Naming the Wilderness

I grew up hiking the mountains of Colorado, a PB and banana sandwich tucked in my small backpack and red striped laces tied on my brown hiking boots. The scent of warm pine filled the air as I hiked with my sisters, led by our parents and grandparents, into the wilderness areas and backcountry trails.

At 20-years-old, I spent four months in the Teton wilderness, learning to live with only what I’d packed on a mule, navigating by ridgeline and scouting for bears and other animals. And while today, I’d prefer not to sleep on thin bedroll outside of a tent, I could probably still guide us through the range by the sun and landmarks.

All of that is to say that I’m still at home in wild spaces and places and this time of year I begin to crave the company of tall pines warmed by the sun, birdsong and the low hum of cicadas. As women, though, we are mostly taught to fear wild places—to remain comfortably within the confines of what others have said is safe and to not venture too far outside of what’s familiar. We’re socialized from the time we’re young to rely on others to be our guides and so we don’t develop the capacity to trust our own judgment and embodied ways of knowing, or to rely on our own strength. In staying away from the wilderness, we have also stayed away from ourselves.

In The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes “when we call a place by name, it is transformed from wilderness to homeland.” And I have been carrying that quote with me the past few months, as I’ve moved deeper into midlife and my own embodied ways of knowing. This path asks that we accurately name the wild places within us – the parts of ourselves we have disowned and ignored—our desire, longing, power, rage, sensitivities, hopes and much more.

Although we have been taught to believe that transformation results from discovering the “right answer,” what we discover instead is that the wild places are carriers of wisdom, truth and creativity pointing us to what is unresolved within us and the path we are to take. And while many of us live in states of fight, flight or freeze, armored with the necessary protection that helped us survive difficult circumstances, it now becomes important to ask whether this protection is still required. We are invited to explore whether these patterns of protection are now interfering with our lives, as we turn toward ourselves and our wild places with care, attention and curiosity.

We can begin by creating a welcoming space within ourselves, gently releasing the power of the inner critic in order to access our wise inner self. We can build capacity through breathwork as we strengthen our capacity to stay with difficult emotions, memories and experiences.

As we do, we create within ourselves “safe passage,” as we allow these parts of psyche to be seen—holding, receiving and naming them accurately. In the process they are transformed from unwanted, orphaned, “wild” parts of our experience, to welcomed, beloved, integral parts of us. This process requires courage, but that courage is the path of transformation as these previously disowned parts breathe new life within us, gently transforming from wilderness to homeland.

**

If you would like to go deeper into this type of exploration, I recommend the book, A Healing Space, by Matt Licata, which has helped to refine much of my thinking and work with parts of self, self-compassion, befriending and wholeness.

If you’d like to explore working together, please reach out for a consultation.