Embodied Wildness: The body remembers the freedom the mind often forgets. Discover Your Sacred Wild

Dear Sacred Soul,

For most of my life, I have been called a wild child. Then I became a wild woman.

And for a long time, I thought I knew exactly what that meant. Wild meant untamed. Wild meant rebellious. Wild meant doing things my own way. Wild sometimes meant being called too much, too loud, too emotional, too unpredictable, or even a little crazy.

And if I'm honest, there were times when I believed those things about myself, too.

But the word wild has followed me through every phase of my life. It followed me through addiction and recovery. It followed me through becoming a mother, a partner, a healer, a student, a teacher. It followed me into my relationship with plants, ceremony, the Earth, and the unseen world. And somewhere along the way, something began to change.

I stopped asking, "How do I become less wild?"

And I started asking,

"What if I have misunderstood what wildness is?"

Nature became my teacher. And nature taught me that wild doesn't mean chaotic. A river is wild, but it knows how to move around what stands in its way. A tree is wild, but it knows how to root. A seed doesn't force itself to bloom before its time. Animals don't apologize for being exactly what they are. Nature doesn't spend its life trying to become acceptable. It simply lives according to its nature. That realization changed me.

I began to understand that wildness isn't the absence of boundaries. It is a relationship with our deepest rhythms. It is listening to the body. It is trusting the inner knowing that says yes and the one that says no. It is allowing ourselves to feel joy without immediately questioning whether we deserve it. It is resting when we are tired instead of proving how much we can endure. It is telling the truth when staying silent means abandoning ourselves. It is knowing when to stay rooted and when it is time to move.

And this is where Sacred Wild was born for me. Not as an identity. Not as something belonging only to women. And not as an invitation to become reckless or untamed.

Sacred Wild is a remembering.

A remembering that there is something alive within each of us that existed before the expectations, conditioning, fear, shame, and stories that taught us who we were supposed to be. It belongs to women. It belongs to men. It belongs to anyone willing to return to the truth of who they are.

🌿 Embodying Your Sacred Wild

You don't have to go deep into the forest to reconnect with your wildness.

You can begin right where you are.

1. Listen to your body's yes and no.

Before answering a request, making a decision, or committing to something, pause.

Don't immediately ask, "What should I do?"

Ask:

"What is my body telling me?"

Notice expansion, contraction, tension, ease, heaviness, excitement, resistance.

Your body is part of the conversation.

2. Do something that brings you uncomplicated joy.

Dance in your kitchen. Sing loudly in your car. Walk barefoot on the Earth. Laugh until your stomach hurts. Create something without worrying whether it is good enough.

Wildness doesn't always have to be deep.

Sometimes it is simply joy without permission.

3. Practice one honest no.

Your Sacred Wild Self cannot thrive when you constantly abandon yourself to keep everyone else comfortable. Choose one place where you genuinely don't want to say yes.

Say no. You don't need a ten-minute explanation.

You don't have to make yourself wrong for having a boundary.

A sacred no can be an act of self-respect.

4. Spend time in nature without needing it to give you anything.

Sit beneath a tree. Watch the clouds. Hold a stone. Listen to water. Walk slowly.

Don't turn the experience into another task to accomplish.

Simply be there.

Let nature remind your body that you belong to something larger than your responsibilities.

5. Notice where you are trying to be "acceptable."

Ask yourself:

Where am I making myself smaller so someone else can be comfortable?

Where am I suppressing my truth? Where am I performing instead of living?

You don't have to change everything at once.

Just notice.

Awareness is often where reclamation begins.

6. Create your own rhythm.

Nature doesn't live by someone else's schedule.

There is a time to grow.

A time to rest. A time to release. A time to begin again.

Ask yourself what season you're actually in, not the season you think you should be in.

Then honor it.

Coming Home to the Wild Within

I don't call myself a Sacred Wild Woman because I have figured it all out.

Quite the opposite. The name came from the many versions of myself I have had to meet along the way. The wild child. The woman in recovery. The woman who had to learn how to trust herself. The woman who sat with plants and listened. The woman who learned from the Earth. The woman who continues to meet her shadows and discover that even those shadows can become teachers.

Each version brought me closer to something underneath it all.

Not a perfect version of myself. A more honest one.

And that is what I mean by Sacred Wild.

It isn't about becoming more untamed. It is about becoming more alive.

More present. More connected. More willing to listen.

More willing to trust what your body, your spirit, and the living world are trying to tell you.

Your Sacred Wild Self isn't something you have to create.

It is something you remember.

And perhaps nature has been waiting patiently to remind you.

With love and deep reverence,

LeAnne Feliciano (Little Big Thunder)

Sacred Wild Woman