What's in a name...

I have a confession to make. For all my loving not fitting in boxes, I really love words that define something. As you can tell, I really love to write. I love playing with words, using them to create a feeling in another, using them to bring something that is inside me out of me, through some medium, and into you. Words are powerful things! They are like arrows pointing people to amazing places.

I have a dear friend who said once that we will have 9 names in our life. The first is chosen for us, and the remaining we chose for ourselves. The name my mother gave me upon my birth was Vanessa. In Hebrew it means "star" and in Greek it means "butterfly". This was the PERFECT name for me. I resonate with the butterfly in the way that I transcend areas of my life, like names. My biggest name change was to Radical Mama. I am STILL Radical Mama (especially to some of my dearest friends). I always will be. And then wild zen - love it! Thank you for giving me that space to dwell and grow.

Both of those names have been me naming myself something that I was aspiring toward and then feeling ready for change once I felt I had achieved it.

I knew this winter that it was time to shed my name (like my hair) and redfine myself. But I am done looking at names like a house I may outgrow. I decided to pick a name that encompassed the very essence of my soul. I looked at myself in the mirror and called myself it to see if it fit. I wrote it several times to make sure I enjoyed the asthetics of it. I delved the depths of my insides, and I sat with names to see how they fit over time.

I had a WILD synchronis moment. A couple years ago, whilst pondering the fact that if I went on to be a midwife that I might put myself out of business because of my fierce trust of unassisted birth, I started having some conversations with a few of my amazing friends (I'm so blessed to have so many of those!). We started talking about outlaw midwivery (a midwife who defies the medical path and medical rules, to aid women in birth the way it has been done since life began), and I got this vision to create a comic called Outlaw Midwife, where the main character would be this kickass woman-empowering mountaintribe-dwelling afterbirth-supporting team-mama-rallying goddess guru, and I loved the "Om"-ness of the whole thing. Well, the outlaw midwife became Ooma. And I knew that she is me in the years after my children have grown to be adults. There is so much more to this vision, but the main point is Ooma. So..... A month ago-ish while I was searching for my name, I decided I needed a birth goddess in my name. I found a website and checked each name to see if it resonated with me, and the last name on the list was Uma "goddess of all things feminine, especially birth". ABOUT KNOCKED MY SOCKS OFF!

But I don't feel like my face is ready to be called Uma or Ooma just yet. There is another name is that perfect for now.

I am Soul. Wild Soul. Wild Soul Free.

And are you ready for this? I am going to change my name legally. I am ready to sever the ties to the name my mother gave me, to the person I once was and am not longer, ready to let go of my past and embrace my present and my future. Ready to let go of who I was to become who I am.

No, I am not going to legally change my name to Wild Soul LOL

Soul Uma Rose Free

OMGosh, my initials will spell SURF! SUPER cool :D Just noticed that....

Wild is going to be more like my title than a name ;) And I will finally have the same last name as my baby :D

Soul is so kickass, the Amazon Worrior monk, guru goddess, the embodiment of all things female (strong and hard, soft and flexible), radiant and reverant, reeking of wildcat sexiness and earthy sensuality ;)

Have I mentioned already that I have been practicing stepping into my power? It is quite exquisite and satisfying. More on that later. But Soul is powerful.

I am Soul. It's nice to meet you ♥

And in other name-changing news. How do you like the new blog feel?

Wildcraftingzen: the radical act of embracing life and simply being. That is what wildcraftingzen is: taking wild life and processing it inwardly to find peace. Oh yeah, baby! So, this blog is going to be a couple different things: my outward expression of an inward journey, and my jumping off point in businesshood. I am SO ready to do some work. Stepping into my power over here, and so ready to do this. READY to do this. Here I go!

