to who you are, that have delivered you here – to the greatest journey of all.

Gather up the few things worth keeping; the ones that speak the memories of the love that gave you life, the talismans that brought you knowledge of your power. The magic bits, the crystals, the torn love notes you wrote to your own goddess self. Tuck in only the things which nourish your soul. The rest is no longer needed.

You don’t need much to hold the most precious of your belongings.

Tie all those bits in a pack over your back. Use the silk scarf that held your hair in the sea breeze that day when you sat in the sand at the edge of the world and the sun shone warm on your shoulders and you saw all the way to infinity.

That day. Do you remember that day? When you were all the way broken and all the way lost and then somehow you found yourself there? You had that silk scarf tied around your head and your old black converse were full of sand and your heart had was in pieces and somehow you managed to save your own life. You found your way home that day. You will do it again.

You know what to do. You always have.

So heed the call. Set off on the path. Whistle that long slow whistle, the tune you’ve been hearing since birth – the one that always calls you home.

There will be choices to make along the way. It will not always feel safe or be easy. No – real journeys rarely do.

But the choices are all yours. This is the time of complete agency and ownership of self.

It always was, you see, you just were not ready to know it yet.

Here is one important truth.
Nothing is forbidden.

Someone taught me that once, and I read that line over and over the words became a steady drumbeat guiding me into my own life.

Do you hear me now – nothing is forbidden.

Stop right now and read those words aloud.

Now speak them again and again.

Nothing is forbidden.
Nothing is forbidden.
Nothing is forbidden.

Your life belongs to you. It always has, but it is so easy to forget. In the losing and the finding and the finding and the losing – sometimes we lose track of that one essential truth.

And in case you have, I will repeat it one more time.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing, is forbidden.

There is nobody walking with you on this leg of your journey – truly there can never be. The journey home is always a solitary one.

But solitary does not mean lonely, or even alone.

You know this, dear one, don’t you? You are never truly alone. Get quiet now. Pay attention. Can you feel your hand in mine? Can’t you feel the weight and warmth of it? Don’t you feel the touch of every loving soul and the light of all the wild things? The whole entire universe is lifting you up.

The fire keeps you company. And the spirit of the wolf. And the wild white mustang. And the essence all of those you met along the way. You carry them inside you and all around you.

You’ve become a part of their journey as well.

This is the way it always is with kindred souls. This is the way of the wild. This is the way of the pathway home.

Quickly now. It is time to leave. The full moon lights your way.

Your life belongs to you now. Your life and your story and your body and your precious wild heart. Every last bit of what makes you the miracle that you are. Regardless of what the rest of the world demands, here, there is no compromise. No settling. No making do.

This is reclamation. This is hallowed ground.

And it is entirely true.

Nothing is forbidden.

In the wild that is your home, nothing is ever forbidden. Not now, not ever again.

Welcome to your life, wild one.

Welcome all the way home.

“When did you know your life belonged to you?”
“When nothing was forbidden.” Isabel Abbott

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.  The Summer Session begins on July 25th – as a gift of love to ourselves.

Please join us.

“I loved this course. It was the reason I woke up in the morning. No really, it was the most heart centered real, present space, so  lovingly created, crafted and nurtured by Jeanette and a bunch of wild hearted writers from all over the globe –  brought together with a love of the written word and expression. I highly recommend this course. It’s totally totally worth it!”
~Hanizan Abdul Hamid

The post Nothing Is Forbidden {It is time to go home} 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

The post Wild This Time {begin again} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

[hr]

It’s the truth that sets you free, right?  Coming clean, that’s what I preach.

I don’t always tell you everything. Did you think I did?

You want the truth of me right now? Tonight? Should I tell you that right now there is no compassionate mother in me. I am snarling and impatient and snappy. They pull me from this. And this is what compels me.  I don’t want to mother. Not right now.

I’m not supposed to say that. It doesn’t fit within the selfless narrative I am called to embody.

Right now I want a shack by the beach and I want to create and I want to be fed green grapes and bittersweet chocolate by pretty girls with nothing better to do. And I want to toss back shots of whiskey at an old bar with men whose skin has been worn to leather from a life on the sea. I want to weave my way steady to the bow of a boat and let the spray encrust me with grit and the waves fill me with the sound of home. And then I want to return, to my weathered wood cottage, and turn the music up loud and light incense and candles and cigarettes and lap dance for the muse until she puts the fuck out for me every single time I ask. Because it’s hot, what I’m making, and even she – fickle as she can be – doesn’t want to miss a second of this flame.

