Wildflowers of an open heart
September 7, 2025
As a girl and even as a young woman, I recall hearing that being a wild one was being out of control. They weren’t my own thoughts, yet because of their proximity and surroundings they became a part of my story, what I believed to be true. It’s a discreet, almost viral-like transmission that happens when we’re young—a contagion of opinions and perspectives around what it means to be powerful bears down upon us, like an impression in wet clay. Now, pair that adjective with the noun woman and you have something even more interesting. Being a wild woman seemed beyond my understanding, beyond my capabilities, and certainly beyond access.
When I first met my husband, we were working alongside one another as massage therapists at a panchakarma clinic here in Albuquerque. While preparing the room for the next client, loading the CD player with the usual healing ragas we’d both become deaf too, he asked, “what kind of music do you listen to?”
I genuinely and immediately responded with, “Punk. Black Flag. And Classical.” Which mind you was a total lie. “Okay, interesting.” I do listen to some classical music, but neither was an accurate answer to his curiosity. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Now, I see it clearly. I wanted to see myself as someone wildly free, edgy, and diverse. Someone who is in control while also totally out of it. Sure lying might not have been the best way to shed the light of truth on that occasion, but in some respects it did. It revealed Erin the punk, the Chrissie Hynde wanna be, the rebel, the outlaw, and the amazon warrior. The woman who was on the other side of two heinous relationships; one mentally abusive, the other a total mismatch.
For decades I took being out of control to heart and embodied it. Don’t take up too much space, stay in the margins, keep it together, play—but if there are rules already in place, play by them. If I can tell you anything about the far majority of women in my family, it is that we are steadfast and in absolute control.
However, this way is exhausting. Practically a sickness, because control is an illusion. It certainly hasn’t made me feel more real, raw, or wild. When you spend most of your time adhering to a particular kind of order, the very consideration that there may be alternatives let alone safety and solace in those alternatives, threatens the stories that we learn. And in their wake, new stories of what is wild and woman, have to be told.
I now know there are many many ways in which to be wild. We laugh and joke about it now, which in and of itself is a gigantic leap for me. I don’t find it valuable to ‘maintain control’ when I should really just laugh at my own silliness. Sincerely, I believe being an embodied wild woman is more about being fully alive and spiritually undivided than my fictitious allegiance to Black Flag.
This time, just a few months back, we’re sitting outside eating a late dinner with some of my oldest and closest friends when my husband (the same guy as above) asks, “What are the ways in which your wild woman expresses?” The meal was done. The sun had set. The candles flickered. We were enjoying the last of the light and the warmth and breeze of the evening. This time I told the truth. I know in my heart of hearts, we all did. I am one who:
knows the moon and where she is, always. I’ll catch a glimpse of her crescent in the dawn or evening. I’ll see the glow on the horizon. Every season we talk in different ways. It’s a source of renewable divinity, one that orients
loves and is of the wind and stars. Who can sense and speak with herbs, plants, and flowers
is childless without apology or shame
nurtures a clear and unobstructed path to ancestral teachings and lineage
feels the magic of connection and the force within plants and generously shares it with others
is the essence of activist and revolutionary. Fearless to undo harm or trauma passed down systemically and challenge the patriarchal systems which are threatened by her wildness and knowing
sleeps alone in the wilderness and exploring nature naked in the sunlight
makes music with abandon
strong yet graceful and aligned with the natural rhythms
The next day we came upon a fellow at the Farmer’s Market with a sign that read,
Poems for Sale. Name your price. Name your theme.
Theme: the Wild Woman, naturally.
the poem | Shri yantra | butterfly
The memory of the night was soft and warm, not precious or fierce, but grounding, settling. What does it mean to be wild? All I know is that it’s a force, a trust, and a knowingness that is, in essence, our very being.
There is a process when working with clay called slaking. It’s where you take all the dried hardened bits, the broken pieces, the mistakes, the unfired scraps and you submerge them in water. You let them soak for a long time until it can be reshaped and molded again. I love this metaphor. What I thought was unchangeable, can in fact change. It’s when awareness clicks and I register the heat of my own heart.
Yours Erin
photo©Erin Johnson—slaking barrel at a ceramic studio in Oaxaca México. I found it fitting. 35mm canonAE1
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