A Love Note From Gilly xo

I write from 100% honesty here. The end of Mother Wild isn’t an easy idea for me.

As a child of divorce and a hater of change, I have managed to weave longevity into almost everything I do. My brand has been running for almost 20 years, my relationship is with a man I met when I was 19 and he was 21... change is definitely not something I run to, it seems!

Back at the beginning of my journey with Mother Wild, when I joined the 6 week course ‘Crazy Mama Village’ that Carmela had launched, I was slightly cynical, doubting what good it would do me and whether I deserved the focus on myself as I navigated the early years of Motherhood. .. I was wrong, Carmela had created the kind of introspective community that I hadn’t even realised I was so in need of, it was actually pretty life saving.

The women I was together with in cohort were incredible creatures that shared, supported, cheered and inspired me. The ‘homework’ each week was to record a monologue in answer to Carmela’s recorded message which posed questions and practices for us to try out/contemplate/discuss. Through that first 6 week course, I was introduced to so many new ideas, one that has particularly stuck with me is ‘Love Languages’ (thanks Robin). I was made to realise that attuning to my needs and dreams was where my sanity lay. This course and all that I have experienced with Mother Wild after that has helped me lift the veil on how distracted by ‘life admin and fitting in/conforming to what I thought was expected of me’ I was. Once I had the permission and a little sisterhood behind me (literally, in my pocket!!) I began to feel the woman I was longing to become unfurl and spread her wings.

Thanks to Mother Wild for helping me reflect on what ‘kind of person’ I am and how that makes me move through this world.

‘How you do one thing, is how you do everything’ is something I find so true. Once I started living with authenticity and realising my dreams, I started to open up to so much more magic in my life. I wish I was like Carmela with the perfectly apt phrases and quotes to help underline what I am trying to explain, but you’ll just need to take my word for it. Mother Wild made me love myself so much more and love my life on a whole new level.

Skip forward a few years and a pandemic later and I have had the delight of meeting these beautiful creatures, sharing stories, dancing, crying, laughing, skinny dipping, riding dirt bikes in the jungle, jumping of cliffs into the ocean, swimming with turtles, receiving such perfectly thoughtful gifts that I immediately cry, meditating, breathing, creating women’s circles, doing the cathartic, deep internal work and so, so much more.

When I came on board to work with the girls it really opened my eyes to a different way of ‘doing business’ in a much more feminine way. Instead of pushing towards targets and shoehorning ourselves into structures that didn’t work for us, we worked in a much more cyclical and receptive way, always open to new ideas and inventing new ways of working towards our goals. When we had space and energy we stepped in and when life got busy we were able to slip to the back of the V as we flew together in our bird formation. Team work at it’s best.

That’s one of so many things Mother Wild has taught me, there is no ‘one way’ to do things, it’s not all about business and growth and commitment, those things are just what we think we ‘should’ do for success within the structures we are living under (the capitalist/patriarchal ones).

It feels really hard to say goodbye to something which has felt so full of amazing potential and so needed in the world and personally so life changing for me. I’m a super nostalgic person too so it’s absolutely not my ‘zone of genius’ to break ties and reinvent.

I love everything Mother Wild has given to me and will miss it dreadfully.

Honestly, it’s felt a lot like losing Penny (my canine love/first child..but less tragic, of course) and like with Penny, I think it’s a lot to do with the person i am when I have Mother Wild in my life, the person it nurtured in me, I love her a lot. These women are such incredible humans and I love the person reflected back to me.♥️

When we began this ‘hiatus’ over a year ago, I wrote down all the thoughts and feelings and dreams I had for Mother Wild.

My rambling thoughts about Mother Wild from a journal entry last year :-

I want to work with something that is created together with others. The magic of a cooperative project where everyone can put their genius into it feels worth so much more than the sum of it’s parts.

I want to put more love into the world and Mother Wild does that.

Mother Wild has introduced such wonderful humans and ideas into my life, I feel so selfish if we were to take that connection away from others.

I want Mother Wild to be a strong and reliable place for people to plant their seeds of ideas and self exploration and grow within the support, like a kind of greenhouse/incubator, supporting, watering, nurturing and being a place for people to put down some roots/practice ideas before they put them out into the big world.

I want to ‘ground’ the magic Carmela creates.

I want to delve deeper, not just scratch the surface of ideas/subjects etc, find the juicy underbelly as Tasha would say.

I want to distill the deep work to deliver it to others in an easily consumed way.

I want to help others to gain the benefits that I have. So much work on the self, it has helped me in so many ways.

I want to put timely reminders in front of people like me to help us not sleep walk through life distracted by reacting to others or our tech.

I want to inspire others to live a life they love and help them allow themselves to take care of themselves first.

I want to help other women embrace their weird and do it knowing that they aren’t alone.

Mother Wild has made me love myself even more.

Mother Wild has enlightened me, who knows what ‘total enlightenment’ is, but I’m definitely walking the right road after finding Mother Wild, they helped me redirected, with a much more heart and intuition based compass.