Happy belated Spring Equinox, Eid and Nowruz. Marking a new beginning, a new energetic year - and for me, marking my birthday tomorrow. I celebrate the return of the light in all possible ways. It’s been a dark year, collectively and for me, personally.

I’ve been on a descent over the last year, and I wanted to tell you about it because it’s archetypal. And because we’re standing at the edge of collapse and might need some kind of collective orientation towards something new. Maybe my journey contributes to making a bigger map of where we’re going.

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An everyday moment as a door

It’s a specific moment that torments me daily. It goes a little something like this: I’m full of ideas, thoughts, threads that exist in my head, weaving, oscillating, pulsating. I am threading several pieces in my head, thinking of you - yes, you, the reader of my writing. But as soon as I sit down to write and put it “on paper”, I freeze.

My body shifts into a state of unease, resistance - confusion flooding in, full of “but what abouts” and suddenly, there are a thousand things that are equally important and alive, pulling in different directions. I lose the thread. I can almost observe myself leave my body and move into my head, where my brain turns on the volume on confusion, in a kind of continuous ricochet effect until I am overwhelmed and can’t move forward with any of it. Enter freeze. The day passes, and I still haven’t allowed my creativity to unfold.

This moment right here is the one thing I know holds me back from sharing more of my work, connecting with new people, and making a difference. It’s been on for a few years - since I started writing more honestly some years ago. I thought for a long time, I was just a master procrastinator, but this - this was its own beast. It cut so much deeper than procrastination. Because this moment - the freeze, the flight into the head, the silencing of the voice before it even forms - is very, very old. A fundamental, bone-deep fear that’s been keeping me “safe” - to my own detriment and that of my little business.

The unholy bargaining

I’ve wrestled with the fear (and wrote about it here before), tried regulating my nervous system, got therapy and coaching, and got other support. All valid and helpful - but at the core, all leading to the same destination: the actual work that needed doing. At some point, it was all just bargaining with the inevitable. It was clear as day: I needed to walk through this portal. Something really powerful was at play here.

As Hannah Fraser Moore, Jungian analyst, writes:

“Fear does more than frighten. It interferes with direction. It keeps you circling decisions you already understand. It delays what you want to begin. It interrupts momentum just as something matters.”

I knew my voice mattered, and it needed to come out. I just couldn’t get myself to do it. This resistance was incredibly powerful and intelligent - it was pointing to something that could no longer be bypassed. It needed witnessing.

The bargaining was over. So in the past year, I’ve descended - willingly - into the belly of the beast. I did it because the cost of staying the same had finally become too high. I needed to see what was at the root of this thing and how far down it reached. And I needed to retrieve something old, lost a long time ago, and bring it back into the light: instinct, aliveness, my wild Self.

C.G. Jung called it shadow work. I’ve come to call it Wild Devotion. Not ambition. Not a strategy. Not even courage in the ordinary sense. Wild Devotion to my aliveness, my inner truth. The thing that was pressing from the inside and refusing to be contained any longer.
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A conscious descent

I tracked it down into the dark, learning its shape, its voice, its pulse. Two opposite forces of the Psyche, one pushing outwards and one keeping guard and preventing it from unfolding. So, down I went. There, I met the original wound - the story that if I show my true self, I will not be lovable. I will not be accepted. I will not be met. I will be rejected. I will be ridiculed. I will be alone. There, I found the hidden, seemingly unlovable parts of me, tucked away from the meanness of the world: my anger, sensitivity, bullying wounds, painful memories and internalised stories I’ve adopted. I’ve tucked it all away just to keep the relational bond intact.

This is a vulnerability I’ve been guarding with my life. Keeping it out of sight was supposed to, in turn, keep me safe, accepted and loved. Neatly kept inside the box, within the parameters of the roles I was carrying. But the wild Self tracks its sovereign territory in the dark, always moving and shifting, and when you’re not looking, it directs your life.

“In stories, the forest appears after the child has already been lost. The forest exists because the old world could no longer protect life. The story insists on the journey so something truer can grow.”

— Hannah Fraser Moore

Who I was on the outside and who I was on the inside could no longer be two different things. On one side, the good girl, the keeper of peace and balance, the persona I’ve built over so many years and on the other, my wild Self, my innate creativity, my imagination, my power, my aliveness, my wild uncontainable Eros with its unabashed love of life. Ungovernable and unapologetic. Keeping the wild Self contained became a hazard that would surely kill me from within. Or kill my business. Or both. Something had to give.

