“A meaningful life is also a messy life. Let it all be recorded.”
-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, The Power of the Crone: Myths and Stories of the Wise Woman Archetype
For many years now, I have strived to live a wild life. A life that goes against the grain, that defies the norms, that feeds the soul and nourishes the spirit. In this pursuit, I have unwittingly cultivated set ideas of what that life looks like, what that life feels like. A wild life is skinny dipping beneath a waterfall after a grueling hike, the sweat and the dirt dissipating after the luscious plunge. A wild life is dancing in a storm, crying and laughing as the rain covers my skin and the thunder drowns out the sound. It’s bathing in the glow of a moonrise. Plunging into ocean waves. Sleeping beneath a sky full of stars. Getting swept away by the whispers of the forest. The messiness looks sexy. The muddiness feels illuminating. Diving into the unknown brings endless wonder, inspiration, and adventure.
There’s magic in these wild experiences. They shape who we are, what we love, how we dream. But they are only one half of the coin. When we focus on these, and only these, we aren’t seeing the whole picture. We are willfully hiding from the shadow.
Look at any ad for travel, yoga, meditation… you name it. We’re taught to believe in the sacred glow of healing and embracing change. We’re taught to “do the work”, with little to no discussion of how unbearable and shaming that task can really feel. We’re sold endless self-help books and podcasts that claim to know all the answers. We see streams of posts on social media from others who seem to have it all figured out. We forget what the messiness and the mud really look like. Our culture has swept away the dirt.
Moving to Norway was meant to be my wildest adventure yet, and in so many aspects, it has been. But this wild hasn’t been pristine or flashy. This wild has been akin to slashing through jungle brush, snagging on branches, being assaulted by insects, leaving me sweaty, sticky, scarred, and exhausted. A journey for which every step forward, I’ve felt I’ve taken three steps back.
My dreams and visions for my life here have been so clear for so long, and yet they often feel impossibly far away. The home in the countryside, with a rescue dog and a chubby, lazy cat, soaking in the solitude and summer air. The garden where I grow my herbs and vegetables, with nature outside our doorstep for morning and afternoon walks to be taken on a whim. I’ll have this some day, but I likely could have had it much faster if I’d stayed in the States. If my partner had moved to me instead. Some days I can’t help but feel I’ve moved backwards in life, having actively and eagerly chosen a path that has forced me to back to square one.
I have an incredibly dear and wise friend who is going through a daunting and painful transition of their own right now. They, too, sometimes feel as though they have regressed, living in ways they never dreamed they would be at this point in their life. But they told me they know, deep down, that this moving backwards is precisely what they need in order to reattain themselves.
They are right of course. Perhaps moving backwards is not that at all, but a realignment. A straightening out to redirect the course of life. Soil is cultivated so that new seeds can be planted and life can once again spring forth. We have the idea that this process should look and feel glamorous, but it is not. I repeat, it is not. Dirt is dirt. Anyone who has tended a garden knows the messy and sweaty and tedious work involved. It strains our muscles, it punishes our joints, it cracks our skin.
Things are happening in my own process, though it feels much slower than I’d like. Slow seems to be the operative word here in Norway, something that we Americans don’t take kindly to. We plant our seeds, and we immediately want the fruit. When it doesn’t come, we assume to have failed. We look down at our dirty cracked hands, our sun-scorched skin, our stained clothes, and we see that it’s nothing like the images that bombard us around every corner. We convince ourselves that everyone is doing it better than us, living better than us. We forget that those pictures are only a fraction of the story.
We forget the pain and ugliness in the growth process. The awkwardness of trying on our new skins, fitting ourselves into our new worlds. But within it lies beauty too. Our incompleteness means there is room to strive, room to dream, room to grow in ways we could not before. Being an immigrant means starting from scratch, completely. The open canvas is daunting, terrifying, overwhelming, a sea of endless white. But it’s also infinite doors, endless opportunities, countless new beginnings. It’s a gift that many are not given.
The aftermath of these last two years have not left me feeling particularly wild, or inspirational, or radiant, or many other of the things I thought I would feel. In so many ways, I am far behind where I thought I would be at this point in my life. I’m still searching for a space to plant myself within this foreign soil, trying to root myself in what feels like ever-shifting, unstable ground.
But that’s what wild really is, isn’t it? When we look at the full spectrum? Like a seed in the wind, drifting… drifting… until it finally finds the perfect space in which to take root, its own unique space to thrive. And it will likely take many deaths and many re-plantings to get there. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes has blessedly reminded me in her lectures, very few of us on the wild path will take the linear route through life. Instead we will bumble, stumble, and zigzag our ways through. Our journeys will not be straightforward. They will not be easy. They will not look like we ever imagined they would. The way will be terrifying and ragged and groundless.
But they will be real. And they will be wild.
A Mermaid Out of Water 