I have more changes to make on the blog, as you will see as time unfolds. I read this quote recently that keeps coming back up inside me, and I can't remember it word for word, but it goes something like, Self growth is like building a new ship from the ship you are already on while out to sea. The balance between stepping into the future and taking care of the present... What a fun dance it is :D

Rightness

Liberation, Stretch, Comfort, De-attach

When I look back on list of the themes of my last few years, I see how it looks like a fluid evolving of life and spirit. It didn't feel like it though. More like a deep and heavy submersion into growth of the unknown and just when I am about to drown or break, I scramble to the top to gulp the fresh crisp air of clarity and then dive down in a totally different direction for a new phase of experience. In the great walk of life, now I see the seamless evolution.

Liberation was when I cleared a huge space in my life, called "a relationship that I had gotten my fill from and was no longer working for us". When we walked in seperate directions, I did not feel like a woman scorned, I felt like a woman liberated! A big giant space in my life was cleared and healthy (because that beautiful relationship healed me and taught me in ways I never could have done alone ♥), and now I could go wild in my new-found freedom :)

And I did -- hence the stretch. The slow unfolding of understanding learning in a new paradigm. The stretch of self-trust through preparing for and experiencing my freebirth. The ferrel re-growth and awesome stretch of radical unschooling and consensual living and respectful connected parenting.
Then, in exhaustion from all the stretching and growing (OMG! Did I stretch and grow), I settled into comfort, like sinking into my favorite old worn couch, for a long winter's night with a mug of hot chocolate and my favorite music playing in the background.

And in that comfort, I realized there was no real comfort in drowing in stuff and over-responsibility, and that I had my fill of newly acquired agoraphobia. I released my attachment to a house (or a "lease-locked box on land that wasn't MINE"), a lifetime-acquired house full of stuff I loved and hated and often both simultaneously. Then I stepped into adventure and wound up releasing my attachment to control. Not done yet -- thick in the deconstruction and healing, I followed my calling to wear my deep inner cleansing outside by releasing my attachment to my hair and my long-constructed notion of my beauty. And now, I feel like a radiant monk ripe with readiness for the next powerful step in my life-healing journey: rightness.

Armed with the tools to enable myself to feel liberation, to stretch wildly, to find deep dark healing comfort, and dettach from what's no longer working, I am preparing for a journey to reflect, explore, and right the breadth and depths of things in my life that feel amiss. I have my work cut out for me. I'm going to be the chiropractor of my life and get myself aligned. And through this, I am going to grow (with my hair) in intention, so that when I step into my power (no doubt, my next step), I will not fear what will be magnified, what will explode from me, and where it will reach and take me. Thhis is the step I right the wrongs, seal the deal on peace with my past, and let go of the things that don't feel right to me in every area of me and my life. I am so grateful for this foundation I stand upon to do this -- I feel like I have the advantage and the warrior skills to defeat my foes... Wait, that's not right ;) I am a chiropractor, not a seasoned Amazon warrior LOL I've been reading too many historical romance novels these days :))

I am ready to step into rightness with my body, in parenting, in relationships, with money, with my future career goals, and so much I can't even see yet from my view of the valley outside my window. Yes, this is going to be an easy walk -- not those mountains I have beared through climbing in my past. This is just an adjustment into rightness.

This Amazon warrior monk gypsy goddess earthmama extraordinaire has bit more prep to do before I am ready to start this newest journey, including (are you ready for this?) a new name -- I know, you are so surprised ;) More on that later :)) I need to sit on it a bit more, feel it's rightness first :)

Another shocker -- my blog is getting a new name, too. This one is already determined. I'm just waiting to purchase the domain name before I share it with the world.

2012, I am SO effing ready for you!

