“The older I get, the more I see how women are described as having gone mad, when what they’ve actually become is knowledgable and powerful and fucking furious.” ~ Sophie Heawood

What is it to be truly wild?

Free?

Foolish?

Joyous?

To laugh in the face of impermanence and flash her your brave, beating heart?

I asked women to share their wildness with me for an article I recently wrote: I Will Always be a Wild Thang. The images I received were so bloody brilliant, they deserved their own write up.

Thank you to all the women who sent me their wildness, you’re all just stinking beautiful.

“Diane LeBlanc, my mother, dancing in a chorus line in 1952. She was the original wild thang.” ~ Renee Magnusson

“If you’re going to love someone or something then don’t be a slow leaking faucet—-be a hurricane.” ~ Shannon L. Alder

Wild thang: Nattalie Marley / Photographer: Jozef Ezra

“Love her but leave her wild.” ~ Atticus

Wild thang: Taylor Eyewalker / Photographer: Bryan Randall

 “Go out in the woods, go out. If you don’t go out in the woods nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Wild thang: Eliza Sloane / Photographer: Tobi Salver

“There is a need to find and sing our own song, to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there, that stirs the yearning for solitary voyage.” ~ Barbara Lazear Ascher

Debbie Lowery Harrell, Rocky Mountain High, 13,000′ on the Continental Divide in Colorado. Photo credit: MAD Hippies.

“I was raised feral, and I mostly stayed that way.” ~ Gillian Flynn

Wild thang: Becky Goebel / Photographer: Ali Marie Parker

“Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair…” ~ Susan Polis Schutz

Wild thang: Brooke Jelliebean Boyd

“Taken right after we decided to go our separate ways. An expression of willingness to move into the unknown. The North Atlantic water in March is about 2 degrees.” ~ Steve McCall

Wild thang: Unknown

“She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city.” ~ Roman Payne

Wild thang dancing in crimson clover: Eliza Murray Davis

“In short, all good things are wild and free.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Wild one: Emelia von Saltza / Photographer: Erin Wheat

“Hidden in the glorious wildness like unmined gold.” ~ John Muir

Wild thangs: Jonell Mae and her Belgian draft horse, Honey.

“Does Wildly Happy Count?” ~ Reakash Attea Walters

Wild thang: Reakash Attea Walters / Photographer: Jay Marie

“She is ideas, feelings, urges, and memory. She has been lost and half forgotten for a long, long time. She is the source, the light, the night, the dark, and daybreak. She is the smell of good mud and the back leg of a fox. The birds which tell us secrets belong to her. She is the voice that says, ‘This way, this way.’ ” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Wild thang: Emilee Guevara

“My wild child, who lives in her underwear and princess skirts. Who is fearless. Who loves rabbits, round bails of hay, and thunderstorms.” ~ Amanda Bird

Wild thang: Kaylin

“Hot summer day, free as can be.” ~ Sarah Wingert

Wild thang: Sarah Wingert. Pennypack Park, Philadelpia, PA, circa 2007.

“I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.” ~Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Wild thang: Jessica Pociask, on the edge of the Devil’s cup. Victoria Falls, Zambia.

“Just as the ancients danced to call upon the spirits in nature, we too can dance to find the spirits within ourselves that have been long buried and forgotten.” ~ Anna Halprin

Wild thang: Rebekah Uccellini

“Truly, we know that we cannot really subsist on little sips of life. The wild force in a woman’s soul demands that she have access to it all.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Wild, Wild thang: Morgan Charlton

“And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

Wild thang: Sara Jade, six months pregnant, here.

“The best thing you can possibly do with your life, is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of it.” ~ Cheryl Strayed

Wild thangs: Outlaw Cydney White Metz & Outlaw Jenni Hopkins Mowery

“Maybe some women aren’t meant to be tamed. Maybe they just need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with them.” ~ Carrie Bradshaw

Wild thang: Shell Windsor, Sunshine Coast.

“Scatter joy!” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wild thangs: Danie St-Amand & Andree-Ann Sabourin.

“She’s mad but she’s magic. There’s no lie in her fire.” ~ Charles Bukowski

Wild thang: Janne Robinson.

“If you have yet to be called an incorrigable, defiant woman,
don’t worry, there is still time.” ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Wild thang: Eliza Sloane / Photographer: Matthew Hickey

Relephant: 

I am Not Afraid to Tell you that I am Beautiful. {Poem}

I Will Always Be a Wild Thang.

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Author: Janne Robinson

Editor: Renee Picard 

Images: via the author, shared with permission  

Relephant bonus: How to feel a precious fully-lived joy: