It is a Tuesday in California, with hawks flying through gray skies and wet breezes telling us that the rain will not leave just yet. As the gray stretches across the miles, I find myself listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter with her stories of life vibrating through my ears, reaching deep for my soul. This journey from ears to soul always brings tears forth from my eyes. Salt-water brims forth, falling like a wave gently covering sands of the beaches that create the coastline of my new homeland. My time in the desert has made me extremely appreciative of the gray wet clouds that are so abundant in this new land. In the desert rain is sacred, life giving. The earth drinks it with greed and gusto, leaving no scent of water in the air which, makes you think you only dreamt of the soft rain that danced off your roof during the night.
Dry air that births clear night skies, littered with tiny stars beckoning for your mind to voyage, lie just on the other side of powerful mountains housing a crystal blue lake which holds healing powers of the elders. Mary sings sad songs from my former self; making my head run to the past and remember. I flash back to my former self, a woman petrified within her life, crying out for someone to save her. She did not know that when it comes to matters of the spirit, only you can save yourself. Later, she would be rescued by an arctic desert woodsman and through him, she learned she was dying within her former life. A woman lost within the sad songs, living them, frozen within the lines of desperate lyrics. Daily the battle began with the small missing pieces of life that I cradled deep within my soul. Waiting and dying, I lived the life that others called normal and happy.
The Atlantic coastline perched not far from my home, in which daily I sat, waiting, forgetting that life was for living. Living life is not about sitting around and desiring discovery, you actually have to risk in order to live. I had tucked away these important lessons in life, in order to survive in my world. Sad songs of loneliness played throughout my house, slowly tugging at my faith, making me believe the dark ghost who whispered from my past that I was not worth loving. Salt water beating across tiny rock kingdoms we call sand, traveling miles to scent my days with salt-water dreams.
My life on this coastline differs for one main reason: love for self as well as, for and by another. A creative soul will surely die when two things happen: it lives without love and/or it is caged. A slow death radiates from the person without their knowing it. Deep down though, they feel the dying and cannot understand why the things in life that others call normal only make them unhappy.
Cages come in so many pretty containers: dream houses, great paying jobs, stable men, expensive cars, family, and friends. These cages do not seem threatening to the woman because her rearing has taught her to cherish and covet these dreams. When they sit before her, the conditioned child within wants to run and scream with glee. Lurking deep within the most sacred cave of the woman surges another type of scream, a howl of grief and despair. The scream turns into a screech, vibrating through her bones and clawing at her soul trying to get her attention in anyway it can. The woman feels the desperation but, society has told her that these pretty containers are the true gems of living. The gleeful squeals from the child vanquish the howls of the wild woman and the battle for her soul begins.
The conditioning and training of our childhood is hard to break. At this point many women push the creative soul deep within a corner of their being and pretend that they do not hear the lock snapping shut when they say “I do” to the job offer, house mortgage or “right man.” They do everything in their power to tell themselves that this is what they truly want in life. Motherhood, a great powerful job, fantastic house with 5 bedrooms and a quarter acre or the man that all her family said was a fantastic catch. Most of the wild women who allow themselves to walk this path are worthy of an Oscar as they act out their daily lives, performing the chores required to be a woman in the modern world. Somewhere down the line, years later, they either hear the last whimpers of the dying woman caged within the dark corner of their private thoughts or the howling begins again. The life they have been taught to cherish now seems bland, mundane and miserable. It is then they must choose life or death. Far too many cannot face the exile that will be their fate once they grasp onto the coattail of the creative soul. The women who chose to deny their creative souls become angry, lonely souls, living within pretty stage front containers poisoning all whom they touch. Some become addicts, others feed off the misery of others, while sadly some see no way out and commit suicide.
This is where I found myself at the age of 40, with a memory of living as the creative soul slowly eating my mind away. I went to work daily, cleaned my house, helped with family and friends all the while earning my Oscar. I was starring in a life that all my family and friends said I should be so proud of as a single woman.
As a young woman, I had listened to my heart and lived a life of traveling, performing and creating. As I lived my life the conditioned child called to me, whispering, “I should really grow up.” My dreams were laced with murmurs of living a life of the damned. Women are not suppose to be independent and wander the world. We are suppose to living within picket fences, bring up children, listen to our parents and husbands with a joyful smile upon our face. The young woman who walked in the daylight wanted everything! She wanted to climb the Eiffel tower, help street people find a warm place to live, endorse a peace filled world, swim with dolphins, teach children to love unconditionally, dance under a desert sky and so much more. Therefore, as the day dreams fought with the night haunts, I took comfort within the arms of the wrong man and a bottle in order to stop the shouting in my head. The battle got worst and slowly, my world dwindled to the man and a drink. My creative soul crawled to her cage and I returned home to grow up.
This went fine for a while as I sobered up, went back to school and allowed myself to flourish creatively within the acceptable roles of student, waitress or Aunt. I was eccentric, but my family was happy that I was alive and working towards maturity. Men loved my “different self” but always they would try to “domesticate” Denise ending with a break up and my thinking that there was something very wrong with me.
Graduating with honors from college in my thirties, I found myself looking for the right job as well as man, in order to fulfill the dream of normal living. Each one I found was a pretty cage that I ran from in one form or another. After a few years the wild woman within me began to whimper and I knew she was dying.
The dreams began again. This time they stalked my days, crying into my head and telling me I had to make a choice or die. I found myself one night driving towards a bridge, knowing it was time to make that decision. My verdict: TO LIVE! At that moment, I sat crying my heart out, listening to the howls giving birth to the woman who sits on the Pacific coastline writing these thoughts.
I refused to sit around waiting for life to start and began to take action. I found I could write, poems and short stories flew from my fingertips enchanting my mind as I searched for my own truth. I began to speak my mind and value the pretty cages less. I spent more than a year alone in my house in the woods reading, praying, finding out who and what I really was. I dressed in gypsy dresses and danced in dew soaked grass, ran from snakes and spoke to the trees. I began to heal.
Today the wild woman lives freely within my body, mind and soul. I allow her to wander new avenues, be it creating jewelry, praying at an altar, painting, writing, photography or just plain old loving.
My search for the right man changed and he finally discovered me because I put my soul out there, naked with all I am, for the world to see. I had come to know myself and live the true version of the life I had so desired. I was no longer sitting waiting life away, I wanted everything again and I was going to get it!
My woodsman from the frozen desert has taught me to love and be happy with me. Acceptance and pleasure breeds unconditional love within our life. My wild woman no longer howls, she giggles gleefully, enjoying life in tiny moments, knowing cages no longer lurk within her future.