In her excellent book ‘Blood, Bread, and Roses‘, author and poet Judy Grahn recalls the experience that led her to form her theory of the origin of menstrual huts: She returned home one day to find her jeans torn apart by her otherwise loving and docile dog! Upon closer investigation she realized the jeans in question were heavily stained with menstrual blood.
This led Grahn to reflect upon wild beasts of olden times smelling menstrual blood on women’s bodies and instinctively charging to attack. This must have forced women to flee and find protection in seclusion. There is quite a lot of evidence that points to menstrual seclusion enclosures in higher places such as half-way up trees, which would make sense if you are fleeing from an animal in the wild.
I recently reflected on The Wild Woman Within and the call to unleash her. It seems that contemporary culture often associates being Wild with acting daringly in public, getting out of control, being untamed in the open, showing one’s unrestrained side, shocking one’s surrounding.
Yet the word Wilderness, which comes from the word Wild, suggests the opposite: wilderness is a place of solitude, where we may withdraw for a vision quest, where we go to be alone, where we journey inward quietly, where we pursue soul searching, often being intentionally silent and isolated.
It seems that being Wild, then, may not necessarily be about how we act outwardly! Seeking, and finding, The Wild Woman Within may well be served in quietude and solitude…
True: part of finding the Wild Woman inside of us is in finding our True Voice and letting it be heard! Another part is indeed daring to act in ways we have not allowed ourselves to act before, yet in this discussion I’d like to draw our attention to the Wilderness within as the place in which we may find the true Wild Woman hidden in us.
Could it be that we were looking in the wrong places? Could it be that the loud, rowdy, so-called ‘wild’ behavior women sometime go for — is the shadow of the true Wild Woman who can be found in the quiet and solitude of our inner wilderness?
Could it be that women who get wild with rage do so because they are deeply deprived of quiet and alone time, in which to recharge and renew themselves?
Isn’t PMS a wise mechanism designed to remind us of the deep need to withdraw from everyday demands to the serenity of our inner wilderness? Wouldn’t it follow, then, that in the absence of quiet, sacred spaces to withdraw to while we bleed — women express their deprivation with wild or raging behaviors?
Women of ancient times may have had to flee wild animals in order to be safe. We, in contemporary cultures, may well need to flee the wild pace of modern living and daily demands in order to be safe, and sane, in our own inner wilderness; In a cocoon of our own thoughts, feelings, dreams and inspiration; In the silence of our own company, giving birth to wild ideas and creations, in the wilderness of our soul.
Click HERE
for inspirational tools on your path as a Wild Woman!
____________________________________________________
© DeAnna L’am ~ All Rights Reserved
