Reclaiming the wild

Guest post by Connie Hozvicka for Oh, these Wild Women: Stories from the tribe

Didn’t get to say goodbye, originally uploaded by volveta96 – Maria

Right before I turned 25 years old the great love of my life (so I thought) dumped me. Not only did he dump dump me – the week before he swept me away to Napa Valley for a week – we wined, we dined, we mud bathed, and snuggled after sex. We did everything two 24-year-olds in love would do in Napa, I guess.

Then.
Then he dumped me.

He dumped me big time. Because, well, we were suppose to get married. I was counting on it – our families and friends and their friends even were counting on it. Good ol’ forever after and a picture perfect story (so I thought).

But he dumped me.

And from that point, I started to let myself untangle. Fall apart. Disintegrate. I stopped seeing friends, stopped going to work, stopped painting, stopped even drinking Argentinean red wine. Instead I started to take long baths. Sometimes baths that would last for hours. Sometimes for days.

And if I wasn’t bathing…I was laying on the floor next to the bathtub staring at the ceiling.

Until, one day, both my boss and best friend got a hold of the landlord and asked if he could let them inside my apartment so they could check on me. They were worried. (Maybe I was dead.)

And when they all three entered to my great surprise, with me laying naked on the bathroom floor just staring at the ceiling, something snapped inside of me like a branch trapped in a storm.

Maybe it was a bit of embarrassment. Maybe I had just grown bored of being so depressed. But there I was, naked – most likely pruned from a long bath – with my friend and boss standing over me, looking terribly concern, and my landlord not knowing where to look. And well, I got up, got dressed, and went and had dinner for the first time in months.

My friend stayed with me for a couple days to make sure I’d stay clear from the bathtub. And I decided then. Right then. That I would no longer live a life expected of me, but rather be wild. Be free. Be unattached to anything that didn’t fuel my creativity.

And it didn’t happen over night. I was a wreck. Untangled and knotted, but ready to be woven into something more stronger – more beautiful – more truly me.

Ironically, shortly after my world fell apart, the World Trade Center buildings came tumbling down, and I remember going to sleep that night knowing that this too was a sign. To open my eyes. To be fully awake. That energy is all around us – it ebbs it flows -it whirls through us and seeps out of our pores back into the earth. And it sinks to the bottom of our existence like a boulder and clogs our soul if we let it.

So I started to listen to my dreams and the enticements of my heart. I slowly let go of things I thought I had to do for years and years and started doing the things I felt I needed to do. Like backpacking through Italy, surfing at sunrise in the Pacific, roadtrippin’ through Arizona with one of my oldest friends, Latin dancing till 4 AM in Mexico.

I don’t believe we’re born wild and free – at least the first time. Somewhere in our lives we have to die to ourselves to be reborn and rebuilt again. Somewhere in our lives is a bath that last for weeks. A period of mourning and defeat. A time that we travel backwards instead of forward.

A moment, that we, on our own – declare and reclaim the wild – the passion – the purity of existence we’ve been ignoring up until that point.

A moment that we see clearly that our life is here for the making – that wild is not just a way of being – but rather a deeper, fresher way of breathing.

Connie Hozvicka is the Artist Yogini Writer of the blog Dirty Footprints Studio where she awakens FEARLESS™ creativity in others through her FEARLESS™ Painting workshops and retreats. Her mission is to be love, spread light, and paint FEARLESS™.

Connect: Website | Workshops | Facebook | Twitter: @DirtyFootprints