“When the instincts are injured, humans will “normalize” assault after assault, acts of injustice and destruction toward themselves, their offspring, their loved ones, their land, and even their Gods.
This normalizing of the shocking and abusive is refused by repairing injured instinct. As instinct is repaired, the integral wild nature returns. Instead of dancing into the the forest in the red shoes until all life becomes tortured and meaningless, we can return to our handmade life, the wholly mindful life, re-make our own shoes, walk our walk, talk our own talk.”
~Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D.
Women Who Run with the Wolves:
Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Many times I have described myself as an alien. The ways I spend my waking hours, the ways I eat, the ways I navigate raising my children, the ways I travel, the ways I play, I do everything a little differently than everyone else thought I would (including me). It’s been a challenging way to be in the world at times, but I’ve learned there is no alternative. It’s the only way I’ve found to align with the reality of what is true for myself, my family and our needs.
This wasn’t always the case. For a long time I lived in a place of confusion and extreme reactivity. I tried so hard to do life by the rules and our culture’s standard approved checklists. I was even pretty good at it – doing all of the “supposed to’s” that Culture dictated as normal and right. Unfortunately I often found myself miserable in the process. I knew something was off. There had to be more to life than this.
Periodically, when my days would be tunneling ahead in a way that felt too fast or out of alignment, I would somehow find the ability to pause long enough to ask myself, “What am I doing?”, momentarily aware that I had steered off track and away from what felt right, suddenly aware of precious time wasted, never to get back.
And then one day, I got the slightest whiff.
A scent of something I had long forgotten. It smelled like wind and grass and stars. It sounded like birds in trees, had the presence of mountains and felt like the cool waters of a swirling creek. My instincts slowly but surely began to return to me. Martha Beck calls these instincts our “essential self,” which she describes as the innermost essence of who we truly are, beneath layers of societal conditioning and expectations.1 Eckhart Tolle calls it presence, the awareness of your true, eternal essence.3 All of us have this in tact when we enter the world, but when conditioning and nurture get a hold of us, it often at a young age gets compartmentalized way in the back of our consciousness, dusty and forgotten.
When this part makes itself known again, when we decide to start listening while still trying to function within the constraining norms, as you might imagine, things don’t get easier – at least not initially. For me, when I first responded to a big moment of course correction, it came with a flood of paradoxical feelings: uncertainty paired with absolute confidence, elation and freedom with paralyzing fear, darkness yet also light. What kept me going was that beauty slowly began oozing back over the world around me like a veil of clarity, showing me examples of opportunity and kindness, where before had been tediousness and façades. It wrapped itself around me like the warm robe of a loving mother. I felt hopeful again and excited about life and my options for being in the world.
In my case, responding and building a lifestyle that could answer the calls of my instincts involved things like changing the path of education for my kids to one that was based in their autonomy, physical and emotional health, creativity and strengths, and things like exploring new interests and using my voice for social justice for the first time in ways that sometimes came with a high social cost. It came with losing some friends and gaining new ones. It came with changing my doctors, specialists and paths of care to ones that I better trusted and related to from a place of both competence and humanity. It came with saying no. It came with more vitality and joy. It also came with complex medical issues. My body had been operating in fight, flight, freeze for so long, that once I came out of it and was actually feeling peaceful and happy on a regular basis, it was as though my physical body let out a huge sigh of relief and said, Now it’s my turn. While I don’t love how persnickety and big-mouthed that my body has become, I know and treat her better now and we have a more respectful relationship with one other. I have become much better at listening to her and can sense and course correct when things are off long before I hit the proverbial wall and get into serious physical trouble.
I still find myself off course at times. I still ask “What am I doing?” My body still claims space and has needs. But the time between being lost and feeling found is shorter now because of the tools and experiences I have gained in attuning to myself, and continuing the life-long effort of building a life around what I value most.
Our paths and instincts are, and must be, distinctly our own. This describes a few of mine. My very own (what Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés calls) “handmade life”. Some of the things I do may resonate with your heart. Many of them won’t. Regardless, I hope something inspires a pause of reflection about the endless ways to do life in a way that’s uniquely your own, to reclaim instincts for navigating the current world and the time you have left to be alive.
This life is meant to be enjoyed. It is meant to be grieved. It is meant to be fun. It is meant to be reclaimed. It is meant to be lived. When I’m not plugged into this version I’ve found of “source”, especially in troubled times, I trust myself to adjust my antennae until I can tune back in and find my instincts, to navigate my way back, no matter the distance I have strayed.
Sources:
- Beck, Martha. Finding Your Own North Star. Random House, 2001.
- Pinkola Estes, Clarissa. Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Ballantine, 1992.
- Tolle, Eckhart. A New Earth. Dutton, 2005.
If you’d like 1:1 support, check out The Handmade Life! There I offer private coaching sessions as well as share offerings related to healing traditions, workshops and consultations.