The year: 1997
The place: Haliburton School of Fine Arts (HSFA)
The scene: Two women meet in the Native Painting and Symbolism course. The teachings of Indigenous artist and instructor, David Johnson, changed the trajectory of the lives of both those women who were not yet declared Wild – but that was soon to change.
In her April 1st blog post, Red Moon Warrior described the origin of the term Wild Women – taken from the Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book Women Who Run with the Wolves which, as she describes it, “became a feminine empowerment manifesto”. One of those two women in Haliburton that year, Gypsy Moon Dancer (GMD), saw the need as RMW so aptly described it, “to help women reconnect to their wild instinctual nature…to encourage us to reject rules and make change in society by living our lives with passion, creativity, and a connection to our inner knowing”.
GMD brought together a group of like-minded women interested to tap into those areas of creativity and knowing that so many of us have learned to negate and block. Many of us had – and have – unwittingly bought in to the story that we’re not artists, or we’re not creative, that there are things we just were not cut out to do or be and woe betide those of us who step outside the boundaries prescribed to keep us curtailed. We know the deep history of this.
To emphasize the practice of being in a different head-space and thinking differently, each of us had to create a name that meant something to us, and we were to use only that name during our gatherings. You know us by these Wild Women names and to this day we call each other Donkey Soul Sister, Butterfly Heart, Red Moon Warrior, Star Woman – though often shortened to initials.
Accommodation for the Wild Women Weekend (WWW) was sourced and booked by GMD until we found our final Wild Women Headquarters – but more about that later. The first WWW gathering was in 1998 in Haliburton Forest. To each Weekend all participants were required to bring a Teaching – craft, beads, decoupage, painting, whatever – with all the required materials for the number of women present. Over the weekend - days (and nights!) in this once-a-year gathering, each woman would teach their skill and learn from others. All the time was spent together, from preparing and sharing meals, to expanding our horizons as we met others on the same quest to find something different for and in themselves. We let our selves find the wildness and joy of creating and, in the wise words of Pocahontas, learning things we never knew we never knew.
I was the other of those two women who met at that HSFA summer course. Though I did not attend that first WWW with GMD, I’ve been a Wild Woman since 1999. Over the years, the annual WW Weekends were attended by varying numbers of women rising to 15-16 at one time. DSS became a Wild Woman one snowy winter’s night in 2000 at a cottage on Rice Lake. The following year, also on Rice Lake, BH became a WW when we stayed at Shangri La - a huge house with a swimming pool in the basement. Go figure.
In 2002 another layer of learning and grounding was introduced with the teachings of Jamie Sams’ The 13 Original Clan Mothers. With the absolutely spot-on byline “The Sacred Path to discovering the gifts, talents and abilities of the feminine through the Ancient Teachings of the Sisterhood”, for the next 13 years we discovered a depth of self-knowing, developing and be-ing as we learned and internalized the teachings of the Clan Mothers.
In her on-going quest to find space for our Weekends, GMD discovered the recently-opened Thirteen Moons Retreat and RMW describes her first experience with the WWW in her April blog post. That same year, 2003, we worked on the 2nd of The 13 Clan Mothers Teaching: Wisdom Keeper. Thirteen Moons became the ‘WWW Headquarters’ that year and we never left. That haven remains our go-to place when the 4WW gather - for Solstice, Equinox, annual planning – or just to be together. At the first WWW at Thirteen Moons, there were 6+1 present - Smiling Forest Heart was pregnant with her first Little One. The following year she brought her baby, as did other Wild Women in subsequent years.
Borrowing from the Thirteen Moons retreat’s name, in 2005 GMD created and published a journal entitled “The Thirteen Moons of Creativity”. This further encouraged us to be intentional and planful in our hopes and dreams, to set goals, to count our blessings and learnings. My commitment to journal-keeping had begun.
2008 was the year of the 13 Clan Mothers Teaching of Loves All Things (what fun in that teaching!!). It was also the first year with four of us at that WWW – and the same 4WW it has remained.
In 2009 the 4WW started travelling for some of our ‘weekends’ away – France that first year. Then GMD returned one last time as the 4th Wild Woman in 2010 when I was with MSF in South Sudan. After that, whether we stayed at WWHQ or travelled away from Thirteen Moons to other destinations like Dawson City, Charlevoix, Quebec – wherever - we continued to celebrate our time together with the Clan Mother Teachings and ceremony. Yes, we got around, and we continued to learn, celebrate and forge our 4WW bond.
The Clan Mothers Teachings ended in 2014, but by then we had learned the value of including the sacred and the irreverent in our lives. To this day we continue to pull oracle cards at the New and Full Moons. We meet at each Equinox in March and September, and at the Solstices in June and December for an Oracle Card-Spread for the upcoming quarter. Each year after Christmas we meet at WWHQ to summarise and share our top 13 gratitudes from the past year and to plan for the upcoming year - with our new journals. And the beautiful, life-affirming cycle starts again. We have been intentional and committed to doing the work, and it has been a journey which has given us – me - the life I have, a life I love and for which I am very grateful.
Finally, I will repeat words from RMW’s April 1 blog below because they keenly reflect the origins from which we have grown to the 4WW we are today:
“Being a wild woman is about being our true selves, connecting to our intuition, getting in touch with and responding to our needs. A wild woman is both vulnerable and strong. Wild women connect deeply with nature, natural cycles, and value their gifts and guidance”.
4WW created for us by the ever-so-talented Maia Heissler @ forestfriends.ca
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