The lifelong struggles with being neurodivergent in a modern world that doesn’t understand or welcome differences, the trauma, the scars, the chronic facial pain, the terrifying hallucinations, the shamanic sickness… all of these and more, I’ve made my peace with and received the precious gifts held there.

(The shadow of shadow work)

As the popularity of shadow work is growing, its own shadow is arising along with it.

But before I say more about that, I’ll share first how deeply I celebrate and support the increasing popularity of shadow work, especially deep inner child work, and especially when done from sovereignty. Sovereign shadow work is a foundational aspect of the work we do with our students and is something I am delighted to see is catching on and being woven into many different forms of healing and change-work.

Over the past decade of deep healing work, I’ve kept different photos of my childhood self at different ages on my altar and my desk… Keeping in my awareness what I had avoided looking at through pain and shame.

I was talking to precious WTW alumni Nicole Barton this morning, she was sharing with me how much is transforming in her life since the shamanic healing she had with me two months ago, and saying that amongst other changes, she was being unexpectedly called back to activities she once loved, such as horse-riding, yoga and piano.

“Though children obviously require the security archetypal projections create, adults cannot continue to submit to that authority without undermining their own psychic growth. At their worst, infantile projections onto parents, if not withdrawn, become the foundation upon which any dictatorial system depends, particularly when the tyranny of that system is never fully experienced because the security it provides outweighs the cost of submission.

One of the first and most powerful practice I invite the women in Waking The Wild Feminine into is some form of body-led dance or movement.

I’d go as far to say that without that... I’m not sure much wild reclamation of our bodies (and therefore our lives and souls) is possible.

Now and then I get unassailable evidence that one of my Waking The Feminine women has got that wild embodied feeling that I’m guiding them into.

Hearing these evocative words read aloud in Circle was one of those times... It’s a poem written by one of my WTWF wild sisters about the body-led movement practice I invited them into... 🐺🔥♥️

This weekend in the woods, two people at different times told me my singing was beautiful. Hearing them say that felt healing beyond words, so much so, I couldn’t express it to either of them at the time. But it wasn’t healing because I needed reassurance about my voice itself, it was because it meant I had finally been able to move beyond my fear of singing fully and freely in front of others.

Sovereignty is one of those words that comes with so much glitz, baggage, and rot, it’s hard to look at it straight.

In truth, we *can’t* look at it straight.

We look at it through the wounded eyes of the Child.

“If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their own experience, that alone would change the world.”

-Syd Banks

Ironically, I notice that the majority of the people who come to work with us after they’ve been travelling that path for many years are still stuck in the search to more effectively escape their feelings (i.e. their experience).

Many years ago, long before I consciously began on the shamanic path, Jonathan gifted me a smudge fan - knowing before I did what was to come. He foresaw the twists and turns my path would take from non-dual spirituality into rewilding, embodiment and shadow work and then shamanism.

“It’s hard being friends with you… you’re always so WELL!”

This was what a loved one told me recently.

I understood where she was coming from, I am exceptionally blessed, but it also called to mind the decades in which wellness wasn’t an enviable quality of my life.

The last few years, and especially the last couple of months, have been an initiation into slowing down to my true nature.

We modern humans have sped up. Magical, creative beings that we are, we have created all kinds of technologies that allow us to step out of the natural patterns of life… A slow trot beginning with farming, lighting and heating, and then hurtling into computers and AI.

Although I often talk about my love of gardening and share photos of scenes of cultivated beauty, what I’m feeling moved to express more of is the reverence for the wild that’s the intentional and devotional foundation for all of it.

When people discover the archetypes that are meant for them, especially the ones that are rare in this modern world, the difference it makes is beyond anything rational… that’s because the archetypes are beyond the rational.

(A post from March 2019)

This week, two separate clients told me that they hate me*...

I understood why.

Becoming present to the possibility of the gift that we are can feel like The Most Terrifying Thing On Earth.

You absolutely can gag yourself for fear of the ones who are compelled by fear to judge and criticise.

Maybe you’ve experienced being shamed in recent years or maybe you’re imagining it based on long ago experiences.

I contemplated long and hard about sharing this photo I found yesterday because it’s one from my “boy” years (edit: it was for about 10 years, not just a short phase) when I was repelled by anything that seemed girly or feminine, which I’ve spoken about but haven’t ever shared photographic evidence of.