I’m probably not supposed to say that either.

I want a bike with a basket big enough to get the food I need, and the chocolate and the whiskey and the wine and cigarettes.  I want endless miles of coastline to ride along, until my legs ache from honest exertion. I want to let go of the handles and remember just how good my balance can be when I trust it.

I want a bonfire right outside my front door. Where the lovely girls and pretty man-boys cavort and dance and strip off all their clothing to tumble into the sea where the kisses always taste like salt.  I want this every single night. Until even my skin is permeated with the burn-down-rise-up scent of wood smoke and sand and sea. I want to be singed with the heat of it. I want it, saturated, in my pores until my breath feels gritty and real again. Until the skin on skin gives off the heat of flame. Until even the words burn as they are birthed.

I know I’m not supposed to say all of that.

I’m not supposed to like this about myself. This selfish that lives inside. Supposed to keep it hidden.  Soften it for you. Take the rough off my edges. Round out my sharp corners. I am told they are wrong.   The wants. The excessive need for solitude. For life on my own terms. Not ladylike. Not generous.  Not mother. That I’m not who you knew. Not who you know, even.

I don’t like it. But then I do. My wants speak to my needs which translate the terms of my survival.  The compulsions of art that will drive me and put me at war and seduce me into the crucible at the center of pure creation. There’s alchemy in owning it all.  Unabashed. Unapologetic. Without shame.

Oh, I know I’m not supposed to be shameless. This world, it’s got all kinds of words for women like me.

But there’s more to this than just me.

Because I have daughters. Because living on my own terms comes down to more than just my own survival.

My girls, they will know me as human. As creatrix as much as mother. As ugly and dirty and real as much as calm and patient and loving. See my struggle as well as my bliss. My unmet longing as counter to my grace. My deep rooted insecurity and my narcissism. My hard fall of tears as much the sweetness of my laugh. The way we all can storm and cry and flail and then fall into my big marshmallow bed, a tangle of limbs and heart and tears, and fall asleep intertwined, secure and at peace.

And they will know what it is for a woman like me to live in fullness with herself. To fight for it. To know she is within choice at each moment. To make contracts with self as the path to wholeness, even when this comes at great cost. To find the integrity within that space, even if that looks different than what the world would call true. To understand that even fullness can sometimes feel dark and bleak and empty.

That even regret and unmet hopes bring untold richness to what will be born. That it can be a raw and primal thing, this unceasing drive to make something from within one’s self. That great art is birthed of both great pain and great joy and sometimes directly as we navigate the tenuous space between the two. That we birth our art as we birth ourselves. Both, often, in the midst of struggle.

I think I’m probably not supposed to say that either. I’m supposed to make it gentle.  Pretty it up a little for everyone.

But I want them to know well the selfish and the selfless that lives within each of us, and the delicate dance between the two. To experience the wilderness of reclamation and the surrender of relinquishment that is a part of every negotiation we will walk as women who burn and ask and risk.   Who refuse to follow the rules given us by culture and upbringing and expectation.

I want them to know it’s okay to exist from the center of absolute unknowing. To live the ugly and the confused and the sad and the broken,  honest and out loud. That it’s equally okay to dive into the bliss.

I want, by the very root of my life, to show them a narrative that diverges from the one this world would have them live.

A narrative that is bloody and powerful and full of heat and sweat and sex and a sweet, holy joy that is owned and chosen. And a grief and teardown that is owned just as fully.  And an autonomy of self that rushes from within their goddess center, and a voice that rings true and tells the stories that will be key to their survival.

Stories that can be lived and written and told by no other voice but their own.

I cannot teach this from within a container of acceptable and predictable.

Because if they feel trapped or small or lost at 20 or 30 or 40, I hope they shall take the freedom to run for the sea and to heed her wild call. To hear the whisper through mountain top pines speaking ancient truth and knowing deep in their bones that the forest will hold their scared vows. I want them to burn sage and creosote and speak ancient incantation and call forth the goddess. I want them to splash paint on canvas under full pink moon while the coyote howl and the fire rages and to not fear the wild power that wells up from within on such a night.  I want them to own their sex as holy.  To know their desire as a divinity. To place a ring on their own ring finger and make promises that they will never speak to another. Unless they want to, and then I want them to do exactly that. To know it’s all in them, as it has been in all of us, all along.

And me.  Their mother?

