When Faced With the Unknown, Don’t Lose Sight of Your “Knowing”
The meaning behind my new ink and a great place to start if you’re new to this newsletter
First, I need to confess that my new tattoo isn’t that new anymore. I got it back in November when I took my first solo trip since the birth of my kids to visit some good friends in Boston (Hi, Jaime and Eric!!). Shout-out to the lovely and talented James at Hourglass Tattoo in Harvard Square who inked my dreams into reality!
That weekend escape also marked the beginning of an onslaught of illnesses for our family. At the beginning of December, my kids contracted pneumonia. The next week, my youngest (Camille) had an FPIES reaction to almond butter. That same weekend, our whole family came down with norovirus which was DREADFUL. The following week (the week of my birthday and the week before Christmas) I was in and out of both urgent care and the ER with Camille, who just can’t seem to get well. And now, she and I are getting over the flu.
Needless to say, our new year is off to a rocky start. Hopefully this explains my lack of writing and absence here – not that I owe anyone an explanation.
But I digress.
I know that many people – both individuals and our country as a whole – are bracing themselves for the uncertainty that 2025 will bring.
My new tattoo is a reminder that, when faced with the unknown, we have to dig deep and tap into our own Knowing; our true selves. The part of us that, especially as women, we have been taught to distrust.
I envisioned this tattoo years before I became a mom when I read Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. In it, Estés describes the legend of La Loba, who embodies what she calls the “wild woman archetype”:
“The old one, The One Who Knows, is within us. She thrives in the deepest soul-psyche of women, the ancient and vital wild Self. Her home is that place and time where the spirit of women and the spirit of wolf meet– the place where mind and instincts mingle, where a woman's deep life funds her mundane life. It is the point where the I and the Thou kiss, the place where, in all spirit, women run with the wolves.
… Call her La Que Sabe, the One Who Knows, call her Wild Woman, call her La Loba, call her by her high names or by her low names, call her by her newer names or her ancient ones, she remains just what she is.
Wild Woman as an archetype is an in inimitable and ineffable force which carries a bounty of ideas, images and particularities for humankind. Archetype exists everywhere and yet it is not seeable in the usual sense. What can be seen of it in the dark cannot necessarily be seen in daylight.
Each woman has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, this river beneath the river. She arrives there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting, prayer, making, singing, drumming, active imagination, or any activity which requires an intense altered consciousness. A woman arrives in this world-between-worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out of the corner of her eye. She arrives there by deeply creative acts, through intentional solitude, and by practice of any of the arts. And even with these well-crafted practices, much of what occurs in this ineffable world remains forever mysterious to us, for it breaks physical laws and rational laws as we know them.”
Author Glennon Doyle describes a similar state that she calls her Knowing:
“I now take orders only from my own Knowing. Whether I’m presented with a work, personal, or family decision—a monumental or tiny decision—whenever uncertainty arises, I sink. I sink beneath the swirling surf of words, fear, expectations, conditioning, and advice—and feel for the Knowing. I sink a hundred times a day.”
-Glennon Doyle, Untamed
Your “Knowing” is your essential Self. It goes beyond your ego and all of your external identities. It’s deeper than you body- your gender, sex, skin color, ethnicity. It’s deeper than your experiences- your roles, work, circumstances. And it’s deeper than your mind- your thoughts, ideas, opinions, beliefs, and emotions. In fact, this Self is the one bearing witness to all of the superficial parts of you.
Your Knowing is the only constant in life, like an electric current connecting your soul to every other living soul.
Your Knowing is Love. It is vast, infinite, and the only real, true thing.
And it can feel SO elusive and abstract, because we are so accustomed to listening and following the voice in our heads.
But that voice is often dramatic, far-fetched, and vulnerable to outside influences– as anyone with mental illness can tell you. My journey with OCD forced me to confront what the Buddha calls the “monkey mind.”
, previous news anchor and mindfulness advocate, explains it this way:“Our minds are like furry little gibbons: always agitated, never at rest… swinging through a jungle of thoughts, urges and desires, always clinging to things that won't last, and constantly lurching from one pleasant experience to the next, never fully satisfied.”
Gaining distance from the monkey mind and accessing our Knowing takes practice. Mindfulness is the most straightforward and unsexy method. But it also requires understanding how our thoughts shape our reality and a willingness to detach from our longest-held beliefs.
Most people have no desire to reach this depth of self-knowledge; they’re content to remain in life’s shallow end. Their monkey mind doesn’t cause them too much distress, so they put up with it and never have reason to explore further. But those of us who suffer from anxious, intrusive, or ruminating thoughts are pushed off the diving board and must learn to swim in the deep.
This tattoo represents a lot of things for me. It represents my journey into motherhood, which forced me back in touch with my Knowing. It’s a reminder that when uncertainties arise, I can face them with strength of spirit– because unlike my circumstances, my true Self is eternal. And it illustrates the life lesson that I want to pass on to my kids: to never lose sight of their wild, wonderful Knowing.
Lastly, a poem for my daughters:
I’ll teach her to howl Like the sages do And she’ll learn to believe In the magic of the moon She’ll learn cycles and seasons And all of their reasons And how not to live small Because she’s part of it all I’ll teach her to know The strength in her dark And how to protect and grow her sacred tiny spark I’ll teach her to see the beauty of the night With joy and ease To my heart’s delight She’ll learn to rely on her power within A force of nature A spirit without sin Full of mystery and wonder She’s pure and good But not the kind of daughter That does what she “should” She’s loud and free– The best parts of me And each time she falls She’ll stand up tall And I’ll show her to howl Like the wild women do The ones who are free Lit up by the moon