The wild soul

‘Soul is our inner wildness…{It} is what is most wild and natural within us.’

                                         Bill Plotkin

The word ‘wild’ has many negative connotations. If you search for its meanings and synonyms, you will find words like barbarous, crazy, extreme, fierce, ferocious, feral, primitive, savage, uncivilised, uncontrolled and unruly. And it is true that some forms of behaviour that we may call wild are undeniably destructive, both of ourselves and others. If we are prepared to dig a little deeper, however, those words are not the only ones we will find. For wildness is also associated with such words as adventurous, elemental, free, free-spirited, natural, powerful, radical, spontaneous, unbroken, uninhibited, untamed and vibrant - words that are used to describe qualities of being which we generally think of as positive.    

For one of my clients, her wild soul is a lioness who roams the landscape freely and without fear, at peace with who she is, comfortable in her own skin and and able to tap into her own elemental power whenever the need arises. For another, it is a tropical bird with with vivid, multi-coloured feathers and powerful wings that soars through the skies with ease, delighting in its freedom. For me, it is a dolphin breaching, thrusting itself with abandon out of the sea with its powerful tail, sometimes flipping and twisting itself above the surface then splashing back down again, slapping the water joyfully. For each of us, this wildness is something to be enjoyed and celebrated. It is something to be treasured and to be embraced.  

Rosa Parks embraced her wild soul on a cold December day in 1995 in Alabama. An African-American seamstress in her early forties, Rosa did something that she had never done before: she sat in a bus seat that was reserved for white people and refused to give it up. In her biography, she wrote, 'People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired but that isn’t true... No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in.” It was a courageous decision to take in a deeply racist society but Rosa was tired of adhering to racist laws. She was no longer prepared to act as if she were less than fully human, less than the woman she knew herself to be. She was no longer willing to collude with those who sought to diminish her. Having refused to give up her seat when she was challenged, she was arrested and convicted of breaking the laws of segregation. But that was not the end of the story. Her actions led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the first large-scale demonstration against segregation in the United States. Led by Martin Luther King, it lasted over a year until the American Supreme Court finally ruled that segregation on public buses in Alabama was unconstitutional. 

When I first read Rosa’s story, I was in awe of her courage and her determination to fight the injustice of the laws imposed on her. I found myself doubting that I would have been brave enough to do as she did, that I would have been willing to pay the cost that she did. I saw her as an exceptional person who chose to do something that most of us would see as extraordinary. What I have come to understand though is that Rosa did not do what she did because she was an exceptional person. She was an ordinary person who made the choice one day to embrace and claim her personal freedom, simply because she was no longer willing to tolerate being robbed of it. If we are to allow ourselves to be challenged by her actions on that day nearly seventy years ago and to discover what it means for us personally to re-discover our own wildness, we must learn to see her as the ordinary person she was. We must recognise that all of us have it within ourselves to embrace our wild soul as she did that day and to fight whatever battles may come our way as we seek to live out the truth of who we are.

Whenever we honour our true nature in the face of other's dismissal; whenever we battle to find our own way through life in the face of others' demands that we follow their path; whenever we take the next step in reclaiming that which we have lost along the way, however small and insignificant it might seem, we are embracing our wild soul. For the wildness of soul lies in its refusal to be tamed, straightjacketed or cowed by social conventions or by others’ expectations and demands. It lies in its willingness to be radical, to rebel against structures and rules when they are destructive or unjust. It lies in its determination not to shrink in the harsh light of others’ disapproval or condemnation but to walk tall and powerfully through the world, forging our own way, eyes wide open and head held high. It lies in its readiness to embrace adventure, to face the unknown, to blaze new paths when the old ones are failing. It lies in in its naturalness and spontaneity and its freedom to be its vibrant, fruitful, instinctive and elemental self.  

Some would argue that to embrace the wildness of the soul is to become self-centred and selfish, that it is to put ourselves before others, to serve ourselves rather than others, to be all that we all that we are capable of being even when others pay the price of our doing so. But the wild soul is never ruthless. It never tramples over the rights of others. It never denies others their freedom in order to embrace its own. It is always tempered by its deep-rooted concern for others' wellbeing and its desire for them to embrace the wildness of their own soul. And when it finds its true calling, when it discovers the story that only it can tell, the song that only it can sing, the gifts that only it can offer offer this wounded and broken world, the universe rejoices in its wildness.

'Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?'

Mary Oliver from 'The Summer Day'

©Copyright Kaitlyn Steele 2025

Kaitlyn Steele www.insearchofsoul.co.uk

kaitlynsteele16@gmail.com