The Power of the Wild Woman Archetype

“Wild Woman, wild woman sing life into my bones. Help me to remember the woman I am to become.”

I recently started a book club to study Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.  This is a book near and dear to my heart.  Any woman who feels lacking in any way, who feels dried up, stuck, full of doubt, fear, or shame… this book is calling to you.  

It is a book I have read all the way through and over the years have continued to come back to it to read bits as I’ve felt inspired.  But, I have never joined other women with a calling in their soul to rewild, to let their hair down and their claws out as they dig into their own depths to rediscover the wild woman within. 

Women gathering in circle is powerful.  Women gathering in circle to rewild and claim their sovereignty… I’m not sure I have words to express the magnitude of that frequency.  

It is palpable, it is humming, it is an energy of unraveling and rebirthing.

You may be wondering what it means to rewild?  What is Wild Woman Archetype?  

She is the female soul, a part of the divine feminine.  She is your intuition, your instinct.  

She is the far-seer, the deep listening, the loyal heart.  

She is your creativity.  She is dancing, singing, drumming, howling at the moon in purest joy and life.  

She is the deep lover, the healer.  

She is your life, death, life cycle.  She knows what must die away in order to make room for new life.

When wild woman is fully present she ignites your vibrancy, your sovereignty, your creative power.  

She is the one who finds all the bones- the lost, dismembered aspects of oneself and she sings over them until you become whole again.  

If you feel at all disconnected from your wild self, if you feel drained, stuck, dry, numb, fearful, or any words that might describe not fully in your vibrancy and wholeness then you are invited to rediscover your own lost parts.  You are invited to find the scent, the soft whisper of the wild woman archetype within you.  Here are a few questions offered by Dr. Estes in her book:

• What has happened to my soul voice?

• What are the buried bones in my life?

• What condition is my relationship to my own intuition?

• When was the last time I ran free? Felt free?

• How can I make life come alive again? 

I invite you to grab your journal and drop into your heart, into your womb and ponder these questions.  The path to your own rewilding might be found in your answers.  

Whether you choose to read the book alone, with other women, or not at all, the wild woman is within you.  She is beckoning you to come near.  Her soft whisper is reminding you of who you really are.  She is reminding you of what is available to you– intuition, connection, creativity, confidence, authenticity, embodiment, sovereignty.  

It is our birthright to live empowered, dynamic, vibrant lives. 

Harnessing your wild woman energy brings you back to life.

3 mindset shifts that will get you UNSTUCK

If you want to feel excited about life and feel like you have control over what your life looks like then you have to start with the internal work.

One of my clients had a huge a-ha moment when she started to dive into our work together. She said, ‘I didn’t realize how much I had resigned myself to a life of drudgery.’ Before our work, she hadn’t realized that she actually could change the way she felt, could change the way her life felt. She didn’t realize how much her own mindset and energy was impacting her life AND that she had the power to do something about it.

She believed that since she chose to be a wife and mom, and this is what her life looked like as a wife and mom (catering to her kids every need, not putting her husband out by asking for time for herself, having sex when she didn’t really want to, taking care of all the household responsibilities because he works and she doesn’t #raisingyourkidsisafulltimejob), that she just had to deal with it. She should be grateful for what she had and suck it up and make the best out of life that didn’t satisfy her, but wasn’t terrible.

Man, had I been there before. Pushing down my feelings of dissatisfaction, not feeling really seen or valued, hopelessness, helplessness, and resignation.

Thinking, “is this really as good as it’s going to get?”

Wishing for more, but not seeing anyway to get it.

But, through laser coaching and tapping we were able to really look at the underlying beliefs and shed light on a new perspective, reprogramming her mindset to work for her rather than hold her back any longer. And, by the end of our work together, she no longer felt like she had to settle for a life of drudgery. In fact, her life had become full of joy, fulfillment, and freedom.

She stopped waiting for her life to magically change for the better one day and started to take responsibility for making the changes she desired. She stopped feeling guilty and like a bad mom and wife if she took the time she needed to fill her own cup, she started doing things that brought her more joy and fulfillment, she stopped worrying that if she prioritized her own happiness that it would negatively impact her family, she felt comfortable asking for support.

She learned to honor herself and in doing so not only did her life go from drudgery to joyful, but the relationships she worried would suffer because of it, actually got closer.

Here are 3 key mindset shifts that will help you reclaim your power and take back your life.

1. I need something or someone to change in order for me to feel better

I spent a lot of my life believing this. If only my boss wasn’t awful then I would love my job. If only my daughter was easier then I wouldn’t feel so stressed out. If only my husband was more open and communicative then I would be happier in my marriage. If only my childhood hadn’t been crappy then I would feel better about myself. If only I had a bigger house then I would feel like I fit in with the other moms. If only something changed…

then I would feel better.

Do you see how this way of thinking keeps you stuck playing the victim? If you continue to wait for something or someone to change in order for you to love your life, mama, you’re going to be waiting a long time. The only thing you have power over is yourself, and if you need everything outside of you to change in order to feel good then you’ve just given away all of your power.

What I know to be true is that in order for your outside circumstances to change, you have to change, meaning you have to take radical responsibility for your life. You have a choice in how you feel. You have a choice on how you perceive your life and what you focus on.

And, when you choose to shift your focus, when you choose to embody love, appreciation, and joy instead of anger, blame, stress, and self judgment, then your circumstances will change.

Your current circumstances are a reflection of your current and past vibration (your thoughts and emotions).

So, let me give you an example...

I had a job that I really didn’t like. It checked all the right boxes of income, hours, location, etc, but the work did not excite me. Plus, to top it off, I ended up with a boss that seemed to make it her mission to point out all my flaws. Initially, I thought that it was all my bosses fault. If she wasn’t awful I would enjoy my job. I wouldn’t dread having to go there everyday. I would do better at my work. But, then I came to the realization that of course I would hate my job, and of course, my boss would continue to pick on me if I continue to stay in the frame of mind everyday that my job sucked, that my boss was awful.

I was coding in the same vibration, the same neural pathways to create the same reality everyday that I woke up. But, when I made the conscious choice to shift my thinking about my boss and my job something amazing happened. I started to wake up everyday and send my boss loving thoughts. I walked into my work everyday in appreciation, thankful to have a job, thankful for the coworkers I loved, thankful for everything I had learned on this job, thankful with all the little bits that I appreciated. Before I had to interact with my boss I would send her loving thoughts. And, you know what happened, she stopped paying much attention to me at all AND within a month I had been recruited to a different department with a new boss and I didn’t have to interact with my old boss at all.

When I chose to no longer focus on the problem, the problem was removed from my reality. It could not exist when I no longer was a vibrational match to it.

Key takeaway here, no one or no thing has the power to make you feel anything unless you let them. You always have a choice and when you take radical responsibility for your life you have great power to effect change. Start to focus on what you want. Start to focus on the areas of your life that you appreciate. Change your focus, change your life!

2. You believe everything you hear in your head

We all have a judge and a victim in our head. The victim is the voice that tells us we have no power over our lives and what happens. The judge is filling us in on all the reasons why we’re bad, not good enough, undeserving, and not worthy.

Our judge is loud, authoritative, and mean. And, it’s been around so long we often listen to it without question. We believe everything it says.

Here’s how the judge shows up… You’ve decided you’re going to take some time for yourself, do a little self-care because you’re exhausted. The judge isn’t having any of that, "who do you think you are?"

The judge says, “you can’t take time for yourself, your kids need you, remember they cried last time you left, only bad mom’s leave their kids upset just to go to a yoga class. How selfish. They're going to think you don’t love them, they're going to feel abandoned. You’re going to harm your children just to do what you want? Why did you even have kids in the first place? Oh, you want to ask your partner for help? Well, they work all week long, they're tired after work. They deserve some free time on the weekend. You don’t work as hard as them, they deserve it more than you. All the other moms seem to be handling it better than you. You should be able to handle this. You wanted kids right? Now, you’re saying it’s too much? Suck it up, this is the life you asked for!”

Sound familiar?

The goal is not to demonize our judge, but to start to get curious? Is what it’s saying really true? Who says? Does the judge sound eerily familiar to someone else from your past… maybe a parent, or some other influential adult when you were a child?

It’s important to start gaining awareness of the judge in your head and no longer blindly accepting it’s voice as truth. It’s time to cultivate a new internal voice. The voice of your highest soul self, your intuition, your inner knowing that will guide you to a more self loving, honoring, and compassionate part of yourself. She is in there, but she tends to be a bit quieter. She tends to need a litte bit more intention to hear her, to cypher through the judge in order to get to the heart of what’s really true. And, that comes from becoming aware of the judge’s voice in the first place, not accepting it as the truth, questioning it, and listening for your true voice underneath. The voice that feels loving, kind, soft, supportive.

The one that will tell you, “of course, you are worthy and deserving of taking some time for yourself. You’re not hurting or damaging your children by taking time away. In fact, the more you replenish yourself, the more you fill your own cup with what brings you joy, the more present, patient, and connected you will be able to be with your kids. Parenting is a BIG job, it takes an incredible amount of emotional energy, and so of course you would feel tired. You are doing a lot of hard work. And, just because you desire a break, just because you desire more for yourself then just your role as mother, does not make you a bad mother, it makes you a multidimensional human. You are so much more than just your role as a mother and it is totally normal and natural for you desire more for your life then parenting. You are not a bad mom, you are a beautiful, perfect, whole, and complete person. And you are worthy and deserving of a life that feels good, brings you joy, and fills your soul! You can have both an amazing relationship with your kiddos and a life outside your immediate family. It’s not one or the other.”

Listen for that voice. She is in there. You can be aware of the judge. Thank the judge for it’s perspective and attempts to protect you, and choose to not hold onto it’s perspective as your own. There is another voice in there, allow her to come through and support you. She's your heart’s voice.

3. You define who you are by what you have been told you’re supposed to be

As women, we’ve been conditioned since we were very young that our value comes from pleasing others. Good girls are quiet, polite, helpful, listen to what they’re told, don’t complain (to name just a few). When we didn’t follow these rules we got in trouble, when we did our parents were happy with us. We were taught that to be accepted, loved, and valued we had to make sure we didn’t do anything to upset anyone, we had to make our parents like us, our teachers, like us, our peers like us.

So we morphed, we pleased, we swallowed our truth.

And, we were accepted, we were given conditional love, AND our soul withered and suffered.

As a sovereign creator of your life, you get to now decide whether you will blindly hold fast to who you were taught to be or will you bravely uncover the truth of who you really are. Will you choose to prioritize loving and honoring yourself over seeking love and acceptance from others?

When you choose to love yourself rather than seek love from others then you get to create your own rules and definitions of who you are that are in alignment with your truth, the real you.

This is another way that we get to quiet the judge in our head. When being a “good mom” isn’t defined by society’s rules, the PTA moms at the school, or who your mother was, then you get the freedom to create your own definition of what being a good mom is. A good wife. A good person. A good friend. A good employee. A good daughter. A good human.

You no longer have to completely sacrifice yourself to make others happy in order to feel worthy and deserving of love. Instead you get to love yourself and create your own ideas of who you get to be based on what feels true and honoring to your Soul.

Now, that is freedom!!!

This has been a long one… As, you can see I have a lot to say about this. I believe wholeheartedly in the power of shifting these 3 beliefs to take your power back. Why? Because it massively changed my life and I’ve seen it change the lives of my clients.

p.s. I have an exciting FREE offer coming soon that will support you in shifting 7 of the biggest blocks to your freedom. Tapping into Freedom, is a FREE 7 day journey to radical self-love, acceptance, confidence, and your freedom. CLICK HERE NOW TO SIGN UP and I'll make sure you're the first to receive it when it's available!

Why You Don't Have the Life You Desire and How to Change it

You desperately want to make a change in your life.  You’re feeling stuck. You’re feeling like something is missing.  You are yearning to experience more from life. You are yearning for something that will make you feel alive again.  Maybe it’s a job that lights you up and you’re excited to go to everyday. Maybe it’s connection and belonging and you want to be able to walk into a room feeling so confident and proud of who you are that you show up big, vibrant, and don’t have a care about what anyone thinks of you.  Maybe it’s following a dream, your purpose, that you know if you did, it would completely transform your life.

But, something keeps getting in the way.  Something stops you in your tracks from taking the leap into that big dream, that new career, or stepping further in owning who you are with confidence.  Want to guess what it is…..?

FEAR!  

That’s right, fear is the reason you don’t have the life you desire.  Fear creates paralysis. What if I fail? What if I’m not good enough? What if they judge me? What if they reject me? What if I am totally humiliated? Sound familiar? I know I am not the only one who has heard these gremlins in my head a many a times. We all have that voice in our head that so “lovingly” tries to keep us safe by ensuring us that we are too dumb, too old, too young, too lame, too something terrible to step outside our comfort zone.  To step into the life we most desire.

It’s okay. You’re not alone.  It’s your subconscious’s way of trying to keep you safe. Fear is totally normal AND it doesn’t have to be in control.  I let fear run the show for almost 2 decades. It stopped me from even trying to become a masseuse after going through massage school.  My gremlin told me it was way too dangerous and scary to apply to a job and have to be critiqued by the owner. I would fail. They would reject me and I would have confirmation that I was not good enough.  I really enjoyed massage. I spent 9 months and a good chunk of money becoming certified and fear stopped me from doing anything with that. Fear has stopped me most of my adult life from showing up fully in relationships because what if they saw the real me and knew that I was damaged and didn’t want to be my friend.  I’ve craved connection and belonging my whole adult life and fear has kept me from actually experiencing it because here’s the deal, you have to be brave enough to be seen in order to experience true belonging and connection. My fear of not being good enough kept me separate from the belonging I longed for most of my life.

But, here’s what happens when you don’t let fear take the reins anymore.  After 4 years of being too afraid to listen to the little voice inside of me that was saying I was meant to do more in this world, that I was meant to make a big impact, I finally listened to that voice.  I’d spent 4 years ignoring it because I couldn’t even fathom a possibility where that was a reality for me. I was comfortable in my mediocre admin job, living a mediocre life, and I couldn’t envision myself stepping into myself and my life in such a big way.  But, when I decided to listen to that voice, and not only that, speak what that voice was whispering to me out loud and into the world (even though I was terrified to do so), Boom!! My life changed. In less than a year, my life has become what I didn’t think was possible.  I left that mediocre job, I let go of my side hustles (all but one really small one that I really enjoy), I became a life coach, went through a business program, and am currently seeing a good amount of clients, and being paid for it! And, I have attracted the most amazing women into my life and deepened the relationships I already had. Because I DECIDED to acknowledge the fear, and do it anyways! I had to let go of my fear of judgment, my fear of not being good enough, my fear of failure, and put faith in me, who I wanted to become, and the life I wanted to create for myself.  And, that doesn’t mean that the fear isn’t there anymore, but what it means is that the fear is not in control anymore. I get to choose who’s in the driver’s seat and I always choose me! Every time I come up against another opportunity to expand, to step out of my comfort zone, to grow, I feel the fear and I choose to take action anyways. That’s the beauty of it, you get to choose, you are responsible for the life you want to live and fear does not have to stop you!

This is the path to a Life Reclaimed.  And, I am so excited for my new group program coming out in early 2020, Her Life Reclaimed where I will guide an amazing group of women who are ready to Reclaim Their Life, own their power, step into their truth, feel the most confident they have ever felt, and create a life they love.  It is going to be epic and so much fun!!! 

But, I digress, let me give you these 5 tools you can use when fear comes up so that you can take your power back and have the confidence to move forward toward what you most desire.

Name The Fear

When you are able to name the fear it loses some of its power.  So, notice when it comes up and name it. Is it a fear of failure? Is it a fear of judgment? Is it a fear of not being good enough? Not being worthy enough? Is it a fear of rejection? Awareness is the foundation of any transformational work.  You need to know what’s there because that is what allows you the ability to do the work to transcend it.

Question The Fear

Start to get a better understanding of why the fear is there. Pull out your journal and a pen and ask yourself, when did I first feel this fear? When is the earliest memory I have of feeling this fear? When did I first decide this was true? What stories am I telling myself about myself that keeps me in this place of fear?

Release and Reprogram

Once you are able to name the fear and identify some it’s origins it’s time to release and reprogram.  I work with my clients using EFT and Matrix Reimprinting to get to the core of the subconscious belief so we can release the emotional trauma and energy and reimprint a new empowering belief in its place.  This work is deep and transformational, it creates shifts at a fundamental, subconscious level that allows them to step into a newer more empowered version of themselves that no longer is bound by their fear and limiting beliefs.  So, whether you work with me, another coach, or have your own tools and modalities, you will want to release and reprogram the fear and limiting beliefs underneath them. If you are interested in learning more about how to work with me to release and reprogram using EFT and Matrix Reimprinting just comment below.

Take Empowered Action

The biggest antidote to fear is action.  Fear can keep you stuck in your tracks forever, but all it takes is one small step forward and then another and another to move through fear and gain confidence.  You see, once we start to take action we immediately feel proud, empowered, and more confident. You proved to yourself that you can do it AND you didn’t die! And, everytime you feel the fear and take action anyway you build up more and more evidence that you can continue to look back on that proves that you have done it before, you survived and actually felt empowered and more confident on the other side. And, here are a few questions you can ask yourself that can help you move into action. Who am I without this fear? What choices would I make if the fear wasn’t there? What would my life look like without this fear? What will I lose if I let this fear stop me from moving forward? These are incredibly powerful questions to help you identify with a version of yourself that is beyond the fear so that you can take action from that place. 

The “What If” Game

This is a super fun and playful game that takes your fear and flips the script.  So, if your about to walk into a room and you’re feeling nervous and not sure what you are going to say (anyone really uncomfortable with small talk!) and you’re thinking, “what if they judge me? What if I don’t know what to say?” with the “What If” game you just flip the script and build yourself up, and instead you think to yourself, “what if I walk in and have the best time ever. What if I make conversation really easily and everyone loves me.  What if I didn’t worry about what or who I talk to, but just go have fun. What if I show up completely, 100% my authentic self and don’t give an F what anyone thinks and just has a great time!” You can go on and on. See, how fun it is. Get creative, be your biggest cheerleader and turn your negative, fear based “what ifs” into your most empowered, confidence producing, fun, and playful “what ifs.” Go ahead and try this the next time you find yourself feeling the fear and wanting to get small and not take action, play the what if game and then take empowered action!

So, I hope my story and these tools have inspired you to take your power back and not let fear have the reigns in your life.  You deserve to live a life you love and be the most empowered, confident, and joyful version of yourself. And, let me tell you so much of creating that life and that version of you comes on the other side of your fear.  These are a few of the tools I use with my clients to help them Reclaim Their Lives, if you are ready or interested in learning more about coaching with me you can comment below. I would love to chat. I only have 2 spots open in January and I would be so honored to walk alongside you as you journey the path of your Life Reclaimed!

So much love,

Shaina

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