Putting the good girl to rest

It was time for the good girl to be put to rest.

The good girl as an archetype is old. She carries a spine made from patriarchy and colonialism - given to her to uphold the system, dutifully. She has been doing her job for a very long time - keeping me safe, keeping the peace, keeping the container intact so nobody would feel threatened, so everyone stayed comfortable, and the status quo was protected. And now, she had served her term. I have been faithful to her beyond all reasonable expectation. But she was built for a world that should no longer exist. A collective denial of the feminine power. The damage was done, and I was done with the damage.

And where there is a wound, there is also the medicine and the gifts. It’s where Wild devotion lives. It’s where unapologetic aliveness and Eros live. Mine, ours, yours. The thing that was most yearning to be expressed was on the other side of this threshold the whole time. Not lost. Waiting in the dark. Waiting for its time to come. Waiting for me to return and reclaim it.

Things that live in the dark

What I found in the dark is volcanic. Elemental lava, a river of fire. Power that can melt through rock. No wonder I was petrified of it. Because that kind of power wants to be seen and felt. It obliges. It wants to move. It wants to reshape.

There were moments I wished I hadn’t seen it all, that I could go back to how things were. I knew I was being tested. And I kept returning to the story of Vasilisa, a girl who is sent by her evil stepmother to retrieve the fire from the old hag, Baba Yaga, in the forest. It’s a story that describes in accurate detail what happens at the last threshold, and I understand now why Clarissa Pinkola Estés, in Women Who Run With the Wolves, insists that Vasalisa must not throw away Baba Yaga’s fireskull after she retrieved it from the old hag.

The fireskull is a luminous, terrible, generative gift from the depths of the forest. It would be so much easier to set it down in the ditch. To stay small. To keep telling the old story. But if you let go of the fireskull, the psyche regresses. It is a retreat from one’s own power at the last threshold. It is a surrender to the forces that have diminished you in the first place. You are back to the start, and every subsequent try will become harder. So, you gotta hold on to the fireskull, at any price.

Because these violent times call for it. They require us to complete the journey, to bring the fire with us, so it can burn away all falsehoods, all pretence.

“Developing a relationship with the wildish nature is an essential part of women’s individuation. In order to accomplish this, a woman must go into the dark, but at the same time she must not be irreparably trapped, captured, or killed on her way there or back.”

– Clarisa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With The Wolves

What I carried back

I’ve been through many thresholds in my life. But this has undeniably been the defining transition of my life. Not because I became someone new, but because I refused to stay small and, in the process, became more of who I truly am. The crossing scared the living hell out of me. But now, I am allowing my wild Self to lead, despite the fear, as it has always been trying to - with the full power that it carries.

This descent has also redefined the work I do. These are not ordinary processes. They are deep rites of passage, crossing the unknown psychic terrain in the dark, individual and collective. Weaving ecology of the Self and the world in new ways. I’ve always lived in the imaginary, the dreamy, the mystical depth. But I’ve not honoured it, nor have I signalled it. I’m done pretending that working on that layer privately is enough. The cost was too high.

I returned with things in my hands. Besides the fiery skull, what was forged is a new cosmology and an ecological understanding of the Self and relationality. It is still finding its way, still learning its own shape and language. It is coming. The work wants to be shaped now - in a different, more conscious way. And it wants to be shared. So, Wild Devotion to it continues.

I know many of you are standing at a similar threshold. We collectively stand there. Maybe you’re mid-crossing, lost in the dark, not yet sure how to return. You may feel alone. We may not know each other, but know that I am here. A steady, fiercely loving witness to your wild Self and your becoming.

Let this be your invitation to allow your wild Self to live. It’s probably been pushing from the inside for a while. You know what it is.

It might be the scariest thing you will ever do.

Do it anyway.

With fierce belief in you,

Martina 🌋

Hi, I'm Martina. I coach creative leaders, change-makers and teams through defining transitions. My approach is relational and focused on growing vibrant, trusting cultures full of life. Our work together serves a systemic paradigm shift towards a regenerative, life-affirming worldview. ​ I am committed to anti-racism and decolonisation, and all my paid client work enables me to support impact leaders and communities of the global majority through scholarships or pro-bono work. ​ And as for me - I am wildly intuitive, ancestrally rooted and happiest in treetops. 🌳 ​

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