top 10 posts in 2024

your favorites from The Rewilded Life

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10) it’s a miracle or it’s nothing

Once, my son got lost in the woods, crying and panicked. He swears a bird led him all the way home. You know, I whispered in bed as I stroked his hair late into the night, in Bible stories, God often takes the shape of a bird. Yes, he says, yes a dove. It was actually a dove. It was actually a dove with an olive branch in its mouth that guided him home.

9.) prescribed burn

In a few hours the prairie behind our house will catch fire. It will start small, a single orange tongue. But it will spread quickly, indiscriminately, until the whole field is ablaze. I will sit in my great-grandmother’s rocking chair in the sunroom and drink my coffee black and watch the place I love go up in flames, an erosion of tears on my cheeks. There is wisdom in the process, sure, but there is also horror in destruction. What’s the point of pretending like there’s not?

8.) give way to madness

Here’s where I went wrong this go around: I started listening to Lana Del Rey. And the first time I heard “I’ve been tearing around in my fucking nightgown / 24-7 Sylvia Plath / writing in blood on the walls / ‘cause the ink don’t work in my notepad” it was a done deal. This was my entire personality now. First thing I did was buy a nightgown, one of those dramatic vintage fake silk and lace ones you pay a lot for on Etsy but I found in our local thrift store for a few bucks. It’s several sizes too big and I can’t get the weird smell out, but that just adds to the despondency of it all.

7.) the secrets we keep

He looks at the picture, then at me, then back at the picture, as though realizing for the first time there might be a part of my life he is not privy to — that there might be some things I keep only for myself. As though realizing that he knows his mother, yes; but not entirely. And that maybe he never would.

6.) 41

The fact is, I have no idea what to write about. It’s not a feeling I’m used to. For most of the past ten years I’ve had more ideas than time. At one point I had a list of three books I wanted to write. Now none of them interest me. I pace the room like a caged animal, willing myself to create and coming up short. I wait for the muse. She peeks her head in to check, says I’m not ready yet.

5.) a nativity story

God with us, I planned to name my baby, before I knew what it was to be devoured by arrant pain, to be so weakened by it’s relentlessness that to stand is impossible and to lay is unbearable and the only thing left to do is writhe and writhe and writhe; before I knew I would throw up in my own bath water; before I knew his father would be praying a rosary gray-faced and breathless; before I knew I would push for three and a half hours to enter him into this world, pieces of vomit still threaded in my hair.

4.) chappell roan is the virgin we need

In the Jungian lexicon, the Virgin is the archetype of self-belonging. She (or he or they, for gender is irrelevant in archetypal language) is the property of no one; she alone determines her path, wholly intact with the wisdom and discernment within. In contrast to the more well-known Hero’s Journey, which is an external mission, the Virgin’s Journey is internal; the quest to know and trust herself fully and without compromise.

3.) on fun

I realized in horror that she was waiting for me to agree with her, to join in the great cacophony of women bemoaning the lack of voices who might convince us that life is still worth living. She wasn’t being mean or petty or looking to offend; she was making an honest-to-god bid for connection. She thought we could commiserate. Oh my God I was as boring as she was.

2.) what would the mystics say about this election?

Julian of Norwich would insist that the gravitational pull towards a hypermasculine leader, and the assignment of a Christ-like identity to that leader by a large percentage of Christians, proves how desperately the divine feminine is needed. Until we encounter God as Mother, Julian would say, we will continue to fear the power of women and marginalize them as a means of control.

1.) dance class for middle aged women

My therapist once told me that dance is the best way to release trauma from your body and reorient your nervous system. After a few months I decided she was on to something, so I fired her to make more time for dance. McKayla is my therapist now, and she wants us to learn leaps. She demonstrates by doing an adorable little prance and tossing herself into the air like a fawn. The rest of us dutifully line up against the wall on one side of the room and “step-step-lift!” our way across the lava pit of shame to reach the other side like the wildebeest stampede that killed Mufasa.

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My sincere thanks go out to each one of you for reading and engaging with my writing this year. There is an endless sea of words at your fingertips, and it is no small thing that you choose to give time and attention to mine. I will always take that seriously.

I look forward to investing even more in this space in 2025 as I reallocate my energy away from social media. May this next year be one of deep thinking, good reading, care-full writing, and — yes, I hear you — more humor.

With love and gratitude,

Shannon