One of the most important things I teach women is how to fall truly, madly, deeply in love with their menstrual cycle.

"When you take the medicine of the Baba Yaga, dark Shamaness, it changes you. When you plead with her to show you how to get back to your wild aliveness, to the state in which your rocking hips effect the shining sea, you'd better be ready.

I’m naturally a leader and teacher, even though it took decades to fully accept it, meanwhile simultaneously (because shadow often works like this), for most of my life I have struggled to submit to someone else’s authority.

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” - C.G. Jung

It is terrifying because it is the most shocking, confronting and disruptive thing… it triggers other people like nothing else when you’ll no longer gag and contort yourself to receive scraps of their approval.

I read a couple of studies recently about the dark side of being seen to be “doing the right thing”.

They showed that displays of excellence can turn off or provoke the very people they might otherwise inspire.

One study showed that “Principled deviants who take the high road threaten others’ moral self-worth”.

I’m *barely* back from the woods so please don’t expect any sense from me but I’ve just discovered it was 8 years TODAY that the podcast was born and it feels right to celebrate…

This is another shadow voice that’s made itself known very clearly lately.

Interestingly, or rather - magically, this is growing louder just after my last initiation into Father Sky, who brings the truth serum from Above.

The rich irony of this shadow voice is that I’m painfully, horribly, triggeringly honest (as my family, my team and our students will tell you).

(Written a year ago and even more true today)

I planted these two different honeysuckles over the swing seat many years ago with the dream that one day they would unite in the middle… now they finally do, it absolutely delights me.

My daughter and I went for a walk today. I suggested she sit quietly a little way away from me so we could both be with nature.

After a while, I called her back to me and she came over excited and amazed at what happened.

One of the practices of Waking The Wild is dream work because it’s such a powerful portal to descending into the soul. Here are some of the ways we guide people to work with their dreams to slide down deeper into their soul…

It doesn't have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try

A new, previously unconscious, shadow part of me has been speaking recently.

It tells me “I’m too good for this!” when I’m choosing into doing certain things I have resistance to.

It showed up clearly and unexpectedly, for the first time a few weeks ago in the woods, when I was helping to build a sweat lodge from the land up.

To these three men… so different, and yet each of them have provided me with so much.

Chris Brook, I really couldn’t have wished for a more wonderful father for my children…

Rob Tyler, you’re in my heart and mind every day. Last night we went for a Southern Indian meal…

Chris Tyler-Humm, Sandy chose well when she chose you, not just a husband but a man who became so much part of…

Lately, I’ve noticed the same question spontaneously arising for me… what moves us to generate and transform once we feel so deeply relaxed, safe and abundant that fear is no longer the animating force?

For the past few weeks, Fox spirit has been calling for me to work with it.

The constant messages from Fox, culminated in me taking the “wrong” route home on Friday and finding a dead fox on my path.

1. The ways you struggle to cope in this modern world you’ll come to know are due to neurodivergences such as autism and ADHD and that they’re really manifestations of unique and precious gifts.

Oak,

you saw it

all.

The girl who didn’t know who she was,

grimacing behind a contorting mask of someone else.

I first noticed myself disappear in a coaching session 9 years ago.

I was sitting with a client and realised I hadn’t been there for most of the session - which of course means I’d come back to be able to notice the absence.

“You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.”

These words from David Whyte’s Sweet Darkness, one of my favourite poems, are playing around my mind today.

This week has been one of the most intense I’ve experienced for a long time… we’re in the final (final, final!) stages of rebirthing as Waking The Wild, inside and out, as well as every part of our ongoing business needing attention. As Jonathan described it: it feels like we’re surrounded by hungry mouths that need feeding.