In the past few months, I’ve been operating more on instinct than plan. Only the most basic physical and emotional needs have driven daily action. My mom died on December 4th, my sister-in-law a week later. Last year and the first months of this one have been soaked in cancer, helping Mom face death, of numbness and shock, and all the stress grief and change create.

I have described how doing The Oat Project, sowing 25 wild oats in one short summer, “cracked me open,” initiating these five years of transformation, a story I’m sharing with you adventure by adventure.

But they were nothing as compared to now.

My friends often say I have no filters, am the Queen of TMI. It is nothing as to now. All of the filters are gone.

I am simply me. I simply say what comes out.

I simply act. Which has been not much in the past few weeks.

As I have un-numbed from the shock of losing my mom, and the wreck my brother survived and my sister-in-law didn’t, it has been magnitudes more painful than I could have imagined.  Immobilizing, in the way of how we hold still to not exacerbate a wound. And then as the un-numbing has continued, writhing, stabbing pain.

Wanting to simply lie down and join my mother.

But the prickles of pain and panic mean I am alive, not dead.

And the writhing is at least movement.

As I have tried to get this book reboot going, the work, my body, my whole life have felt like a cold, neglected engine, turning over but refusing to catch. Even movement–yoga, running, anything–has been too much. But as my insides start to come alive again, it’s like having all your limbs separated and reattached and then learning to walk again. And as I continue to try to simply be functional, my most essential Self is noticing patterns and roots.

Why have I always done this that way?

From which fear does that stem?

If I have conquered or banished or worked around that fear, why do I still do that?

From where does that paralysis come?

Why do my muscles, in my body and brain, still behave as though that lie I told myself and no longer believe is true?

So I wrote a book. Does it still matter?

What does Wild mean, anyway? Does it still matter?

It is that last question to which I answer a wholehearted YES. For it is only in the Wild that I have survived. And thus, I am sharing that journey, too, via days in which I lead those seeking through ways to integrate the Wild into everyday life.

What will it take for you to see the unconscious patterns that govern your actions? Death? Heartbreak? Upheaval? I think we can all begin to see them by simply noticing them and intending change, quite apart from those painful methods. By transforming our metaphors and creating new muscle memories. I would like to share how I have continued on this path and thus, help you do so as well. Go HERE to sign up for the Integrating the Wild Workshops. Love and hugs. Jene’

p.s. You can also find the events on Facebook here.