A Wild Heart
Photography by Morgan Whitney Photography
Six weeks ago, I led the first ever Wake Your Wild Heart retreat. Teaching the curriculum that I worked to complete for two years felt like fulfilling a prophecy. Every person who shared this inaugural offering with me was certainly predestined to be a part of the story. The very act of a group of women coming together to heal is also healing for the collective. It is a reminder that we have access to spaces to feel vulnerable, raw, primal, or emotional. Not only do these spaces exist, but they are safe and supportive. We need spaces like this.
Leading this first solo retreat was very personal. My own transformation was underway as I wrote the Wake Your Wild Heart curriculum during the last two years. I made the choice to face the dark places of my heart that I never dared to look into. I chose to look at the creature that is me. I chose myself again and again. Endeavoring to choose myself continues to challenge me. Yet to choose anything less is to risk living my life fully. It means to risk not moving on from those who force me to stay small so I can meet all the people who are meant to love me. As I leaned into this initiation, my wild heart sang. I could hear the call to share these lessons.
It's nearly impossible to describe an entire retreat experience in words. Every person contributes to the container created on retreat. It’s always unique. The sacred space allows for rapid growth forged from shared exposed hearts. There are lessons learned and blessings received in the form of tears, laughs, sighs, and hugs. Community is held in this container and set free at the end of the retreat. The impact of time together lingers for a lifetime and can never be replaced.
Below is an excerpt from the Wake Your Wild Heart manual:
“Your adventure into the wild is an act of love. When you dive deep into the wild embrace, you expose your relationship with the scariest creature of all, yourself. The pain you choose to face, own, and nurture will reveal what it feels to be truly alive. Choosing a heart that is wild means a choosing a life that is fully yours.
Many of us water down our wild nature in order to survive or escape life’s harshness. When you learn to express your wholeness, you are not just learning the physical skills required to bring your authenticity into your mind and heart. You are understanding and unraveling the lineage from which you came from. You’re awakening old songs; you’re pressing yourself into the flesh of your stories so that you can let them fall away like outgrown skin. Your new pelt gleaming with life, your body stable and strong, your voice confident and unwavering. You become initiated into the way of the wild; your heart synchronizing with all the wild hearts.
No matter where you are in your life, if you hear the drum beat of your wild heart, follow it. It will lead you to your truth. Despite the fact that no one can show you your truth, others will sing alongside you on the way home.”
‘Can you hear it? Can you hear it calling in the last moments before you fall asleep and the first moment before your consciousness floods in with what you need to do today? Can you hear the whisper of the wild, feel the yearning to come home? Is there a part of you that knows that there simply must be more, that you have in your grasp some fragment of a dream, a promise of oneness, of being whole, being held in the fullness of your being?’
