I cried seeing this rose this morning… talk about death and rebirth (as I did in my last post).

This rose had to be uprooted when the old summer house came down in April.

“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 At their worst, infantile projections onto parents, if not withdrawn, become the foundation upon which any dictatorial system depends, particularly when the tyranny of that system is never fully experienced because the security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.

I met a successful entrepreneur at a party last week, and we got talking about what we do.

Attempting to capture what I do in a few short sentences is foolhardy, so I said something that met the dear man and the precious moment about how Waking The Wild helps people to find and live their purpose.

Today, I walked to the crest of a windswept hill to make offerings to my oak tree in celebration and gratitude of its vital role in me beginning and then completing a commitment - a commitment to a three-year period of intense shamanic initiations.

We’ve become so used to having answers on tap… from other people, books, Google and AI… and sometimes for some questions and some people, this is fine - at one level anyway.

It’s not so fine when we learn to always look in those places for answers and it’s not even close to fine at the level of the soul.

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.

I had a huge smile on my face and joy in my heart as I settled in my purple tent of wonder in the woods last week. I can’t say I ever imagined I would feel sad for my nights in it to come to an end…. But now I can count how many are left on almost one hand, I do.

From as early as I can remember, I’ve done what I can to help our non-human friends, even the smallest… from moving worms from the pavement to physically fighting with the boys in the playground to decide the fate of the crane flies (known then as daddy long legs) they enjoyed pulling the legs and wings off.

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.

My soul came here with a message… that it *is* possible to live an enchanted life, and not just possible, it’s your human birthright.

And when I say “enchanted”, if you know me at all, you’ll know I don’t mean a Disneyfied, glittery (not that I’m knocking glitter), saccharine kind of enchantment, and I don’t mean the bypassing of the mess, mud, tears, and blood of the human animal, I mean the stuff of wild magic, myth and meaning… the legacy of our long ago ancestors.

I find myself thinking about being autistic less and less these days, and it’s easy to forget why I am able to do that.

I was reminded last week after an ill-considered supermarket trip that my frazzled nervous system required a few hours in bed recovering from.

“Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?” Carl Jung

Last night I had a dream that was especially vivid… it unhooked me, frightened me and also allowed me to see how safe I really am.

What’s required to live from soul?

✨ Heart-centred

✨ Soul-led

✨ Sovereign

These are the three tenets of Waking The Wild that are woven into everything we do.

A client told me that she often struggles to create time for body-led movement*, she asked if it’s OK if she’s simply listening to her body throughout the day and seeing how it feels and wants to move.