Saturday, August 19, 2006

Preserving the Wild Soul



Julia & Dylan, August 2006

We’re sitting on a red and blue quilt on a wide green lawn overhung with cedars, at an Ani diFranco concert. It is my daughter’s last night before she leaves us to go back to school for her junior college year, maybe the last summer she will come to spend with us before she travels to Europe to study opera. Because she is going, because we are already feeling her loss, she sits between my husband and I, rather than having to choose sides. When he goes off to find us dessert, she leans into me and asks, “Any last words of wisdom?” I laugh and tell her she has almost surpassed me in wisdom, and that the best I can tell her is to trust herself, to trust what she wants. She knows what I mean by this.

We have spent most of the summer deciphering what it means to live by one’s instinctive nature. I have experimented with sitting in one place doing nothing for hours until it occurs to me what I really want. I have gotten up, made a sandwich, taken a walk, written an essay, sat in stillness with those words. She has tried a few experiments with casual relationships, and then determined it isn’t for her. Through a health challenge, I have begun to look at my own history of pushing through adversarial circumstances, managing details, caring for others, because I was strong and I could – but not necessarily because I was acting out of my own sense of order or horror or beauty or understanding. My daughter also has allowed herself to stop; to rest her voice for six weeks, to cease requiring a busy social life, to sit in her own boredom until she could locate her essence.

I think if I could pass along one bit of knowing to her it would be this: One cannot preserve the wild soul on piecemeal terms. I have tried. I have tried taking a karate class, and redecorating the living room and cleansing my liver and buying the cutest freakin boots to ever walk down Pike Street. Beautiful alterations that lasted a few moments, and still never delivered the intended, lasting joie de vivre.

What sustains my wild soul is living less out of perceived obligation, finding the place where desire and responsibility have merged into one soulful union. It can emerge in writing what has depth, rather than what I think someone is going to buy. It can come in finding creative people to be in relationship with, and then setting a structure to that interaction that allows each of us to thrive. It can come in noticing anger when it arises, and not making anyone else but myself responsible for that anger; it can come through taking action to alter the circumstances that cause my resentment. It can come through consistently making choices not to alter my consciousness with substances, to live in truth as it arises. It can come through giving myself enough time to follow a spontaneous choice – to turn to my daughter in the middle of making dinner, and laugh and sing and turn off the peas to have a long embrace. Or, in saying to the family – I need quiet to write, and I’m going in here and shutting the door, and unless there’s catastrophe – don’t disturb me.

And I know she’s learned this, because I watch my daughter making choices to halt the red shoes’ incessant dance. On a summer trip to see her childhood friend Julia, after a luscious Indian dinner, and a drive through Vancouver, and consulting the paper for nightlife, she decides she wants to craft a full moon ritual instead of either going to party or descending into abstract conversation. “What makes you most a woman? What does it mean for you to be female?” she asks us. And after we answer, in between nibbling a bowl of cherries and lighting candles and finding bed linens for makeshift beds, I lay my head on a pillow and close my eyes, safe in an apartment full of women who know who are they, and if not, who can sense who they are becoming. An hour later I wake up to giggles and splashes. She and Julia have submerged themselves in a bubble bath, where I will learn later, they have set themselves right on all matters of uncommunicative men, and disaffected roommates and ineffective teachers.

Joseph Campbell called for a ‘creative mythology’ that could become the structuring force of civilization – one whose core is not theological, but instead personal. In this creative story, we allow our experience to suffuse our being, to wait for its depth and import to arise through our understanding of events, to know out of what one has been in, not what one has been told. Through true revelation, an uncoerced discovery of our deep soul, Campbell says we become a living myth. In a world gone mad with killing over God, this secular yet inspiring philosophy might indeed preserve not only humans, but also the earth, which is being destroyed through our unconsciousness.

