top of page

Wildlife & the 'Wild Woman' are both endangered species...

Writer's picture: Carly Chandler-MorrisCarly Chandler-Morris

Our expectations of women are closely mirrored in our expectations of earth and for too long we have expected too much of both.

We have expected the land to provide without respite, the rivers to flow predictably tame, the forests to thrive without nourishment and the oceans to be somehow both wild and safe. Just as we have expected that women be giving without rest, that we show up each day the same, that we thrive without proper nourishment and somehow be both enticingly wild and predictably tame.

But the earth and its women are by their very nature unpredictable, inconsistent and of limited resource yet for too long we have been swimming against the tides, insidiously influenced by the accepted cultural paradigm that to shift and change is to be less than, to wax and wane is a weakness.

For too long we have been separated from our innate capacity to understand the forces of nature and the seasons and cycles of life, cut off from the ancient and timeless skill set of wild women that values and honours ebb and flow, wax and wane, the same wisdom that understands the role of wildness and unpredictability as the perfect antidote to too much order and restraint.

For too long we have been denied access to our intuition and insight through the prioritisation and proliferation of the logical and analytical over the visionary and feeling. For too long we have been valued only for our capacity to be fertile and life giving yet our form has been denigrated to a shape that promotes neither. We have forgotten the value of lineage, wisdom and community and with that the importance of the role that women play as we move from life givers to wisdom keepers and in doing so have created a world in which to be old is to be worthless and a burden as opposed to respected and revered.

Premenstrual women are not crazy and to deliver this curse is to gaslight a perfectly valid and reasonable response to the craziness of the world and the suffering of earth. Premenstrual women are truth speakers, revolutionaries and catalysts for change using their wild power to promote and protect life. The fertility of earth and the fertility of women are intricately linked and the pollution and pillaging of earth shows up in the earth of our bodies every cycle as a message that something is wrong. We are cells in the organism that is earth, there is no separation and what we are doing to earth we are doing to ourselves.

‘The cycle itself isn’t a problem, it’s revealing a problem.’

~ Wild Power, Alexandra Pope

For too long earth and women have been bound to the unnatural and inorganic timings of society and now the time has come to take a stand for rhythm, to feel the rumble of rage pulsing through the earth and reject any expectation of consistency, predictability and infinite resource. The time has come to reclaim our wild and cyclical nature and in turn restore the earth to hers.

​‘To know what comes next has perhaps been the dominant aim of materially complex societies. Yet, having achieved it, or almost achieved it, we have been rewarded with a new collection of unmet needs. We have privileged safety over experience; gained much in doing so, and lost much.’ ~ George Monbiot, Feral

The practice of conscious menstrual cycle awareness is a practice that teaches growth and abatement, activity and rest, harvesting and nourishment, give and take. As more women come to see and to know the value of honouring and celebrating our wild and cyclical ways we begin to unearth an age old blueprint for the understanding of the seasons and cycles of nature and all of life. We unearth a crucial understanding of the intricate and incredibly important interconnections between us and nature, an understanding that has the capacity to restore an attitude of respect towards earth and harmony to the natural working of nature.

‘Our wild power is the feminine waiting to be known through our individual experience. It’s our personal service to the revolution. Not a revolution imposed on us but an organic evolution that works through our bodies.’ ~ Wild Power, Alexandra Pope

Women let us harness the knowledge and power that has been pulsing through our bodies to protect and proliferate wildness this Earth day and every day.

Carly x

‘Wildlife and the 'Wild Woman' are both endangered species. Over time, we have seen the feminine instinctive nature looted, driven back, and over built. For long periods it has been mismanaged like the wildlife and the wildlands. For several thousand years, as soon and as often as we turn our backs, it is relegated to the poorest land in the psyche. The spiritual lands of Wild Woman have, throughout history, been plundered or burnt, dens bulldozed, and natural cycles forced into unnatural rhythms to please others.

It's not by accident that the pristine wilderness of our planet disappears as the understanding of our own inner wild natures fades. It is not so difficult to comprehend why old forests and old women are viewed as not very important sources any more. It is not such a mystery. It is not so coincidental that wolves and coyotes, bears and wildish women have similar reputations. They all share related instinctual archetypes, and as such, are both erroneously reputed to be ingracious, wholly and innately dangerous, and ravenous. The modern woman is a blur of activity. She is pressured to be all things to all people. The old knowing is long overdue.’ ~ Women Who Run With Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Illustration by Laura Wildgoose // @Trindles

262 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page