Rewilding the Soul

Joseph Campbell, the great mythologist, retold a Ramakrishna fable about a tiger cub whose mother died and ended up being raised by goats. The tiger spent many years believing it was a goat among the herd until one day, it met an elder tiger who questioned how the tiger was living. The elder tiger proceeded to take the young tiger down to the river and upon seeing it's reflection in the water, the young tiger awakens to it's true identity. 

Profound as that is, the story doesn't end there. It continues with the elder tiger offering the vegetarian young cub meat for the very first time. Upon taking a bite, the young tiger nearly chokes to death, serving as a potent metaphor.  

When you've been living a lie and feeding on lies for so long, the "truth" can be hard to swallow. 

We often think of self-realization as a one time event. In reality, it's more like slowly turning on the lights for someone who's been asleep in a dark cave. It takes time to adjust to the light. 

You embark on a life-long journey of unlearning and releasing what was never you in the first place.

Water is a reflective energy that provides us the opportunity to face our reality. Once we see our true reflection, we have a choice. Go back to what we have always known or venture into the wild unknown...

In Chinese Astrology, I am a Wood Tiger, so this story is particularly potent for me. I was raised in an extreme fundamentalist religious community which never fit me. Over the last few decades I have been doing the work of rewilding my soul and excavating my divine feminine. 

When I left my spiritual community with my husband 20 years go, we both knew it was the right thing to do, yet neither of us were sure where this journey away from our upbringing would take us. We had devoted our lives to being leaders in this cult-like, fundamentalist church, but upon awakening we became the outcast prophets of our community and in our families. 

We found ourselves with a small child, following us on a path into the Great Unknown. This journey wasn't for the faint of heart. It was full of steep cliffs and arduous descents, passing through many lonely deserts and shadowlands before it led to new horizons. We had a few token friends that also took the difficult "Hero's Journey", but if I am being honest, I found myself missing the support of community when times were rough. The work of breaking generational patterns of abuse, can be very isolating, but it doesn't have to be.

The Rewilding the Soul Circles

This idea of creating a community for those who want to reconnect to their wild essence is born of the alchemy of my pain and the excavation of my joy. It comes from my heart-felt desire to share the resources and the wisdom I have learned along the way thru my various pilgrimage journeys and to highlight the importance of divine feminine liberation.

I'm not here to offer answers, because there is no one answer. My hope is to foster community that holds space for our individual journeys and our collective experience of being human. A space to ask questions, sit with mystery and reconnect with our souls thru nature, story-telling, art, ceremony, contemplative practices and women's wisdom circles.

This community is for anyone who feels like they are ready to discover their tiger face. Your reasons and your background may be very different than mine. You are welcome in this wild space.