So, let us push on now, and remember ourselves back to the wild soul. Let us sing her flesh back onto our bones.

Solitude is not an absence of energy or action, as some believe, but is rather a boon of wild provisions transmitted to us from the soul. In ancient times, purposeful solitude was both palliative and preventative. It was used to heal fatigue and to prevent weariness. It was also used as an oracle, as a way of listening to the inner self to solicit advice and guidance otherwise impossible to hear in the din of daily life.

A woman who is starved for her real soul-life may look 'cleaned up and combed' on the outside, but on the inside she is filled with dozens of pleading hands and empty mouths.

I became married at a young age and had two daughters and divorced at 26. I had to go on welfare to make ends meet. I had no way to support myself.

When a women speaks her truth, fires up her intention and feeling, stays tight with the instinctive nature, she is singing, she is living in the wild breath-stream of the soul.

Do not cringe and make yourself small if you are called the black sheep, the maverick, the lone wolf. Those with slow seeing say that a noncomformist is a blight on society. But it has been proven over the centuries, that being different means standing at the edge, that one is practically guaranteed to make an original contribution, a useful and stunning contribution to her culture.

Writing, real writing, should leave a small sweet bruise somewhere on the writer . . . and on the reader.