I am wild.

Wild Woman. When women hear those words, an old, old memory is stirred and brought back to life. The memory is our absolute, undeniable, and irrevocable kinship with the wild feminine, a relationship which may become ghosty from neglect, buried from over domestication, outlawed by the surrounding culture, or no longer understood anymore. We may have forgotten her names, we may not answer when she calls ours, but in our bones we know her, we yearn toward her; we know she belongs to us and we to her.

There are times when we experience her, even if only fleetingly, and it makes us mad with wanting to continue. For some women, this vitalizing ‘taste of the wild’ comes during pregnancy, during nursing their young, during the miracle of change in oneself as one raises a child, during attending to a love relationship as one would attend to a beloved garden.

As sense of her also comes through the vision; through sights of great beauty. I have felt her when I see what we call in the woodlands a Jesus-God sunset. I have felt her move in me from seeing the fishermen come up from the lake at dusk with lanterns lit, and also from seeing my newborn baby’s toes all lined up likea row of sweet corn. We see her where we see her, which is everywhere.

–Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves, quoted in Celebrating Motherhood by Andrea Gosline and Lisa Bossi

The very last assignment in my Sacred Pregnancy class was to write about sacred business and whether or not we have a sacred business. My answer is, yes, I am absolutely living it. In the last year, my husband and I have poured out hearts and souls into our co-creative business, Brigid’s Grove. We make our pewter birth art and goddess jewelry and clay birth art goddess sculptures and we just finished publication of our Womanrunes book and card set (based on the divination system by the late Shekhinah Mountainwater). Our whole lives center on our sacred work and the integration and shared focus of our efforts feels extremely powerful.

Here’s what we’ve been focused on recently…

After a lot of failed attempts due to tiny-baby-arm detail that causes difficulty getting a good cast, we finally have a very limited amount of Mama Goddess of Three pendants available. She is particularly sweet and I’m very pleased with her! We also have a limited quantity of mother-of-one pendants and mother-of-two pendants as well as a single, lovely mother-of-four pendant.

Additionally, if you’ve been waiting for a bargain on one of my birth art sculptures, today is your lucky day! We’ve listed quite a few new pregnant and nursing mama sculptures and each one has a flaw of some kind (don’t we all!), so they are all discounted–some significantly and some a couple of dollars off the usual price. (We have other seconds available here.)

As I noted above, Womanrunes book and card sets are also finished and ready to roll! Huge project!

“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D Women Who Run With the Wolves

(via Tuesday Tidbits: More Wild Woman | Talk Birth)

“Be wild; that is how to clear the river.”

–Clarissa Pinkola Estes

(via The Ragged Self | Talk Birth)

And, I wanted to share a quick recent funny mothering moment:

Alaina was sitting on my lap snuggling her head into my neck. “Mama, I feel the baby kicking me in your neck.”

Me: “that’s just my heart beating. See, you can feel your heart beating in your neck too?”

Alaina: “how is the baby kicking both of us through our necks?!?!”

🙂