Belonging to the Wild

We are beginning a short series on leaving the obedient life.  For the next few episodes, my co-hosts and I will be exploring questions about what our shoulds have been, what it looked like for us to step across, or transgress, those well-worn paths into our own wildness, and what living from our own knowing and nature looks like for us now.    In this episode I answer some of these questions about my own life. Before I invite my guests to share so bravely about their stories, I thought I would share with you some of the places I’ve encountered Great Shoulds in my life and what my experience of stepping beyond the bounds of obedience has been like for me.  As I tell some of my story, I also explore the experiences of sacrifice, permission, grief, and blessing on the journey of leaving the obedient life as we learn to trust our knowing and to live from that knowing.

In this episode Vanya is joined by Kaitlyn Turner who helps guide the conversation with questions around the tired word, patriarchy. We discuss how patriarchal consciousness is embedded within the Western world and how this system of “power over” exists within our day to day lives. We ask the question of what is another way, or other ways and explore some of the ways of being we’re looking for and how we can find and remember these ways in the natural world, within our dreams, our bodies, in science, and our mythologies. We hope to continue this conversation by asking more questions around how we shall live as we remember these ways of being.

In this episode, Vanya offers us 5 elements of the knowing life. She talks about learning how to live into our questions and be faithful to them rather than to the prescribed answers we’ve been given. She also discusses the powerful magic of curiosity, the work of transformation as the work of becoming, and how to embrace the unknowing within us (that lives at the heart of the knowing life). In all of this, Vanya explores learning how to befriend the wild life that we’ve been given and how to welcome ourselves home everyday a little bit more.

In this episode, author, poet, and activist Natalie Bryant joins Vanya for an in-depth conversation on leaving the obedient life and moving toward wildness and sovereignty.   We discuss the unwritten contracts— the shoulds and external expectations —that we were devoted to when we met in our late teens.  Our conversation includes topics like the work of discerning between external expectations for our lives and what we really want, the sorrow and joy of leaving the known for the unknown over and over again, and the idea of safety within and without the approved paths in our lives.  In this honest conversation, we talk about our experiences, insights, struggles, and questions as we continually learn to move toward the center of our own lives. 

This episode is about seeds.  It is about what has been buried in our lives and what awakening right now.   Seeds are a humble magic.  Inside their tiny walls they hold the potentialities for a whole life.  Seeds show us a burial that is for preservation and safe keeping until the time is right, until the conditions are favorable for new life to grow.  And then, when the air and wind and sun and soil reach their tenuous agreement, the walls of the seed break open and new life pushes through the dark and into the light.      Sometimes what is most precious and true in us goes to seed.  We can imagine our wildest and wisest self, gathering what is too tender for the current environment and burying it deep in the soils of our own hearts and bodies.  And when it is time, the containers ~ ideas, identities, attitudes, values, relationships, religions, vocations ~ that have kept us safe need to break open and release what has been kept in these secret vaults.       In this episode, I invite you to be curious about what has been buried in your life and what is awakening right now.  As we enter into spring and watch all the hidden life that was kept safe from the harsh environs of winter break loose, we can ask ourselves: what wants to break free in my own life right now? 

The first episode of Belonging to the Wild is coming soon! For more info on Vanya & her offerings go to www.drvanyaleilani.com