Week 16 - 49 years 3 months 3 weeks

I can’t fully explain yet why this change is coming about for me, but coming it is! I am certain without truly being able to grasp the details or the magnitude of it, that I am entering my wild woman era.

I cannot, like physically can. not., go into my 50’s with even the slightest possibility that the last half of my life will be anything similar to the first half. I’m specifically referring to how I show up in my own life.

I feel like the first half was preparation, and the second half - the last half - is go time. Time to actually do the things I want to do and live the life I want to live, because if I don’t, I won't have another chance. Like, what have I been waiting for?

I mean, a lot of things I guess. Maybe not that I was exactly waiting, but honing my skills. Yeah, honing my skills. That’s what I’ve been doing. Practicing and figuring out what I want, what I don’t want. What I want to do, what I don’t want to do. I had to get the recipe right before baking the cake.

But now that the honing season is over, and I’m looking ahead to the literal last chance to live my life the way I want - now that I’ve tasted all the samples - it’s time to get on with the actual living of the life I’m designing for myself. It’s time to quit being worried, afraid, hesitant, uncertain, busy, and full of excuses. It’s time to do the damn thing.

What does it mean to be a wild woman?

At its essence, at least to me, it means to recognize and embody our natural states. It means to shed the conditioning and the rules that don’t belong to the organized chaos of nature. It means letting our inner savage out to play. It means messy hair and dirty feet from being in nature all day. It means unleashing the emotions that have been trapped inside us for decades out of a fear that they were unacceptable; and allowing them the freedom to leave our bodies and find refuge elsewhere. It means dismissing with love, the concept that anything is unacceptable. It’s embracing the creative, nurturing nature of being a woman, and embracing the raging storm that is also being a woman. It is letting go of inhibitions and prioritizing Being over Doing. It is remembering the stillness that allows me to hear my own intuition. It’s lifting the perceived veil between me and the infinite energy of the Creator.

It’s admitting that I am the Creator playing me, experiencing the physical world through my experiences. It’s knowing that the more fun I have the more, the more fun the Creator experiences through me. And it’s knowing that I am not one woman with many facets; I am many women in one physical body. And it’s letting all of those women have their freedom of expression.

It suddenly makes sense to me on a much deeper level, how my grandma found such solace and connection in her gardens, with her plants and the critters all around. She would spend an entire day, and one day after another, on her knees in the “beds” as she would call her gardens of evergreen, deciduous, and flowering shrubs. Her hands were often stained with rich, fertile soil. Her feet were stained green from forever being barefoot in the grass, while she spent countless hours tending to her creations.

And creations they were! The term “green thumb” was likely invented about my grandma, and if it wasn’ it should have been. She could turn a barren, dusty field into a lush, green, flowering oasis. Her hands were magic when they were in the dirt, or gently pruning spent buds and branches that were diverting nourishment from the healthy parts of the plant. She wasn’t formally trained in horticulture or botany. She went by intuition. She trusted her plants to tell her what they needed, and she trusted herself to hear them. You’ve never seen such a beautiful yard as hers.

They were not overdone or gaudy. Not a 100 different colors and species of flowers that looked like confused weeds. Her gardens were curvy and flowing, but defined.

They went on and on, and the more you immersed yourself in them, the more sweet surprises you would find. Maybe a little ceramic frog or a bird bath tucked away almost out of view, but for the patient observer, easily found. Her flowers were never more than two or 3 different colors. She knew there was no need to clutter the view and overburden the senses. She created with simple elegance, and luxurious whimsy. Classic, but not rigid. Abundant but not overwhelming.

And most important of all, they were uniquely hers. You will never see gardens that match my grandma’s, although my aunt’s are a very close second. My aunt spent many years of her life with my grandma - planting and digging, driving to nurseries and choosing the exactly right tree for a certain spot in the yard. My aunt learned at her mother’s side, about nurturing the plants and the soil. And which ones like shade and who prefers full sun. My aunt saw the wisdom her mother held, and absorbed it through the simple act of experiencing the gardens with my grandma. Listening, observing, trying, asking, practicing.

This is how we are meant to learn; from those that have come before us. Those who forged their own unique path and created their own unique style by listening to their soul and following their intuition. We are meant to learn to hear our unique voice and forge our own path by the unspoken yet clear and obvious permission given to us by those who did it before us. No rules. No formulas. Just flow. Just fluid, soft movement guided by the Creator of the Universe, playing and enjoying our experiences as women.

Trusting. Soft. Nurturing. Savage. Chaotic. Dirty. Free. Unhindered. Expressive.

As a kid growing up, I tried so hard to be the person I was expected to be. To meet the requirements of being a ‘good girl’, ‘a lady’, ‘a responsible adult’. I twisted and contorted my behavior, my likes and dislikes, my interests, and my appearance in an attempt to meet the standards and be accepted by those whose approval I believed I needed.

