While at the One of a Kind Show this past weekend, I was given a piece of artwork from a woman who attended one of my women's empowerment workshops several months ago. She said that she recently came across a handout that I had included in the packet for the class and that she was inspired to create the first piece of art she has ever made on her own since her first time creating art in my workshop!
She had actually included the script from the handout on her art and told me that she wanted to donate the piece to the Giving Gallery! I was blown away by her courage, talent, and consideration-- and thought I should pass along her story to you all! Below is a copy of the text from the handout I had given her, that was given to me several years ago. Anyways, I love when people discover their inner artist:) Enjoy the pic and the write up!!!
That is all for now!
Sarah
"A healthy woman is much like a wolf. Robust, loyal, fierce—Yet separation from her wildish nature causes a woman to become meager, ghostly, anxious about leaping, fearful to create a new life. With the nature as ally and teacher, we see not through two eyes only, but through the many eyes of intuition. With intuition we are like the starry night, we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes. The archetype of the wild woman carries “los bultos”, all the bundles for healing and meaning.
She carries all the medicines of stories, words, and songs, all the mending tools of dances, signs, and symbols. She is both vehicle and destination. She is the essence of the female soul. No matter how many times she is cut back, or called unsafe, dangerous, useless or mad, she rises through the psyche regardless. Even “la somber.” The most restrained woman, keeps a secret place for her wild nature. Even “la cautiva” the most captured woman, is waiting for an opportunity to hightail it to freedom. All women are born gifted. To live close to the instinctual nature does not mean to become undone. It means to establish one’s creative territory, find one’s pack, be in one’s body with certainty and pride. It means to act in one’s behalf, to find what one belongs to. It means to rise with dignity, to proceed as a powerful being who is friendly but never tame. The wild woman is the one who thunders in the face of injustice. She is the one who keeps a woman going when she thinks she is done for.
The wild woman is fluent in the languages of dreams, images, passion, and poetry. No act of love or social justice occurs without her. She lives in every woman, everywhere; in the barrios and the boardroom, in the prison and on the mountain at the fire, in the penthouse suite and on the night bus to Brownsville. She is mother “El duende,” the goblin wind of creativity. She leaves footprints behind for us to try on for size. Whether you are possessed of a simple heart or the ambitions of the Amazon, whether you are trying to make it to the top or just make it through tomorrow, whether you be spicy or somber, regal or rough, the wild nature belongs to you. She truly belongs to all. The issue is simple. Without us wild woman dies. Without wild woman, we die. “Para Vida,” for true life, both must live.
Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Her name is Wild Woman, but she is an endangered species. Though the gifts of the wildish nature come to us at birth, society's attempt to "civilize" us into rigid roles has plundered this treasure, and muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls. Without Wild Woman, we become over-domesticated, fearful, uncreative, trapped.
The real miracle of individuation and reclamation of the Wild Woman is that we all begin the process before we are ready, before we are strong enough, before we know enough; we begin a dialogue with thoughts and feelings that both tickle and thunder within us. We respond before we know how to speak the language, before we know all the answers, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking.
If you want to create, you have to sacrifice superficiality, some security, and often your desire to be liked, to draw up your most intense insights, your most far-reaching visions. Do not cringe and make yourself small if you are called the black sheep, the maverick, the lone wolf. Those with slow seeing say a nonconformist is a blight on society. But it has been proven over the centuries, that being different means standing at the edge, means one is practically guaranteed to make an original contribution, a useful and stunning contribution to her culture." --Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D
