Category: Soul Essence

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The Journey

“One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.”

~Mary Oliver
🌙

Image: Portal by Nancy L

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My Body

“I am not your cornfield,
not your uranium mine, not your calf
for fattening, not your cow for milking.

You may not use me as your factory.

Priests and legislators do not hold
shares in my womb or my mind.

This is my body. If I give it to you
I want it back.

My life is a non-negotiable demand.”

~Marge Piercy,
‘Right to Life’ excerpt

♾

Image: Venus by Susan
Seddon Boulet

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Becoming Elder

“…To a woman of the Celtic nations, to become Elder is above all to become Cailleach: to represent the integrity and health of the wild places and creatures of this world.

To become Elder is to become strong – strong as the white old bones of the earth, strong enough to endure the long, lonely vigil to the end of the world.

To become Elder is to hold the power, stay the course.

Above all, to become Elder is to become the bean feasa, the Wise Woman: the one who knows the secrets and speaks the languages of the land, who speaks with the moral authority of the Otherworld, who weaves the dreaming of the world.”

~Sharon Blackie
www.sharonblackie.net

🌙

I have a new goal.

Image by Carolyn Hillyer

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It’s Your Life. Own it.

“She never smoothed her wild edges.
She never stopped writing new chapters.
She fell.
She rose.
She danced.
She unraveled.
She let go.
She evolved.
She was a tangled mess.
She was strong.
She was fierce.
She was brave.
She was a badass.
The ocean was her therapy.
Grace was her religion.
She lived like there was a fire in her veins. e.
Forgiveness was her freedom.
She lived like there would never be enough time.
She lived like there was fire in her veins.
She lived.”

~Katie Yackley Moore

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The Wild Will Call You Back

The Wild will call you back.
Through half-remembered dreams
and sunsets painted
in burnt sienna
and vermillion flames
she will call you back home.
The coyotes will wake you
from your sleep
with their clarion call
to keep your eyes
wide open.

How long have you been sleeping?
How much have you forgotten?

The Wild will call you back.
She will hang you upside down
and shake the nonsense
from the pockets
of your mind.
She will strip your soul naked
leaving you raw and exposed
under the searing glare
of the gods.
Offer up the holiness
of your confusion
and questions.
Dress yourself
in fireflies
and attune your senses
to awe
while you learn the slow seduction
of courting your muse.

Brush the stardust from your wings
and wipe the ocean from your eyes.
Flex your claws
dig your roots deep down
into the fertile earth
and show your fangs.
Gather pollen on your legs
and speak
in venom
and honey.
Peel back your colonized tongue
and let it hiss
and purr
and growl
and scream.

Do you remember
how to stalk
as predator
and how to surrender
as prey?

The Wild will call you back.
The owls know your real name
and will call you
from the darkness of night
to dance under the moon.
Crack your heart open
with your ancestors’ bones
and dance in the ecstasy
of your love
and your grief
with flailing limbs
bloody knees
and mud-stained feet.
Braid mugwort into your hair
and dream yourself
awake.

The Wild will call you back.
She will teach you how to die
again and again
and how to die well.
There is no difference
between your funeral pyre
and your birth canal.
Do not bother
to try and stop
the bleeding.
Love with the gentleness
and ferocity
of your whole
soft
tender being.
Feed the spirits
with your beauty
and sweetness
and ask them to show you
the way home.
⠀
~Gina Puorro
www.ginapuorro.com

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Wild Breath of the Soul

”It is that holy poetry and singing we are after. We want powerful words and songs that can be heard underwater and over land. It is the wild singing we are after, our chance to use the wild language we are learning by heart under the sea. When a woman speaks her truth, fires up her intention and feeling, staying tight with the instinctive nature, she is singing, she is living in the wild breath-stream of the soul. To live this way is a cycle in itself, one meant to go on, go on, go on.” 

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes 

#WildSoul

♾

Image: Prayer to the Wild and Sacred
by Nancy L