Spiritual Rewilding
A sacred return to ourselves
Spiritual Rewilding - a definition: “In a spiritual context, rewilding signifies a restoration of our connection to nature, ourselves, and each other, ultimately leading to a renewed sense of spiritual wholeness. It's about recognising and embracing our innate, untamed nature and finding a deeper connection to the sacredness of the natural world.”
The Wild Child Archetype
I have always been a nature girl. Even when I lived in south east London as a young child, I would seek out green spaces to play in. Like many children growing up in the 60s and 70s, we were latchkey kids and so were left to roam freely from a very young age. We lived on a concrete jungle council estate which the 1970s seemed so good at producing. Even then at age 5 or 6 I intuitively knew where I needed to be, and it certainly wasn’t there. Just like a homing pigeon, I would leave our flat and walk/fly away from the town centre, crossing main roads by myself, just to be able to kick off my little black plimsolls and run barefoot in the local park. To be amongst trees, plants, grass and soil felt like Home to me. (Probably because it is).
It will come as no surprise for you to discover that my favourite book as a child was The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton. I would spend hours of my young life escaping into those magical worlds, through climbing up that special tree along with Joe, Beth and Frannie. Once again, I was organically finding ways to survive my childhood. Or perhaps these places and stories were finding me….who knows? Grace tends to work that way.
“I do not understand the mystery of grace, only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”
Anne Lamott - Elder & Author
The Wilder Child (aka the feral child archetype)
After a few years we left (escaped) the city and moved to a more rural location in the South of England. It was here that my true rewilding began. When the violence and related screaming became unbearable in my house, I would take my dog and run to the fields as fast as I could to escape it all. Here my little dog (aka an angel) and I would spend hours together in a fantasy world, hiding in that long overgrown grass so that we could not be found. I would lie down in that secret soft grassy land and lose myself, gazing up at the clouds in the sky until it became less painful to return. Both to my body and then to my life. I didn’t know it then but I was learning how to regulate my nervous system whilst releasing any stressful energy back to the land. Without realising it consciously, I was returning to the ultimate mother - Mother Earth, and asking her to Love, hold and protect me, which she always did.
It’s fair to say that nature has saved my life. Many times. From building dens in the woods at 7 or 8 years old to create a safe place (home), for me and my imaginary friends to ‘live’ in, to walking for miles every day in my pyjamas at aged 30 when I had my breakdown/breakthrough. Again I didn’t realise it at the time but I was walking a pilgrimage on those daily outings. Walking back to find myself. Each step in nature, helped me become stronger, and brought me slowly back to my connection with the land and in turn with myself. I had become so busy and disconnected in my young adult life trying to run from my trauma, that it took a Divine intervention to make me stop and start to heal.