1 . Maya Angelou’s entire body of work tells the story of a woman who had every reason to be beaten down by the circumstances of her life, and yet she grew to be one of the brightest literary flames of the last century. With her sun in Aries, Maya Angelou is an embodiment of power in the highest octave. Watch her in the video above & if you want to go deeper, I highly recommended her autobiographical series of books which begins with, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
2. St. Teresa of Avila, Sun in Aries, was Spanish Mystic & incredibly powerful force for good in her day. Get to know her & her powerful teachings with the book, Holy Daring: The Earthy Mysticism of St. Teresa, the Wild Woman of Avila by Tessa Bielecki.
3. As outdated, unhelpful & even dangerous power structures are falling apart before our very eyes, many of us are asking: what makes us powerful now? Brene Brown makes a strong case for practice of vulnerability in all areas of our life. Can being vulnerable make us stronger, more effective & more fulfilled as individuals and as a society? Read Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead to find out.
4. I always recommend Woman Code by Alisa Vitti to my sisters who are struggling with Fertility and/or irregular menstruation. However, the application of Alisa’s advice does so much more. I think the subtitle of the book says it best: Perfect Your Cycle, Amplify Your Fertility, Supercharge Your Sex Drive, and Become a Power Source. Understanding the hormonal changes throughout our cycle & how they influences every aspect of our lives is truly a life changing, empowering tool for women. I believe women are magic & this book gives some insight into the biological why.
5. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés entire catalog is treasure. Untie the Strong Woman: Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul gives a stories that provide strength and empowerment for women. As in her classic Women Who Run With the Wolves, Dr. E links love with power over and over again. She offers up inspiration for a new paradigm of the love-centered living that is perhaps the most powerful force on earth.
On the Horizon
Join an international, intergeneration group of weird and wonderful wild-hearted Women in our online Cave (which lives on an app)!
We meet weekly in Circles, Workshops, Practices to keep our wild spirits lit!
Upcoming Weekly Gatherings:
Join us for an hour-long New Moon Meditation Adventure on May 7th!
Online, from anywhere.
Using a dynamic meditation journey, we will tune into the New Moon, to your own Inner Guidance, synced up with wild-hearted women from around the world. This offering will include music, storytelling, meditation, journaling prompts & intention-setting.
Can’t make it live? No worries. All participants will receive a copy of the recording with 24 hours of the session.
We have Wild Woman Project-trained Circle facilitators is 26 countries, and 44 out of the 50 United States.
Chris Maddox is the founder of The Wild Woman Project where she teaches women how to utilize the gifts of the Wild Woman Archetype in their everyday lives & how to lead women’s circles in their local communities. She is the organizer & facilitator of the beloved annual WILD WOMAN FEST, a women’s retreat-festival hybrid which fosters a deep connection to nature, a direct experience of the divine feminine & profound spiritual sisterhood among the women in attendance.
An ever student of the great mysteries of existence and nature itself, Chris believes women are holding innate gifts & tools that society at large needs – now more than ever. She is committed to helping women remember their special magic and to bring it forward into every corner of their lives, for the greater good of the planet.
Lisa Lister’s Code Red proved a powerfully transformative read. This book taught me – at 36 – how to chart my cycle, and it’s changed my life for the better. Also, Women Who Run with the Wolves! And…Jane Eyre. Jane is an indomitable spirit, always true to herself, and (I believe)…a witch!
Thank you for this list 💚
Great suggestions! Thank you xo
I have been working with women for eleven years using their mid-cycle ovulation window with its 15-30 % chance of conception and the same phase of the moon they were born with its powerful 70-85 % chance of conception to create a 98% success rate when both cycles are used for either birth control or conception and no known physical impairments exist. I encourage every woman to discover what phase of the moon they were born under.
Excellent!
I just wanted to say I am so grateful I found this website. I decided to read Women Who Run With The Wolves and I felt such a profound connection to the wild woman archetype. I started to research more and more about it and I came across this website. Knowing that there are other wild women out there brings me so much joy. I am CRYING tears of joy as I type this comment. Being an empath, introvert, and a wild woman, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. It’s always been very hard for me to connect with people and make friends. Also, I never felt like I belonged anywhere. I’ve been searching for my tribe for so long. I grew up as an atheist so I never had a religious community to connect with. And then I attempted to connect with the atheist community but quickly discovered that they were quite hateful and closed minded. I may be an atheist in the technical sense since I do not believe in God, but I do believe in spirituality. I do believe in Gaia and connecting with nature and our true inner selves. I am so excited to start discovering my true self more and joining circles to meet other beautiful souls!!
Hi Ana,
Thank you so much for sharing. I am so happy you found your way here. I hope you can join us for a circle or maybe even WILD WOMAN FEST (this summer) – to be immersed in wild hearted community.
Never hesitate to reach out.
Love,
Chris
A year and some after this was posted, but I bet I won’t be the last person to read this. So still worth posting! Two of my favorite books of all time are White Oleander and Memoirs of a Geisha. Both are about specific conditions of being a woman and the trappings and navigation that come with it.
White Oleander is about the daughter of a poet who ends up going into foster care when her mother is arrested for murdering a man and she gets a big shuffled around from home to home. Each new home brings a new woman in her life and new lessons that she learns from them, choosing what to keep and discard as she becomes a woman herself. Gritty and empowering.
Memoirs of a Geisha is about a girl who is sold into the servitude of being a geisha in the 1930’s in Japan. She has to learn the artistry of a working geisha including performance, social navigation, and aspects of appearance, but more importantly she has to learn all of the softer feminine strengths – flexibility, negotiation, endurance, hope, and intuition – in order to come out on top of a world dominated by men. She has to use all of the things that we see as stereotypical “yin” qualities to succeed over “yang” masculine tendencies. Wonderful for admiring the strengths that women hold in different formats.