When I was a little girl in Florida, my Grampa Brown had a great garden.  He grew vegetables, and herbs and flowers.  But the part of his garden that I liked best was a small corner where everything grew wild.  Separated by a small, foot high fence, with a little gated opening, this corner of the garden was allowed to grow exactly as it pleased.  There were overhanging branches from the tree next door, and even on the warmest summer day, this area was cool and shadowy.  I would go into this corner and sit and watch.  Sometimes butterflies would come and sit on my finger or small animals would scurry around in the underbrush.

Every evening, my grandfather would place a small dish of food, and a bowl of milk in the wild corner.  He would tell me it was for the pixies and leprechauns.

I accepted this behavior as any child does, unquestioning, until I was 6 or 7.  I thought everyone had a wild corner in their garden.  About this time, I was sent for the summer to stay with my other grandparents.  They had a large garden on a farm that produced all of their vegetables, and enough left over to sell at the local market.  But they had no wild corner.  Everything was hoed, raked and the weeds were all pulled.  I asked, "Where do the pixies live?" and was roughly told there was no such thing.

Since I knew my Grampa Brown knew everything, I didn't believe this, and couldn't wait to get back home to tell my parents and grandparents that Grandma Anderson didn't know about pixies! She even said there were no leprechauns.  My parents roared with laughter, and told me those were just my Grandfather Brown's stories, like the stories I could read in books.  But Grampa Brown said, "If you don't believe in pixies, and give them a place to live, they won't come to visit.  Or if they do, they will tear things up."  I knew he was right, for he always was.

This story inspired me a dozen years ago when I was Chair of Metaphysical Studies at the Centro de Creativo, near the capital of Costa Rica, San Jose. I was a delegate to the International Women's Congress to be held that year at the nearby University.  I wanted to create a special event to mark the successful completion of the congress.  Seventy-five women from countries across the globe came to our small school grounds on a beautifully clear tropical night to celebrate the full moon and to experience their wildness.  As we ended the circle, I began a "howl" and encouraged others to join in.  For 15 minutes, the sound of women howling at the moon rose up to the heavens.  All the neighboring dogs joined in.  It was a beautiful, wild sound.

Later, many of the women came to me, and told me that this experience had been the first time they had EVER contacted that wildness that lives in all of us. Some shared that they were sure we would be arrested.

I found this so sad. Here were these bright, wonderful women from many countries who were terribly frightened to have a simple howl at the moon.

I thought about the story of my grandfather's garden again, when I began  preparing  to teach Wild Women! at the Women of Wisdom Conference in 2002.  At first, I had envisioned this class as a way for women to transcend the tame and ordinary lives they lived as "good girls" and "nice ladies." I wanted them to get in touch with that wild, untamed corner of themselves, where spirit lives.  I wanted them to experience their Amazon power and embrace the wildness that I was sure was hidden in every one of them.

Then, 9/11 occurred.  Suddenly, everything was much more frightful.  People were terrified by what had come in out of the wild.  How could I get women to explore their own wild nature, when terrorists threatened to blow apart the world we knew and loved?

I regrouped.  I rewrote.  I took out "Confronting the Beast Within", removed "Where the Burrowing Creatures Live" as too scary, too much for them to experience in such a short class.  In fact, I wimped out.  I rigidly hoed and raked my class, until what weeds were left could easily be pulled up by my participants.  Maybe I made the right choice, for the class went well, and everyone seemed very satisfied with the results.  Except me.  I was unhappy with my performance, and what we had achieved as a group.  It just wasn't enough.  The wild had no where to live in that cold, cavernous, hotel meeting room we had used. The wild is where nature can grow exactly as it pleases, just as in the corner of my grandfather's garden. I had pulled up some of my wild plants and tried to make my seminar safe and free of weeds. I realized this came from my own fears.

So I vowed to let my teachings grow wild again.  I determined to present these classes in natural settings near brooks and streams, where the creatures of the forest and wild birds live.  There we could discover the wild flowers and animals, the weeds, and the powers of nature as expressed by our Mother Earth.  There, we could safely discover and express our own wildness without being afraid. Since then I have presented this class in several incredible wild and wonderful places.

You see, the wild can be scary.  We are trained from birth to suppress our wilder urges. And in order to live in a society there must be some rules, some agreement of civilized behavior.  And yet….when you push the wild out of your life so completely, it has to find other places to live.  If it can't be in you - then it will exist outside of you and be much scarier than coming to terms with that inner wildness, for no matter how hard we try to weed it out, it is still there.  My grandfather knew this, and gave it a place to live and something to eat, so that it never took over the whole garden.

For in that wild, shadowy part of ourselves lives great power and great spirit.  When we try to suppress and marginalize it, we end up losing a part of ourselves.  We each need to have a wild corner, a place where pixies live, in the well tended garden of our souls.

Explore your wildness. Go on hikes into nature, swim with dolphins, howl with wolves, walk in the woods.  Create a place where you can explore the wild, in yourself, and in your world.

We were never meant to live a tame, sedentary, boring life all the time.  We are designed to seek the thrill of adrenaline, the rush that comes with excitement, the quickened pulse of doing something that scares us.  This is what being physical is all about!  Moving our bodies, exploring the physical world, creating a life filled with passion and purpose.  This is where the power of the wild can come into our civilized world and be harnessed to help us get where we want to go.  When we marginalize, ostracize and deny it, it comes through as disease, and unhappiness, violence against ourselves and others, for the wild will always find a place to live.