First the Wildness, Then the Sense
When we feel blocked, it's usually because we're trying to make sense of something too early. Wildness comes first in the creative process — the unshaped, uncurated, unfiltered material where our most original work comes from. Most of us were trained out of it, which is why advice like loosen up and get out of your own way is so bewildering to receive. Three prompts for taking the lid off.
My grandmother wrote in line-a-day journals for her entire adult life. Daily, she would write a few sentences:
Rainy and cold. Got a letter from Johnny today. Both kids sick
Sunny. Kids feeling better. Ate tomatoes from the garden for lunch. No word from Johnny.
She never skipped days. There are dozens of journals. She was SOLO PARENTING while my grandfather was at war on the other side of the world. These accounts of her life are beautiful. And. When I read the journals, there is an energy that emerges between the words. It feels like an electricity — a music underneath the daily doings — a story that's not being told that I desperately want to hear. My grandmother was a complex, nuanced, creative, brilliant, woman. In between the kids getting sick and the rain starting and stopping there is a whole symphony — her quiet self and her operatic self and her questing self and her wild self.
But these selves weren't free to roam. In the context of her world, there was no space for all of her.
Meet your Wild Self
One very nonconventional way to think about creativity is that it is a reclamation and expression of the lost parts of ourselves.
To create, we must cultivate a relationship with our Wild Self — this part of ourself who unlocks truth, freedom, possibility, and deep expressiveness.
Because of cultural conditioning, systems of oppression, and the overstimulation of the digital age, many of us underdevelop or lose connection entirely with our wildness, even though it is one of the most essential qualities for birthing our most authentic expressions.
Nobody taught us this
It's also challenging because this relationship is so rarely nourished or addressed in our creative training. In fact, so much of our training experiences, while well-intentioned, actually block or suppress the innate wildness we need for our most original expressions.
If you have been told to loosen up, let go, get out of your own way, or stop being such a perfectionist, but been bewildered as to how to integrate this feedback, it's because you weren't in a situation where you were free to access your wildness.
I have become obsessed with how we create that freedom in our creative environments and lives. Curiosity is a way in.
Signs that it may be time to become curious about our Wild Self include: feeling stagnant, listless, resentful, emotionally suppressed, uninspired, stuck, creatively confined.
Take the lid off
When we are creating anything — a change, a project, a new life — and we are feeling blocked from our creative flow, it's often because we are disconnected from our wildness, and, as a result, trying to make too much sense too early on in a process.
This is why Anne Lamott's Shitty First Draft tool is so powerful. I invite my clients to make Wild Drafts. The rule is — first the wildness, then the sense.
In order to unearth our truest and most original material (and life), we first have to let ourselves creatively unfurl, and freely flow forth in whatever shapes and ways want to come forth. And this is uncomfortable, because we've been conditioned to stop wildness before it starts.
This preemptive controlling of our process is deeply rooted in a cultural status quo that is invested in keeping us quiet and contained. We've been taught that our wildness is dangerous, too much, and something in need of control, which is of course, a lie.
Letting this lie drive our creative process means we will be disconnected from our most creative selves. Our wildness is not a liability. Our wildness is an essential and valuable creative capacity that must be unleashed in order to do our freest most alive work.
3 prompts to explore wildness in your creative life and work
What wild ideas, dreams, or desires have you been suppressing or ignoring?
In what moments or areas of your creative life do you feel like you are holding back, playing small, or feeling boxed in?
Where have you been working too hard to curate, be perfect, or make sense too early? How has this been exhausting you or blocking your connection to your truth and expression?
The Wild Experiment
Imagine, for a moment, that you were your own coach, mentor, or trusted guide. Where in your life and work would you give yourself permission to take the lid off or stop worrying about making sense? What safety could you create for yourself in order to do so?
Do your best not to negotiate with whatever responses you receive.
This week, choose one way or area of your life where you feel called to invoke your wildness. Be curious and be open to what comes up.
It’s time to come down from the attic
After giving birth to my son, I felt an unbreakable connection with my Wild Self that I hadn't felt since early childhood. I was very aware of the presence of this self, and simultaneously aware that there was nowhere for her to go. Her energy felt incongruous to this new role of mother in a Pandemic and the entrapment I was beginning to feel. So she stayed in the attic of myself.
Over the last several years, she has very much made her presence known, but mostly by reminding me that she is still up there — maybe she knocks on the floor or rattles the door — while I am raising young kids and leading a coaching practice and trying to stay human in the polycrisis
But roam our Wild Selves must. And they are most needed right now as we work together to birth a better world for all of us. Mine has made it clear that as I approach this next chapter of my life, she will be coming downstairs.
What about yours?
I am human.
This essay is a labor of love written by yours truly. I wish robots could do my laundry for me while I write. I hope it’s helpful to you. If you have suggestions or topics you'd like me to write about, send me an email at hello@lizkimball.com.
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