I am never more than a sliver of space from the center of the paradox. From the glorious reality of complete contradiction. Not unbalanced, no. The {im}perfect center. Point and counterpoint. I seek it others. And when I look deeply enough, I find it in myself.

I don’t want to be where I am, but I cannot be where I belong. I am always searching for home, always seeking the next idea, the next embodiment of what may be. I am broken, and I am whole.

And yes, there is an unrest there, an ceaseless searching. A wolf who comes calling, whispering, howling. She leads me to hunt and prowl and burn. And she guides me to that delicate sliver of space, right at the core, that is pure peace.

I am opened finally, to a relentless sort of hope. For that forever love that the movies try to prove to me is real. And I believe. God damn, after all this time and all this ache, I actually believe.

But I also want to be pressed hard against a rough wall by someone who has the right not to give a fuck who I am or was or ever will be. I want a family of kids and grandkids and chosen souls and a 40-year partner in crime to surround me until the end of my days. And I want to be left the hell alone – to get old and grow gray and soft with the company of books and seagulls and worn wooden floors and chipped pottery that holds my morning tea. To take lovers when I want and discard them when I don’t.

I’m probably not supposed to speak that, am I? Not supposed to honor the way they swirl together, am I? That contradiction between the safe and the wild that lives in all of us. We are to choose one or the other and not look back. If we feel a pull to that which we’ve left behind or that which we have not yet found, we are to ignore and suppress and forget. There are truths that are easier for others to bear if we commit to never speaking them aloud.

Once upon a time I silently agreed to do just that.

I cannot.  Not any longer.

Tonight I feel the glow of the candles on my face and the cool of air on my back and the peace of the rain that falls and falls and falls outside. It quenches the packed, dry earth of desert and something in me as well. Taking what was hard and making it soft. Liquid. Inevitable. The way water flows. Just like it was the last time my body met another body and current met current and it all flowed into mystery. The way I move when I stop fighting my nature.

Until it’s all liquid alchemy. Wet heat. The way home.

I don’t care anymore what I’m supposed to say. This is my story. You can listen if you want. You can join me if you will.

Because these words and this life are my own.   Even when I contradict itself.  Even when I make every sense and no sense at all. Even when it changes from minute to minute. Whether they ring true or untrue. These things are nobody’s but mine.

And I’ve got a story to tell.  And so I begin and begin and begin.  Again.

 {images by iamchanelle photography}

The post The Truth Of A Woman Like Me appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

Why are you so determined to keep your wild silently inside you?   Let it breathe. Give it a voice.  Let it roll out of you on the wide open waves.  Set it free.

The post Set your wild free. appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

We’ve got a wild ride ahead.

Let’s agree on some ground rules right now.  The rules are that there are no rules.  And that you make all the rules. Make them and break them and change them at will.   Actually, the only rule is that YOU are the rule. The ground is still the ground. The sky is still the sky.  But the limits have been lifted.

You are free.

No more playing small, lover.  Stop tucking away your brilliance into the pockets of that oversized cloak. You’re no shrinking violet.  I know it and you know it.  If they all stopped for long enough to look below your surface the world would know it. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.  They might try; it’s easier for them if we don’t do this.

We’re not interested in easy. 

That slow fade into nothingness? Pale pastels and safe choices? Quiet corners and predictable lives? Stagnant comfortable sameness?  Your life story written by those who have a vested interest in keeping you small? Not now. Not you. Not tonight.

We’ve got places to go.

Take a deep breath.  Feel that fire burning deep within you?  You’d almost forgotten it was there, hadn’t you, love? You’ve been holding it down all this time, stuffing out the flame.

Tonight we stir things up. Rekindle the dying embers until the sparks catch and your belly warms. Let the light spread outward until your toes tingle and hips twitch. Feel that smirk start to curve your lips?  Sense that new strut in your step?  Good, you’re almost ready.

Now ground your feet to the earth, raise your arms to the heavens and release that goddess fire in a roar that brings down walls and shatters glass. Let’s get messy.

There’s no need to keep things tidy tonight.

Hop in the car with me. I’ve already got the top down for you. The music is blaring. Some deep voiced seductress is signing your freedom song.  There’s no speed limit where we’re headed. Our hair can tangle medusa crazy in the wind. Tonight we’re going off the beaten track. And you are in the driver’s seat.

