Radical Sisterhood

'' Within every woman, there is a wild and natural creature, filled with good instincts and ageless knowing. '' - Clarissa Pinkola Estes For a long time in my life, I was a woman surrounded by male friends. I had a hard time loving myself and because of that, I couldn't help seeing other women as competition. With today's social influence platforms, our wild inner creature has restricted herself to living in hiding. Surrounding myself with male friends was for me a way of receiving external appreciation and filling my inner void. They weren't healthy relationships. I ended up breaking hearts and being heartbroken most of the time. Other women saw me as a 'man eater'. I was so desperate to please. As the years passed, I faced an ultimatum: to keep on hating myself or learn to love myself. One day I just realized that I might pass next to my sweetest years if I didn't start loving myself now. During the wildest years of my many travels around the globe, I did learn to love myself. I did it by hiding at first. I was going to the beach alone in a remote place, taking off my swimsuit, and I would bath naked for only 5 minutes, afraid that someone would see me. I repeated this in several places, many times until my body became familiar to me. I kept repeating this until it became essential to show up for myself daily and connect with nature in it's purest form. Raw and Wild. Little by little I ended up surrounding myself with women. They were beautiful, naked most of the time, and wild. They were not afraid. Slowly, they have become my friends, my closest allies, and I no longer saw women as a competition. I believe it is a reality that a lot of young women go through. This misconception of having to physically look like what social media shows us. This series is soft, strong, and pure. It represents the Wild Woman, untamed. This wild woman lives in each of us. She is asking to no longer have to live in hiding. “There is in many women a ‘hungry’ one inside. But rather than hungry to be a certain size, shape, or height, rather than hungry to fit the stereotype; women are hungry for basic regard from the culture surrounding them. The ‘hungry’ one inside is longing to be treated respectfully, to be accepted and in the very least, to be met without stereotyping.” - Clarissa Pinkola Estes