Have you seen those videos on the internet where animals kept in captivity for their whole lives are released into the wildness of a grassy pasture? At first, the animal is afraid to leave its cage. Then slowly, slowly, it emerges, sniffing the air, feeling the grass under its paws. Tentative, reluctant, until its memory of who it is begins to return. And when it connects with its true nature, it begins to frolic in its freedom.
This is a metaphor for calling back your authenticity.
Many of us spend our lives in captivity. A loveless marriage, a job that depletes you, overbearing people and circumstances that encroach on your time and life force, are each forms of capture.
Your authentic self is Free. Loving. Creative. Unbound. Brilliant.
A life of captivity
You are an original. Authentic is your birthright. Staying really real is not easy. There are many ways that we lose our authenticity. Well-meaning folks like parents, caregivers, educators and spiritual advisors encourage women and girls to follow roles, behave in certain ways, be certain things. Violence, abuse, bullying, peer pressure, and more, can silence a woman’s true voice and betray her authentic self even further.
Instead of feeling free, you feel helpless, mute, alone, starved.
There is a way out.
You must remember your authentic self.
It is time
You are ready to retrieve your true self. Connect with your brilliance, your creativity, your freedom. It is time to remember that you are Love from Love.
Dear One, call back your authenticity.
Remember your really real.
In the Sleeping Beauty story, it is not the kiss of the Prince that wakes the princess from her sleep. The hundred year spell has expired and it is simply time. She would have awakened regardless; the Prince’s kiss the brothers Grimm and Disney added to the ancient tale. (Oh the damage that this belief perpetuates. For another post…)
No one else was required to free her from captivity. It was simply her time to wake up.
Dear One, it is your time to wake from an inauthentic life.
How-to
The process of calling back your authenticity is one of undoing. It is a rolling back, a peeling off. As you remove the layers that obscure your true self, you may feel a yearning, a pushing forward of your really real. You are leaving the cage and about to step out into freedom.
The process is a birthing – a re-birthing – of your true nature.
Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature,
a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity,
and ageless knowing.
–Clarissa Pinkola Estes
This is your true self, the authentic self. Call it back. The world needs authentic women like never before. It is time.