Epic Success

(Written early December)

No matter how much I want to embrace the fact that this nomadic-dream-in-action was a classic "epic fail", I can't deny the success of my adventure. We may have logged few miles on our journey, but the living and learning was immence. I could provide you with a grocery list of experiences (and I still may), but the biggest success (I am learning as I read my journals from the 2 years before we set sail) is just the fact that I did it. Even now, in our broken down state, I am so happy we are here than the heavy mess of a life we had before. I was drowning in stuff -- I remember (as if every journal entry for 2 years crying about that very fact wasn't vivid enough to recall the hopelessness I felt). I am so immensely freakin happy about how much STUFF we have right now. You can only begin to imagine the implications of what I just said... unless you were pressent for the prcoessing of said stuff out of my life, or if you have done a similar journey of selling 98% of everything you own to live so incredibly simply -- radical minimalists got nothin on me :)

I know, I know, I hear those folks talking, too, about how the external doesn't matter -- it's all the internal. Bah! Maybe that is true for them, but it wasn't true for me. I was drowning in responsibility and attachment, and releasing all that stuff from my life opened up space to spend my time and energy in ways that I wanted to. Changing the external absolutely healed the internal.

My other greatest success in this experience? Laughing at my epic fail. This truly was a fail of the most epic proportions for me. It has all the ingredients of "epic" and "fail" -- I hyped this up so huge in my life, knew it was to be my crowning achievement in life and fell flat on my face. Hahahaha. That is hilarious! I'm glad I am laughing at myself before I hear the more pessimistic loved ones in my life do it first LOL

So, I failed at making a lifestyle out of free roaming the country... I succeeded at so much more.
I met the most amazing people from all walks of life. People who moved us and loved us and supported us, people who I didn't want the conversation to come to end, people who I admired from a distance, people who are like my family, and people who filled me with hope and then flew away ♥

I got out of the house in ways I haven't done for as long as I can remember! Coming from a woman who was borderline agoraphobic, THAT IS SERIOUS SUCCESS! I experienced things I have only dreamed of (like taking my family to ren faire) and things I never expected (meeting pirates and wanting to be one of them!). I walked a jetti that changed my life, and spent some down time reconnecting with the beach and the ocean. I practically lived at the library and stepped outside of my old ways to coax a librarian into liking my wild bunch (rather than just hiding from her or avoiding the library entirely). I parked in a hotel parking lot where I was NOT a guest and comsumed a heavenly deluxe continental breakfast and lounged by their pool for hours afterward (eek! I still can't believe I had the balls to do that!!!). I even kept my cool and found out it wasn't as scary or uncomfortable as I thought when they approached me about my room number LOL I woke up to the ocean out my window, fell asleep to the sound of waves crashing, got a fireworks show out my bedside window. I became familiar with people I never would have approached. I loaned something important to a stranger with the understanding that I may never get it back. I opened up. I healed. I got balanced. I got more in touch with nature than I have ever before. I worshipped the sun (without forgetting the moon). I lost things I thought I would crumble without... and barely blinked. I came face-to-face with my weakenesses. I let shyt flow. I lived. I was alive.

I dreamed new dreams. Dreams of a Goddess Guild at the local ren faire. Dreams of pirate days with unschooling groups, and belly dancing classes for all ages and body types. Dreams of a winter cabin in the mountains as a cave with a little community of gardeners and animal-lovers we call home. Dreams of living the uber-light life of van & tent set-up -- the best of both worlds: light & easy and spacious & ours.

That list is short because the "experience" list was so so long, and still not complete :)
I broke down more times than I can count, literally and *just* emotionally, and I got back up and started dancing.

I stepped into the flow and didn't get burned alive.

I'm okay right now. I got through the hardest part. I'm on the other side, feeling a lot of the same things I did after my unassisted birth: the dichotemy of "I can't believe I did that" and "Of course, I did!", the dichotemy of "I f*cking ROCK!" and "That was just life, nothing special", the dichotemy between "That was NOTHING like I expected" and "That was exactly what I knew it would be", the dichotemy of "That was an epic fail" and "That was an epic success" :)) The truth, as is often true in life, is both extremes and anywhere in between, depending on the moment and the context :)

I guess this is an epic success because I am happier and more content today than I was a year ago, because I am still joyfully living regardless, because I feel stronger than ever before, and mostly because this isn't the end -- I still have a giant empty canvas waiting for me to paint my new dreams upon.