When wild women come together in Corfu

About embracing the mess and finding structure

When I decided to stay in Corfu more than a year ago I had the joy of immediately connecting with a group of beautiful women. We are connected in a free, but strong way and try to meet regularly during the full and new moon. Even though I just returned from my trip from England I knew that we had to come together for a new moon circle on Monday.

The theme would be chaos, order, mess and structure.

And that’s what we got.

The day leading up to the circle it was a total chaos in my mind. The day before I had released a lot of anger in a way that felt too wild (even for me). I have learn to not do this since I know that non-violence is the starting point of anyone’s yoga journey. I normally try to behave kind and socially accepted, but I was triggered so much that all my anger wanted to come out. So I let it go, while my partner sat there, waiting for me to calm down.

As I am on my journey to open up to even more parts of myself I didn’t know, a lot of anger feels stuck in my body, so it has to get out. And even though I could see where it came from, after my rage I felt ashamed and guilty. Instead of feeling free through the release, I was angry at myself even more.

But after a good talk with a friend, I felt better and started preparing the session, by writing a new moon ritual for this blog. That consisted of some writing prompts, and I decided to use these prompts also during the circle.

Chaos is okay

The session was total chaos. I hadn’t set up the space very well, it was still very warm, people were coming in late and when we finally started I felt a pressure to haste into the questions that I had prepared. That is not what I normally do, but the chaos was there and we just went with it.

And even though it was a bit more head than heart this time, we had a beautiful conversation and I would love to share some of the takeaways.

Being out of control

We started talking about the feeling of being out of control. And the question probably came to my mind, because I felt completely out of control myself at that moment. For me it mainly had to do with an overwhelm of emotions, others felt out of control because there was so much to do, and one of us shared that she felt out of control because she had no idea where the steps she was taking would lead her.

Taking back control?

I wondered what would happen if we could take back control and the main conclusion was that having control over everything would be boring. Not knowing where things are going means feeling alive.
When we do feel the need to take back control it is often times because we do not feel safe in a certain moment and we think we will be safer when we have control. This is not exactly how it works of course, feeling out of control is a feeling that can be overwhelming and as with all overwhelming feelings, we just have to wait them out ;-)  

Bringing structure

While taking back control is fear based, bringing in structure can help you make more time for the things that you want to create. Because oftentimes we are asked to do things for others (whether they are clients, children, parents who need care, friends or your partner) and forget that we have a creative life we want to live. Structure can help you make time for what you value most.

From experience I know that it is also very powerful to let structure go, and trust that you will start with what you feel like at the right time. This happened to me in the last months.

The last 3 months I had a lot of ideas, but I didn’t start on anything. I was distracted by all the other nice things in my life and the needs of people around me (and my personal needs to set up my life in my new house). In the end, I saw my ideas progress and move in a direction I couldn’t have envisioned if I would have started on them right away. And now the time has come to bring a little more structure in my life and focus on my writing again.

Chaos in or around you

When you are a sensitive woman you can be easily distracted when there is chaos around you. Especially when you didn’t create the chaos yourself. When you have a family and you are surrounded by the chaos they are creating or when you arrive in places that are so full of people, cars or bikes that you can’t figure out where to go.

This can be distracting and make your head spin. In these moments it is very important to bring the focus back to yourself and see that what is around you is not who you are. That you don’t have to focus on it, but just leave it like it is and focus on what you need at that moment.

Embracing the mess

Mess is a part of life. It is part of being human. Because we all have messy things in our live and we have a lot of messy thoughts. There are days when it feels like it is messy in every aspect of your life. Mostly it is just messy in parts. Nothing will ever be perfect at the same time, so it is necessary to allow the mess, because that is what makes you human.

Most of us are brought up by the idea that we should be in control of our lives, while most of the time we aren’t. We put on our masks to show how great everything is and only fall apart at home in our safe spaces. So many feelings and emotions are not welcome in the worlds outside of our houses. Especially when they are loud or different.

But as women we are wild, we all have a wild side and it is time we show it to the world. Only then we will create a world that is safe, loving and kind for us and our children and all the people that will walk the earth when we are not here anymore.

So embrace the mess and show your true colours.