I stifled myself in order to be accepted. I thought that the way everyone else said was acceptable was right, and that I needed to fit into that idea.

It never occurred to me that they should have accepted me as I was rather than try to mold me into someone more palatable to them. Someone more easy to predict and therefore control. Someone less disruptive to the status quo, and more willing to color inside the lines.

I tried so hard to be acceptable, when I should have just been accepted.

If you knew me as an adolescent and a teenager, you may believe that I was a bit rebellious and defiant and contrary. But that was just little dribbles and drops that seeped through the cracks in my soul. I was holding back a deluge of wildness and unpredictability. I was stuffing my true self down so far that I almost forgot that part of me existed.

My older kids said to me the other day, that they think of me as “very accepting”, meaning that I allow people to be who they are and don’t expect them to change so that I can feel happy. I let them be who they are and decide if I want to give them my attention or not. But the responsibility for how I feel and my interactions with others is all mine, no one else’s.

I guess when you know what it feels like to feel unacceptable to others, you don’t want to be the person who isn’t accepting.

All the rules, and guidelines and proper procedures, and ‘right way’ to do things, and ‘right way’ to behave and believe - it’s such crap. The older I get the more I realize this: there is no right way.

There’s the right way for me to be me, and the right way for you to be you, but there is no universal right way for absolutely anything. If you hear yourself saying “that’s not right,” or “it’s so wrong,” check yourself. Ask yourself this:

Is it wrong, or is it wrong for me? Why can’t I let them be? What fear is being triggered in me that makes me believe I have to dictate what’s right and wrong for another in order for me to feel happy/secure/safe?

I see this need to decide for others what is right and wrong as a symptom of undefined boundaries. That’s what it was for me.

My personal boundaries were watery and diluted at best. I had a natural, even primal awareness of what was acceptable to me and what wasn’t. I also had an ever present awareness of the rules of society that told me my instinctual boundaries were unacceptable and wrong. It was a veritable tug of war between my natural instincts and intuition, and what was deemed appropriate by those who were in charge.

And honestly, that’s fucking bullshit.

The wild woman in me uses her No as a full and final answer. No explanation. No negotiation.

Animals in the wild will let another animal know right away if they’re too close for comfort. A short, quiet growl. Then a longer, louder warning. And then they fuck your shit up if you keep pushing.

Looking back, that's how I believe my grandma was. She created these stunning, expansive, flowing gardens that could immediately calm you and nurture your soul. She would welcome you into the fold with her delicious soul food and gentle nurturing ways. But if she felt threatened by you, or more accurately if she felt her family was threatened by you, she would show up ready for the fight of her life. And she could scrap with the best of them.

She could also set a proper English table with the finest china, crystal, luxurious linens, sterling silver place settings, and fresh flower and evergreen centerpieces that she made herself.

That woman was in a motorcycle gang and she read Emily Post’s Book of Etiquette.

She was a wild woman.

I’d like to share this description with you of the wild woman archetype from Michaela Boehm’s website. She is the author of the book ​The Wild Woman’s Way​, which I’m currently reading.

“What is the Wild Woman?

The Wild Woman is a part of each of us. She is not the crazed and uncivilized creature she is sometimes made out to be, but the part of us that is deeply and inextricably connected to natural life. She is connected to all things in nature, including her own body, whom she cares for and utilizes as an instrument of perception. She represents the part of each woman that comes from nature and is part of nature.

The Wild Woman is an archetype, and as such, can rise from the unconscious and come into play when the time is right. She is a portal to natural empowerment, through which we understand that we don’t have to “become someone else” to be loved, that who we are is utterly perfect, and that each of us is born with a natural genius that can be revealed and will bloom with the help of our body’s native intelligence.

Each of us has that native, embodied wisdom—a wild, untamed, undomesticated body-mind and heart that know what is true for us. This looks and feels different for each woman, and no two are ever alike.

The Wild Woman is not a fixed idea or a template into which we need to fit ourselves, but rather a portal, an entry point into our vast and rich inner landscape.”

For me, being in my Wild Woman Era means over the next half of my life I’m reconnecting with and revealing my unique essence; first to myself and then to the rest of the world. I’m allowing and embracing my natural self, my beauty, my sensuality, my sexuality, my savagery, my fierceness, my creativity, my curiosity, my playfulness, my nurturing, and whatever the fuck else I want to allow and embrace!

I invite you to do the same.

Blessings & Beach Days Forever,

​

Katie

Click below to get The Edge of 50 delivered to your inbox every week…

PS - The image at the top of the page is me in Madrid in 1992 on a school trip. This image captures more of my wild woman self than any other I can find. Something about Spain made it easier for her to come alive! I keep it on a board in my room to remind me.

PPS - The Edge of 50 is now also available on my website: SaltWaterandSoulFire.com Use the link to comment and share!

If someone you care about would enjoy The Edge of 50, please share it with them. They can use this link to subscribe. Previous posts can be found HERE.