The phrase, Wild Women, Modern World, our theme for the year, presents a puzzle we rebel-hearted, earth-loving, spiritual misfits are trying to reconcile – consciously or unconsciously. How do we do this? How do we bring “the old knowing” Dr. Estés writes about in Women Who Run with the Wolves into our lives as modern women.
On October’s New Moon we pondered Sparkling Cages, Velvet Traps. Those seductive shiny things in the modern world which promise happiness that are merely traps that take us away from nature’s wisdom, true soul-nourishment, and from our inner knowing.
One of the most sparking of all the modern cages is that most powerful of drugs: Smartphones, our pocket portals to countless virtual realities where we can get dopamine spikes and adrenaline boosts at anytime. And just like any drug, the crash always follows and you need more.
The price for using is high: our time (read: our life), our original creative thinking (replaced by headlines, memes, other people’s derivative content), our attention spans (our ability to direct our focus), our relationships with others (Someone disagrees with you? Throw them away, silently judge them, or drag them publicly!), not mention our mental and physical health.
This particular trap is so pervasive, it’s become normal to spend multiple hours of the day on our phones accessing platforms where you can put input anything (a current event, a pop album, a scientific study) and stand back and watch. In a matter of minutes you can witness two opposing groups form. The most unhinged, dramatic, violent, inflammatory sects of both groups go straight to the top of the algorithm. Before you know it, it seems everyone is hunkered down on one of the two sides and pontificating about how righteous their perspective is and how very very wrong the other is. And within hours it seems there is yet another micro-cultural war.
It’s as exhausting as it is predictable.
Excuse me as I name the most obvious thing in the world: the long term effects of online life have taken a serious toll on our humanity. It’s difficult to fathom the price we have paid and have not yet paid for this shiny VR.
Yes, we need individual strategies for living in healthy relationship with our phones so we can have our minds back, and our time, and our health – Things like keeping phones out of the bedroom, turning them off and putting them away anytime you are sharing space with others, having specific times of day designated for use, etc. That is a to each, her own thing.
We also need the medicine of IRL places to mend what has been broken.
We need places where our differences are not judged or demonized, but celebrated. We need places where the biodiversity of perspectives is recognized as healthy and valuable. We need places where we look one another in the eye.
We need places that inspire compassion & connection, where we speak and listen from the heart. We need places to sing and dance and dream. We need places that help us find a little depth where we can connect below the surface.
We need places where we can lay down our armor for a little while and be softer, more tender. We need places to grieve together.
We need places to celebrate as a community. We need places where we can play and laugh and remember we are tiny specks of life in a vast ever-expanding universe. We need places where we don’t take ourselves so seriously.
We need one another.
There’s no virtual reality that can compete with soul-nourishment of being together in the messy miracle of being alive. Much like working out, being together IRL is not always comfortable, but is so good for us.
At Wild Woman Fest unplugging is an essential guideline. In Wild Woman Project Circles around the world, we put our phones away and breathe together, calming our nervous systems and share in two focused hours of guided introspection and community connection.
What kind of places are you creating?
What kind of places are you a part of?
What places do you feel inspired to explore?
If you feel at all called to bring people together, I hope you’ll do it. Yes, it can be intimidating. It takes energy, time & courage. Trust me when I say what you put in will come back to you tenfold.
Fires with friends, meals with loved ones, karaoke with strangers, dance classes, live music, hiking the woods or walking in the park, meeting for coffee or tea, and on and on. It doesn’t have to be a big to-do, but it’s worth reminding ourselves that we evolved to be with others, in the flesh, in community.
As virtual realities continue to expand, we humans will need to tend to the wilderness (inside and out) and to take very good care of what is raw and what is real – in us and between us.
It’s a very strange time, with tech evolving so much faster than we are. To stay grounded, to stay well, to stay human, we need each other.
I believe in us.
♥️ + Howls,
Chris