No, I’m not talking about some out-there wilderness. We don’t need the inhospitable desert or the mountain switchbacks or the backwoods country roads.   Fuck the map and the GPS. You know the way. You always have. Tonight we’re heading straight into the uncharted terrain of you.

Into The Wild.

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. Untethered. Gloriously free.

See that little dive bar up ahead? It’s got a neon sign that flashes ‘Open. Open. Open’ – keeping exact time with blood’s rough pulse through your veins. Pull off the road. Hear the hard crunch of gravel beneath the wheels. Feel the pounding of the bass in your chest.  Throw open the door. There’s a dance floor straight ahead and a disco ball spinning light in all directions.  The room awaits your spiral hips. Your electric pulse. Your restless, uninhibited limbs.

It has always waited for you.

Make a quick stop at the bar. Feel the whisky burn a path down your throat and heat you from the inside out. Slam down your glass on the weathered wood and laugh out loud. Let the beat of the music call forth the rhythm of your soul. Know you are being observed. Closely. Watched by the voyeurs and the vicarious and those who have already entered their own wilderness.  All eyes are on you.

Taste the freedom. Revel in the attention. Gather it all to you and welcome it home. Feel the lust and the respect and the waves of divinity connecting you to everyone here. Lay claim to sex and sensuality. Experience deeply your duality and autonomy. Find the ecstasy that lies at the intersection of all that has been and all that will be. All of this exists on that dance floor, just as it does the space between your ribs that your heart calls home.

Right in the wild of you.

You’ll dance the way you’ve always danced when the audience was gone. For hours. Under the staccato lights and the pounding beat and the primal drive of reckless heat. You are rhythm rediscovered. You are sweat’s salt sheen. You are tangled hair and smeared eyeliner. You’ve stopped caring what anyone thinks. You’ve gotten a little louder.  A little more brazen.  A whole lot more of who you’ve always known you were.

When you’re done here, you’ll know you’re done. And you’ll go. Straight cut, easy exit. In the wild nobody will try to convince you to stay. Here, when your heart says leave you answer it by leaving. In the wild of you there is only one voice, and she speaks in the tune of you.

You are fully ready now. Embrace the disorderly conductivity that flows like lifeblood through the heart and root and white hot heat of you.  Forget the car. We’ll do the rest on foot. The terrain has gotten deeper. Darker. Less hospitable to those looking for an easy pass to the next destination. There are no roads. The only path is the one you create.

The journey is everything.

But do not fear. You won’t need a map. Your heart is your compass.  The stars light your way. You have the key to every door.  You will be tired and raw and ache with the depth of discovered truth. You will be irrevocably changed. You may not recognize yourself by morning, but you will always be granted safe passage.

There are deep, gaping chasms. Intimidating tangles of bramble and brush. The unknown eyes of other wild creatures glowing at you from beyond the darkest dark.  You’ll go in circles here, guaranteed. Looping into and out of yourself. You will come to know the sweet spiral of surrender, the lushness of the yield.

You will discover when to push forward, and when to stop completely. You will greet with delight the multitudes within you. The ones with pretty, acceptable faces and the ones you keep hidden from judgmental stares. You will be seduced by each one and make peace with them all.

Every last one of your wild souls.

The terrain is climbing now. Huge boulders lay before you. You’ll need to use your entire body and mind to continue. But you will and you must and you do. You climb at precarious angles and across narrow peaks where your hold is so precarious that only the tenacity of your drive will keep you from falling. Climb until every muscle screams defeat and your gremlin mind calls persuasively for quitting.

And then you’ll be there. At the summit. Where it all lays, spread out before you. Your life. Your stories. Your pretty, safe disguises.    The most frightening places within. Your million breathtaking truths. The lies and the failtures and the shame. Your triumphs and dreams. The wild, unconstrained wholeness of you.

By the light of a glorious full moon you will see that all the walls you ever built were imaginary. Made of nothing but air. And you can soar over them all right now if you choose. Here in the wild your power is infinite.

Always, your power is infinite.

One more time now, from the top of your world.  Arms to heavens, head thrown back. Let your eyes reflect the light of the cosmos.   Let your wild spirit free. Howl from the depth and root and heat of you. Roar with the desire and desperation and power of you.   Scream the demons and the passion and the very core of wild magic within. Let it all go and call it all home.

I will leave you now. Don’t worry, you didn’t ever really need me. I am but a guide. I can be called back at anytime, because I am in you. Because I am you. Because you are the wild. Because the wild is you. Because you had the courage to take this journey.

Into the wild.

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