genesis
and other humble beginnings
"Pammy, you are a wild woman!" I heard it often.
When I was a kid, I played in the woods and sensed eyes all around me. I didn’t feel threatened, I felt curious. About everything. I was all-in outside (and inside my own world). Wonder tempered fear within me. Wind in my face, I regularly wore skinned knees and pine sap and sweat-tangled hair. I traveled through a bazillion lives in library books and pretend play and costumes. I created stories and art and clubs and friendships. The rules couldn't contain me. When I spent the night away from home, I was told to "be calm". Years later, I remember who the ones in the woods were.
I was wild. And I was with.
Then I was a teen. Inside opened up in a great flood and outside got slower, denser. I was all-over inside. Grief and abandon found me. Summer sun on my skin, I wore big hair, harsh words and crippling insecurity. I travelled through a multitude of identities by observing and mimicking and longing. I created masks and letters and conflict and fairytales. The rules felt odd, like a too-small, itchy sweater. But I played along and when my big, screeching winged-one of a spirit could no longer hold it in, I turned to the trees to spread out enough to feel my songbird-self again. The duality hardened me. When I spoke up, I was grounded. Years later, I realize my body is a bridge.
I was wild. And I was withholding.
Then I was gone. Racing toward my own life on a mission to captain my own mercurial ship. I was all-around everywhere. Outside of myself. Love and assimilation hunted me. Fire in my belly, I wore excitement and lipliner and shame. With wide eyes I travelled to Ireland and hospitals and concerts. I created lifestyle and fantasy and dance moves and apologies. The rules felt like an illusion, one that yielded access if you played along. So I did, slipping between the realities I dreamed - one for me, one for access - until I could no longer tell the difference. I bought in and played the part but not well. My partner flying wing-to-wing and I in a breathless free-fall. The absorption fooled me. "Great enthusiasm, terrible attitude," were my reviews. Years later, I cradle my own paradox.
I was wild. And I was without.
Then I was a mother. And was rattled to my feral core. Over the moon and in the Underworld. In a natural world. In a different world. I was all-out of tempo. Exhaustion and tenderness devoured me. Earth in my bones, I wore fresh grass and dark circles and life budding and dissolving. I travelled to highest peaks and deepest valleys and into the woods. I created music and longing and chaos and myself. The rules felt like shadows across the stretched skin of womanhood. Stretch marks of birthing and tending and loss and renewal - contracting and expanding contour lines; the topography of my life. Never and always alone. The complexity opened me. "Purify for liberation," they chanted. Years later, I understand foresight and hindsight are poets.
I was wild. And I was withstanding.
Now I am aging. And I am alright-ing. Unfinished. Exploring the rhythm and sinew and musk of flight. Giving and receiving define me. Aqueous as moonlight, I wear agency and regret and binoculars and imperfection. Learning the intricate ground again and again with scarred feet that have travelled; my heart a loosely organized bloom grown from roots made for tracking forest and stars and game trails; with mind like the sky river of clouds that flow over and through, licking the mountains of my home. The rules still knick me but I bleed my ancestors and descendants closer. Time’s spiral has polished me. “Keep honing,” my soul whispers. Years later, I will know my own gravity.
I am wild. And I am withing.
turning my process inside-out
This story is not unique, nor it is universal. For me, a white, neurodivergent, cis woman raised in 70s and 80s Midwest American culture, reclamation of the wild implies the life-long process of swimming in the complexity of what it means to be a "me" and "us" in an ever-changing and sometimes intentionally hidden landscape. As an animist (or rather, mythoanimist - thank you @juniperstokes!) with a generous cosmology, a tender heart and the gift of heightened perception, that's a whole lotta "us". I wasn’t always aware that my world view was animistic (and certainly not human-centric) or that animism was even a thing. But the gifts were always there. Before I knew what to do with all that input (and output!), my walk through life felt more like a controlled fall.
“Animism nods to the inspirited nature of the universe — and not only to the spirits of nature we know and love. True animist practice acknowledges that even concepts and objects can have their own vital energy.
Mythos reminds us of the poetic, non-linear, symbolic, and archetypal reality of the universe. This invites trance states, direct revelation, and ancestral wisdom into our spiritual paths. Mythos also allows space for the non-embodied dimension of spirit — deities and beings of other realms are acknowledged and brought into our philosophies and practices.
Together, these words give us mythoanimism. Mythoanimism is contained enough to have identifying characteristics, yet broad enough that each person can walk “the mythoanimist path” in their own unique way.”