And so, dearest daughter, I would say spend all your learning becoming your self, and spend it too in the practice of courage and steadfastness it will take to hold your wild soul when others have ideas for you. Become the spiritual guide of knowing your own nature, and devote yourself to the unflinching task of serving it. For, whatever its name, or hue, or form, this soul will create the events of your life, and with it, you will be carried as a river is carried by its shore.

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Thoughts influenced by Clarissa Pinkola Estes "The Red Shoes," and Joseph Campbell’s “Creative Mythology."

14 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I have been sitting all day, telling myself I need to get this and that done. Yet, all I can do is sit. While I sit, I am wondering what's wrong with me. Why can't I get my life together more efficiently. After reading this incredibly well-timed article, I understand it is my own wisdom coming through saying, "Stop!". I thank you for these wonderous words that have taken me back to the precious, vulnerable times of transition when my wild soul was ready to take off. I honor this time to rest so the next flight will be marvelous. Blessings and deep gratitude - Coleen

6:26 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

As I read the precious way in which you parent your adult child, I feel I am recieving this gift also...you have parented me as well. Your wisdom inspires me as a parent and I pray I can find the Presence of mind and heart to help guide my beloved son home to his own authentic mythology that is based on love and respect and self-knowing. My heart swells in gratitude as my eyes are washed clean with tender tears .

10:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I am deeply touched by your profound ability to step back and witness your life. Beyond that, you detach a bit emotionally to learn, to experience to be. Then you write. I am honored to read these words - especially regarding anger and about being a parent. I have so much to learn from myself AND from you.
thank you.

1:25 PM  
Blogger Sonya Lea said...

Yes, it's true. It does take that detachment sometimes for me to learn what is happening. The challenge as a writer is more often allowing the experience to happen, to be present in it, without crafting the story while it is going on.

1:34 PM  
Blogger MM said...

Good. Quite Good.

8:44 PM  
Blogger Maya Stein said...

i will not say this as beautifully as you've put it, but this idea of the "wild soul," and what it means not just to nurture it but to serve it, is the best sort of wisdom to pass on to one's children. how wonderful to have a mother who embodies such care, attention, and honesty, someone who's truly living the lesson herself. it's the kind of experience and role-modeling your daughter will be sustained by throughout her life, a steady light that will guide her through the choppiest waters, a deep, reverberating note she will hear always. Lucky girl.

9:37 AM  
Blogger Maya Stein said...

i will not say this as beautifully as you've put it, but this idea of the "wild soul," and what it means not just to nurture it but to serve it, is the best sort of wisdom to pass on to one's children. how wonderful to have a mother who embodies such care, attention, and honesty, someone who's truly living the lesson herself. it's the kind of experience and role-modeling your daughter will be sustained by throughout her life, a steady light that will guide her through the choppiest waters, a deep, reverberating note she will hear always. Lucky girl. Lucky mama.

9:37 AM  
Blogger Alison said...

How beautiful, and inspiring! Also--just what I needed to hear. I just spent the afternoon napping, after several days of fulfilling but exhausting activity. I have often felt self-conscious of my need for rest--goes against the grain of this super-productive mythology I was raised with. You make it better for all of us.

Alison

10:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

this is so lovely. thank you.

12:51 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You didn't really write "she sits between my husband and I", did you?

And I? And I?

My god, you've jumped on the hair-pulling, grammatical nightmare 'And I' bandwagon!

It should be 'and me'!

9:58 AM  
Blogger Sonya Lea said...

Ah, "and me." Yes. Thanks. If only I had you or Strunk along before I posted. I notice I'm oriented to truth more than craftsmanship some days, and I could be more strenuous.

10:56 AM  
Blogger Goddess Leonie * GoddessGuidebook.com said...

wow, woman.

thank you :)

2:54 PM  
Blogger Jen said...

I just found your blog, and I know I will need to read this piece several more times to really take it in. Beautiful piece of writing.

7:24 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What a beautiful essay.

9:32 AM  

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