Linda

For a long time, I took my inner voice for granted.   It was just there; I never stopped to ponder where it came from or what it was telling me.    It was me and I was it.    I feel like this is the case for many of us. There is no separation between ourselves and our inner voice. There is also no separation between our inner voice and the truth.    So often, we believe our own thoughts 100%. We are certain that they are telling us the truth, but that’s not always the case.    My inner voice used to be critical and self-conscious, with a tendency to be controlling and judgmental, both of myself and [...]

“Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” - Rainer Maria Rilke -   A couple of weeks ago in The Dancing Wild, we explored dance as expression and embodied storytelling through the theme of SPEAK YOUR TRUTH.    Speak your truth has become quite a popular saying over the past few years...but what does it mean, really?    When approached through the lens of the Tyrant King, it can be quite monolithic. You’re either speaking your truth or not. Yes [...]

  “Do you ever feel like a bit of a chameleon?”   I remember my coach Lianne Raymond asking me this several years ago.    I froze. My eyes went wide.    “Yes…,” I half-exclaimed, half-whispered.    How did she know?!?   I suddenly felt both seen and exposed. One part of me breathed a sigh of relief, while another part wanted to duck for cover.   After several years of coaching women through the portal from Good Girl to Wise & Wild Woman I now know how familiar this chameleon tendency is, but often, we don’t talk about it or name it.    Chameleons are amazing creatures. They are able to change the color of their scales in order [...]

  When I first started teaching Qoya in 2017, there was one particular aspect that was difficult for me to let go of: GIVING PRAISE.    I would find myself saying “Beautiful!” and issuing mini celebrations throughout the class as I would catch women moving freely. It was so beautiful; I just couldn’t contain myself!   Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes it can be deeply nourishing to be praised and celebrated. It can remind us that it is safe to be seen in our light.    And yet, one of the things that intuitively drew me to Qoya, was the lack thereof.    Because there is no way to do Qoya wrong, there is no criticism or correction.    [...]

  Once we begin to see these patterns of the Good Girl, the Rebel, and the Tyrant King, how do we dismantle them to find the wildness that we truly long for?    The Good Girl believes that perfectionism and performance is the way to get out of the cage. If only she could finally be good enough and have everything “just so”, then she can relax and feel more free.    The Rebel believes that fighting is the way out of the cage. But in her efforts to dethrone the Tyrant King, she often serves to further entrench him by utilizing the very strategies that she learned from him.    We cannot utilize what the Tyrant King has taught [...]

The Tyrant King: The Energy that Keeps us Trapped Alas we have made it to the crux of what forms the inner cage that many of us long to escape without being able to name it: The Tyrant King.  We’ve now met the Good Girl and the Rebel, which we can look at as the feminine split in two: good/bad, light/dark, virgin/whore. When our feminine energy is trapped in this either/or pattern, there is never room for the wholeness or the wildness or the freedom that we most long for. We are divided from ourselves and a piece of us is invariably exiled, whether that be our power or our tenderness (as an example).  But where does this pattern come [...]

In my last letter, I wrote about the Good Girl as a crucial part of the inner cage that we need to dismantle in order to claim the wildness and freedom that we long for. (You can read that here.)  But the Good Girl isn’t the only feminine archetype that keeps us caged.  Let me introduce you to her shadow sister: The Rebel.  For the longest time, I identified with the Rebel archetype. Or perhaps I should say, I wanted to identify with the Rebel. I was an artist. A creative. A feminist. I prided myself on going against the status quo. As a dear friend told me once, I am the person who points out that the emperor has [...]

I have spent the last decade of my life on a quest: a quest to unearth and claim my WILD. As I wrote in my story about moving back to the ‘burbs, the first half of my quest was a hero’s journey. It was all about escaping the external cages.  In that first five years I went to health coaching school. Met my husband. Left my corporate job. Started a full-time coaching business. Moved to a different state. Made new friends. Started new hobbies. Read voraciously about other’s journeys of reclaiming their wild feminine.  All in this effort to find this elusive wildness and freedom that I so longed for.  It wasn’t until I escaped all the external cages and [...]

For much of my young adult life, the suburbs represented everything that I did not want to be or become.  Conformist Cookie cutter Conservative Banal Downright boring As a teenager, I could not wait to get out of Plano, the Dallas suburb that I spent most of my childhood in. I looked at the manicured lawns, the houses lined up in neat little rows, and the women who went to the store in perfect makeup, and I knew this was not somewhere that I fit in. It was not somewhere that I wanted to fit in. I saw no way to stay there and be authentic to myself and also belong.  It was a cage that I longed desperately to [...]

This was my intention at the beginning of the year. With the exception of intermittent spurts of activity (like moving back to Dallas in July), that rhythm has been much slower than in previous years.  With less of the external world pulling at my attention - no dinners with friends, no in person classes or workshops to teach - in many ways life has slowed down and I have slowed down right along with it. When it comes to my work I have allowed myself to take my time, to wait for when things feel right, rather than forcing myself to post on social media or send out a newsletter. This has felt like a time of deep listening, both [...]