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  “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 [...]

To feel the wildness you long for, to find the truth that you want to speak and the wisdom that you want to own, you have to reclaim the feminine.  But she doesn't respond well to demands or orders or "shoulds". You cannot force the eros energy of the wild feminine into your life; rather you must learn to court her. To evoke her through how you relate to yourself, your body, the natural world, the great mystery, and all that remains outside of your control and logical grasp. These are my favorite three ways to court the untamed energy of Eros back into your life. You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on [...]

Who were you before you became the good girl? Before you inadvertently picked up the voice of the patriarchy and believed it to be your own? Before you were taught who you were allowed to be, what you were allowed to want, and how you were supposed to feel?  I was reading an essay this weekend by Emily Hancock in which she wrote about how those of us who put on the cloak of the pleaser, the good girl, and the achiever must circle back to a time before we were that. A time when we were still whole unto ourselves and our choices and actions stemmed from the simple truth of our being.  I remember this time clearly because I didn't [...]