Wild Free Woman Chapter 3: Home

How I Became a Wild Free WomanWild Free Woman Chapter 3: Home

February 2023

I had been dreaming about this day for years. One of the biggest longings I had since starting my Priestess training was to be Home. Home as a place to feel safe. Home as a place to design my life as I wanted it. Home as a place to love and care for. Home within my own skin. Home within my community. I was often asking myself “where is home for me” over the course of my Priestess training. A small piece of my Priestess training was learning many different techniques and reading different books about wishing, about dreams coming true, about longings, about the power of prayer and how to properly and effectively pray, about ways to bring dreams into fruition in life. A central theme to my training was the phrase “the message is in the feeling,” and for me, the feeling of home was ever-present in my dreams. This feeling of being cozy, content, safe, wrapped in love, peaceful. A place where I could tend relationships – my relationship with myself, with my partner, with my animals and plants, where I could tend a garden, where I could tend my budding business, and where I could tend to my community as well. I would imagine myself a year from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now so many times during my training, and Home was always a big piece for me.

A Poppy in bloom at home. A symbol of safety, openheartedness, and delicate tenacity.

Logistically, I didn’t know how Home would find me, or how I would find it. I wasn’t financially thriving and several years ago I was a bit too close to not having a home at all. And for a long time, I thought my visions and dreams were mine alone. I thought it was a sign of strength to be able to create something on your own, without the help of others. But over the last six months, I actually learned so much about just how strong it is to work together with others. And in fact, I wouldn’t be where I was right now had it not been for others.

Last April my partner Ben and I decided we wanted to buy a house in Missoula, our first house. We didn’t know how this was going to happen. The market had inflated so much in the last several years and so many people were moving here from out of state. We met with one of Ben’s family friends, Matt, who was a real estate agent with over 30 years of experience, in the spring of 2022 with the desire to start this process. When we sat down for coffee he started off with an interesting question: “What do you absolutely not want in a home?” I used all my Priestess experience to say “Actually, I’d like to start off with what I’m hoping to find in a home.” And there started a long list of things we are looking for. I wanted to focus on my desires because from my learnings, your focus is powerful and whatever you focus on is what you get.

Fast-forward to August. Matt had been sending us emails about what was in our price range for houses and it was depressing. The houses were small, sad, no potential for gardens or community connection. We had just gotten back from looking at a house that was out of our price range and so not the feeling I was after in a home. Ben and I laid in the grass in the backyard of our rental and I started to cry. I felt hopeless. I didn’t think it was possible for us to find what we were looking for in Missoula with what we were pre-approved for. After a nice cathartic cry session where I voiced all my doubts, fears, and challenges, we decided to pause the house-looking process. We didn’t feel the need to tell Matt, as there was so little within our price range anyways.

A few weeks later, I found a house that was almost in our price range on Zillow. I sent the house to Ben. A week after that, they dropped the price of this house to just barely within our price range. We looked at the house on a Sunday and put an offer in that same day. On Monday it was accepted! We didn’t know if we would qualify for the amount we needed to pay for this house, but we were. Every step along the journey from finding this home to it becoming ours was a miracle. We just kept saying “we shall see if the next door opens” with each threshold we needed to pass through in order to purchase this home. In October we got the keys to the house, and the real work began. This house was adorable with so much potential, yet it needed so much work! And this is where some of my beautiful lessons about community support started to show up. I had no experience working on a house. Ben worked for a contractor for ten years before he became a filmmaker. His dad John used to own a drywall company. Our family friend Steve works for Habitat for Humanity and builds houses all the time. I started to expand each time John or Ben or Steve would do something on the house that I couldn’t do or didn’t know how to.

Our sweet, vibrant, orange home!

I learned a lot working on this house, and here I was, February 2nd, 2023. The night before my final initiation for my Priestess training. I had really wanted to get my office — or “dream palace” as I call it — completed and moved into prior to this final initiation. Ben had stayed up late each night this week to finish painting, trimming, and installing lights for it to be complete. I moved in all my things today so I would be ready for tomorrow. It was a push. And as I sat in my office the night before my final initiation I started to realize how dreams really work. I could feel into my dreams, my longing for home in this case. I could imagine myself there in my home, how it would feel, what it would smell like and the calm of my body here. And it wasn’t until I really started to dance with others and let them witness my doubts, fears and concerns that the dream could be realized. It wasn’t until I started to allow others to help me that my dreams really started to come to fruition. I used to think I was weak for needing others in bringing my dreams to life. But now I know it’s essential in realizing dreams. We do not live in a vacuum, yet when I dream and visualize my longings, it’s often just me that I’m focusing on. And the bridge for me is others, it’s relationships. This is the magic that helps to bring the dream into form.

I look to the natural world as a teacher quite often, and I see how interconnectivity is a necessity in the wild. It’s only humans who think we can do things alone. Flowers cannot bloom without soil to ground them, sunlight to warm them and water to fortify them. I feel sad thinking about society that has glorified the false idea that those who do it alone are stronger and better. Because we never do it alone. We are just as interconnected to our relationships and to life as the flowers and the rest of the natural world. I wonder how our culture and society would change if we really leaned into the power of community, interconnectivity and diversity.

Further, my dreams are so much more magnificent, creative and beautiful when I embrace community and bring others into the mix. There is such magic that happens when people get together to create something. As a solo entrepreneur, I’ve focused so much on what I can do alone, and trying to do it all. Yet another piece I learned during my Priestess training is that when you focus on your strengths, your weaknesses start to fall away. When you are operating within your skill set, you can thrive! But I was trying to do it all myself. Little did I know that one of my deepest longings and greatest dreams, finding home, would also be so rich with lessons in receiving help from others, in co-creating, in leaning into my own particular skills (design, color, creativity), and in healing. It was deeply vulnerable for me to ask for and receive help from Ben, John and Steve, among many others.

Through the doorway to my Dream Palace, the first room in the house to be finished and moved into.

And so here I was, the night before my final initiation to become a Priestess, in my new home, unfinished except this one room. I see how my deepest longings and desires also provided me with rich lessons that weren’t painful, but fulfilling, expanding and intimate. And after all this time training to become a Priestess, I found that the truest thing I could be as a Priestess is myself. To see the sacred in the everyday. To learn the lessons in front of me and to trust my deep soul desires. To believe that these deep longings not only were like constellations guiding me through the night sky, but also healing deep wounds, challenging me to step into my strengths, and bringing so much fulfillment and joy into my life.

Emma Jaqueth, (me!) on the day of my Priestess initiation.

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