There's a movement deep within me that has always longed for the constituted "we" - and it for me - and senses the possibility of a liberating harmony that holds within a vast capacity with grit and traction, presence and boundaries; a both/and with self-awareness and curiosity as the foundation. The longing begs for a numinous and steady center; to examine and experience it; to feel an earnest and authentic opening to it; AND be able to tolerate, titrate, and have personal agency in that broad of a connectivity and pretty much continual reconfiguration, privately and collectively. And I’m a bit of an idealist (my astrology made sure of that). Sometimes I spend so much effort in the longing and seeking that I miss that it's already here. It's not a quest, it's an opening, an expression, a becoming. And this is the story of that.
I've been picking apart the knots and tangles and unwinding the too-tidy spool of my particular brand of domestication for awhile now. What I realize again and again is that it is alll about slow time, long arc. It has to include honoring feelings, availability to insight, and as much bias-aware, open attention as one can muster in the listening to and witnessing of constant change. This body-mind activity of becoming requires honing discernment for the process of slowly and consciously and even tenderly detangling programming, rigidity and the privilege and degradation of power in its many forms. It requires commitment and courage. It's a cha-cha sort of effort of waking up to an expansive, all-that-is-human AND more-than-human mutuality while keeping personal values awake and mutable – and boundary conditions clear. As we all know, it’s not always lovely and smooth here. Sometimes I want to check out of everything - crawl into a cocoon with a furry friend and turn off all of my senses and (de)vices and sleep for days. I think that’s part of it, too. To think about or conceptualize this elucidation of becoming the wild is one thing but to allow yourself to feel it and let it breathe you is quite another.
As I soak myself in soulful contemplation while writing this, the neighbor kid is skateboarding on his homemade half pipe to Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Brain” (an album that ushered in my art school years and has relevance in this context for so many reasons) and the migraine that woke me up at 2am last night and sparked a thousand ridiculous to high-grade worries is threatening a reprisal. This is it, right? Spirits aren’t always compassionate and things rarely go according to plan. Safety, security and equity are not a given. At the same time, I’m smelling wafts of sun-baked pine as the Nuthatch honks along with the music and a couple of my ancestors with whom I commune regularly with are near and enjoying me enjoying this gorgeous, blue-sky day. It’s an and/all.
My personal process of becoming has to include conscious somatic engagement because (and this is true for literally every human) the knots and tangles and everything we have ever (in this life, our ancestors lives and beyond) experienced inform the shape of our bodies, minds and energy fields. And the bigger fields we live in as well - we contribute to and draw from the fields that shape our collective consciousness. I turn to my wise ancestors of place and blood and root regularly to learn their gifts, mindset and understanding of the interconnection of all things (including the dense jungle of myself) and how they grew, gathered, healed, mediated, celebrated and faced challenging times. I also invest a great deal of time listening to the natural world, of which we are all a part, and the many lessons it holds. And learning and experiencing with teachers of wisdom ways and fresh insights, including poets and my brilliant GenZ kids (I tell you, that generation is magnificent). My practice is flexible and includes more things than I can list here - and wouldn't want to because they're alive and ever-mutating. There are so many openings.
After years of sitting in my own earnest inquiry of what-where-when-who-why-how, I think the taproot of my intention in the process of becoming the wild we is simply to be open, connected and present - in all the seasons and faces of being human, including the shitty-scary-shadowy ones. As it integrates and becomes embodied in waves, it guides my actions, activities, boundaries, healing, choices, activism, perception, spirituality, values, vocation and on and on and on. And now it guides this leap into expressing in this open format! I'm so curious what will happen here as we go!
the wild be, the wild we
The story of the wild is always there - always mutating and tugging at the hem and margins in deeply personal ways. Introspection folded into compassion and radical "what if". An invitation into willingness to observe honestly and vulnerably - and sometimes fearfully - as a living, breathing value. The process of "being" available to growth, healing and connection in a conscious way. Cultivating availability that opens us up to recovering or uncovering an ever-broadening sense of self that realizes both wound and reclamation, both autonomy and unity, both agency and generosity. Paradox is the tension required for breaking through.
And it’s a circle, or rather a spiral; it's non-linear. Some growth, healing and connection happens with sustained attention and effort, some through pure, effing grace. There are no heroes here but there is the equally extraordinary and mundane journey through an intricately woven web of personhoods and interrelationality; a pollinated landscape moving through cycles, moving at different speeds, moving according to multitudinous values. It's bananas! It’s wild! (chuckle, snort)
And it called me into action under this moniker of mystery. I’m learning about it as I go. the wild be is a sentence out of order, a hand extended and some wisdom ways I have the honor and delight of sharing. the wild be is my private and group work, the wild be project is this publication with my process turned inside out as an offering extended in camaraderie, as an invitation, as a service, as an outlet. "the wild" is the call and the all, "be" is both an activating verb and a state of being. Join me on this joyride?
the wild, may we be
With wide eyes and appreciation,
I’m in!
It is so lovely to have a second opportunity to connect to the magic of you. :)
What a beautiful introduction to you and your work! I'm grateful the mythoanimism resonates...thank you so much for sharing ❤️