Joyful Rest

// reframing and reimagining the wild inside //

I was walking a familiar path last year when a thought, clear as day, popped into my head: “What if being wild was actually a quiet thing?” This was a thought that felt welcomed and wonderful and yummy and made my insides feel at home. Not even a few hours later I was talking to my dear friend Tina Crespo and she said essentially this very same thing. I was like, “Tina! Wait, were you inside my head while I was walking?” And of course she said, “No surprise, we are often on the same page.” And although this is very true, this time it was serendipitous – really freakin weird. So ensued the beginning of our ramblings about how wild can be quiet.

Shortly thereafter I heard Ross Gay interviewed on OnBeing. It wasn’t even a recent episode. You know how finding a podcast can be hit or miss? I just pressed play hoping to have something keep me company in the studio. In his interview with Krista, to which I have listened a half dozen times now, he read about one of his students, “What if we joined our wildernesses together?” she asked. He goes one to say “Sit with that for a minute: that the body, the life, might carry a wilderness, an unexplored territory and that yours and mine might somewhere, somehow meet — might even join. And what if the wilderness, perhaps the densest wild in there…is our sorrow? It astonishes me sometimes how every person I get to know, regardless of everything, lives with some profound personal sorrow. Everyone. Regardless. Is this sorrow the great wilderness? Is sorrow the true wild? And if it is, and if we join them, your wild to mine, what’s that? What if we joined our sorrows? What if that is joy?” (pg 49 from The Book of Delights) As I re-listen to this and type this out for you (skipping over a few parts) I have goosebumps running up and down my body. I have never felt anything more deeply – to my bones.

He seemed to speak my language. He seemed to fill this void of understanding in that 30-second read. He helped me see the wild and the sorrow and the joy and the delight in everything and in the most poetic and inspiring way. I see sorrow, as I imagine Ross Gay does, as a thing so pure. And that this thing we have seen as terrible, a thing to avoid, a badge you don’t want to wear is actually the core of our humanity. And it is quiet and still and inside of each of us.

As I hosted the Annual “Studio Night” last night for my beautiful 2023 Wonder Mastermind women, I sat in awe at every single one of them sharing their work, their hearts and their minds. I was struck yet again by this same sentiment. We each carry such sorrow and pain while experiencing pure joy and delight. They live side by side. Joy comes from the acknowledgment, the honesty and the vulnerability of it all. Because what greater than the ability to be just who you are? Exactly as you were made?

What if WILD is REST and SORROW is JOY? What if it is all intertwined to create this magical experience we have on earth?