Wise, WildWoman

In my teens and twenties, I was the proverbial Wild Child. Always pushing the boundaries, always rebelling, defying authority, getting high and sometimes into fights.

I was a Seductress who got a hit from the sexual power I wielded over men.

I thought I was free because I lived by my own rules and escaped reality through all manner of addictive behaviours.

But I was not wild and I was not free. I was in a prison of my own making. My chains were my unhealed wounds searching for love, and where I couldn’t find it, for oblivion to numb the feelings of loss, abandonment, betrayal and rejection.

I discovered my inner Wild Woman and learned the true meaning of freedom through my recovery journey from addiction.

Yes, an intrinsic part of my recovery was running in Mother Nature with my dog, up and down sacred hills and through ancient woodland, but it wasn’t the fact that I was running, it was the stillness inside me that grew when I ran.

The stillness required to listen to my Soul, my guides, Source. The stillness necessary to stop running and hiding, and turn instead to meet my shadow places.

To finally know the Wise, Wild Woman who had chosen to masquerade as all these wounded parts.

Because the last vision I have of my chain-smoking, emaciated, drunk addict Self is her shrugging off her costume and my Wise, Wild Woman Self stepping towards me in her stead.

She was smiling at me knowingly. It had been her all along. Choosing to hide in my wounded Addict Self, my Wild Child, my Seductress, until one day I realised, they were all just masks she chose to wear so my Soul could learn what it needed to learn.

And when I no longer needed to run away. When I ran towards her instead, she took off her masks and set me free to walk softly and gently upon the earth, listening to the stillness between the beats of my heart and the pause between my breaths.

For it is here in the stillness, in the quiet, in the pause…that we are the most wild and the most free.

Blessed be ?♥️?
Annabel Du Boulay
Rose Priestess of Sophia-Magdalene
Priestess of Avalon