Hairy legs, hairy vulva, hairy armpits, hairy arms, hairy woman...
So much hair...
Oooh and the shame that came with letting that hair grow and grow and grow...
What does it mean to "rewild"?
What does it mean to be a woman?
An untamed woman?
A wild woman?
These were the questions I sat with as I watched my pubic and armpit hair grow and grow and grow, only to realise that along with the hair came a reawakening of my senses, a heightened experience of feeling, of knowing...
In a recent conversation with my cosmic grandmother, she shared about the time her 9 year old son said, "Mum, why are you shaving? How will you know the truth?"
When our hair "stands on end," when we get goosebumps AKA "truth bumps," it is our wise body letting us know... pay attention! There is a truth here, a warning, an important message.
This little boy knew that without her hair, his mum would not feel her hair standing on end... she would not detect the truth.
Rewilding is not about taking naked photographs in nature for Instagram likes.
Rewilding is the reawakening of our wild senses, our ability to feel truth, to know instinctively what is good for us and what is not good for us.
As Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estés says, "Wild Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women, is an endangered species."
The patriarchal paradigm is a system of domination. It is purposefully designed to subjugate nature, women, indigenous, wild...
It is very simple.
A civilised woman is an enslaved woman, a tame, well behaved, unthreatening woman.
We strip and shave and starve and censor and sweet talk our way through the agony of playing the role of a pretty plastic barbie for a world that is terrified of us feeling and knowing the truth.
The truth of our subjugation.
The truth of our corroboration in our own subjugation.
It is not "pretty" when we decide to rewild.
The truth can be quite ugly.
Wild hair begins to grow like wild weeds.
Weeds that are relentless, spiky, stingy...
Weeds that give no fucks about your perfectly manicured lawns or luscious legs.
An eyesore that makes you feel unkept, dirty, shameful...
Like an ill-mannered teenager that should be scrubbed clean,
Mouth washed out with soap.
Weeds cut to the harsh truth.
A wild expression that cannot be censored.
When we let our hair grow, when we actually "rewild", we filter out the onlookers who liked us smooth and sweet and silent.
We suddenly feel the aching aloneness of just how rare we really are,
An endangered species indeed...
But like the weeds, who've been poisoned so many times before, the fight for survival sustains us.
The knowing that my wildness is vital.
That without me, this ecosystem would not survive, will not thrive.
And sooner or later, we see other wild ones springing up, we hear them cackling, and howling, and saying no.
We realise that wildness is contagious, it triggers and stirs the primal nature within others, the thirst for truth, the hunger for wholeness.
The sniffing out of bullshit.
And suddenly through witnessing others standing proud and beautiful in their wildness, we rewire the programming that told us that this was in any way "ugly" or less attractive...
We begin to see beauty in our calloused bare feet.
Reverence in our soiled fingernails.
Joy in our wild inhibitions.
We laugh at the silliness of ever believing we were surface-deep objects for others to admire, to decide how we are to be, to live, to act.
We remember who we are bone deep, women who've bled and birthed, women who see and who know, women who choose life over death and wild over taming.
Heres to doing whatever feels necessary for you to reframe, reawaken and rewild the truth of who you really are.
We see you.
We commend you.
You are not alone.
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