There is a truth that men and women are biologically different, but to what extent are we coerced into behaviors and contracts that are not inherent to our sex, and instead support a hierarchy that doesn’t serve any of us? For some the equality of women is seen as a subject of the past — we have come so far. But it’s always harder to see what is still alive when we are living right in the midst of it. You can be grateful and still want more. Unless we all question how we have been indoctrinated nothing will ever change.

There is not one temperament of the perfectionist that fits us all. It arises in many ways, looking different for different people, at different times in our lives, and in different scenarios. It is quite wise at its core, but there is often so much wounding that its habitual ways become debilitating. Until we understand the dynamics that are deeply imprinted within us, we cannot free ourselves from their grasp.

We are not living in a body — we are a body. This is the wisdom of the Wild Woman.

The Wild Woman’s medicine is rooted in sensuality, embodiment, and presence. Her medicine is rooted in her being fully alive and present in her physical sensual experience of this life. She trusts her bodily instincts. This is how her intuitive wisdom guides her. Her instincts are visceral, and this is where her presence lies.

Claiming our feminine power means knowing our worth, otherwise, we will never have the strength to harness it. It means embodying the shameless woman amidst all our imperfections. We can have self-reverence and be humble, and we can have confidence and make mistakes. We can trust in our knowing, even if we don’t know where we are going or what's next. We can have courage and be terrified. Ultimately, power is confidence because without confidence we freeze, hesitate, doubt, and are reluctant to follow the truth flooding within us — and we are reluctant to love and accept ourselves as is.

Our power and feminine energy is activated when we are able to surrender to who we are.

Our feminine power’s greatest ally is our ability to surrender and accept the current of energy within and around us for exactly what it is. It’s finding harmony with the forces attempting to carry us instead of distrusting the gravity. The feminine is fluid, cyclical, vast, and shapeshifting. We are many things. We are contradictory in nature but our vast polarities are what makes us whole. Our many faces, moods, energies, and embodiments are what make us complete. This magnitude is our power and we’ve been taught to constrain and deny it.

The dark side of shadow work is letting the process itself swallow us whole. It’s allowing our pursuit of healing to blind us from our already healed state. It's being oblivious to the abundance in front of us, the potential at our fingertips, and all the love that is waiting for us to wake up, open, and receive it. The dark side of shadow work is believing that we need to be fixed. It's becoming attached to the story of our survivorship, or what is wrong, lacking, or not serving us. It’s allowing our drive to become dependent upon our fires of rage, bitterness, and injustice — because this then binds us to a wounded identity.

Beautiful woman, surrender to your capacity. Happiness does not come from denying ourselves, and joy does not live where we cannot breathe. Creativity doesn’t flourish on flumes, and passion cannot be forced.

Rebirth is death’s adornment making us forget that we must burn to ashes to rise like the phoenix. Rebirth often conceals this bound relationship with the dark. It instead taunts us with its beauty. With its hope, light, and promises. Rebirth taunts us with images — images of what we long to become, of the life we dream to create, and the truths we ache to embody. In some ways, I thank god that they dance in this way — destruction and creation, life and death, endings and beginnings, and the dark and light. Because otherwise who would surrender? Who would ever step into the fire? Who would jump off the edge? Who would dare let go and leap for more? 

May we let go of our contracted muscles and clenched hearts and show the frailties, and sweetness of our animal bodies that are these sacred temporary temples of vulnerable beauty? Why don’t we expose our hearts? Why don’t we strip away our clothes, and war paint, our armor and facade, and leave our deflective humor, sarcasm, self-critique, and cynicism at the door and let ourselves be? Why don’t we let our truth be seen? Why don’t we embrace it with open arms?

My writing process is for every woman who has ever doubted herself or thought herself to be too much or not enough. I write for every woman who has thought herself ugly — too fat, curvy, skinny, pale, dark, blemished, or asymmetrical. I write for every woman who has ever concealed her identity, her voice, or her radiantly, beautiful essence. I write for every woman trying to find HER way. I write for every woman who is exhausted from trying to be everything except the truth of her shapeshifting, messy, raw, beautiful self. I write to wake the beautiful women of the world up to their power. And I write for me as much as anybody else.