Have you ever been called defiant, incorrigible, or rebellious?

A celebration of audacious women of soul and verve everywhere this International Women’s Day 2024. Wondering if you qualify as an audacious woman of soul and verve?  If we were to ask one of my favourite authors Clarissa Pinkola Estés, she would say something like:

“If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible, forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly, rebellious” then you’re on the right track. 
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And “if you have never been called these things, there is yet time.”
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She would also tell you that “when seeking guidance, don't ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice.”
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Every year International Women’s Day reminds me that whilst we have definitely made progress towards achieving gender equality, there is still a very long way to go.  Look no further than the huge gender gap in the world, and the World Economic Forum current prediction that women will not achieve parity with men until 2154. A timeframe beyond our lifespan. And this is the most basic of measures.

​ It’s easy to feel despondent and yet if you have even the smallest quota of defiance, incorrigibility, unruliness or rebelliousness in you, then giving in or giving up is simply not an option.

It is times like this that I turn to stories. For as Rebeca Solnit, author of “Recollections of My Non-Existence” and other amazing books says, “Stories can change the world”.
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​Here are some snippets of stories I turn to again and again to restore and revivify my inner levels of defiance, incorrigibility and rebelliousness. I hope they feed your audacious soul and encourage you to continue your defiant and rebellious ways.

​ From Virginia Woolf, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors.

​“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”

“A feminist is any woman who tells the truth about her life.”

“Be truthful, and the result is bound to be amazingly interesting.”

“One must learn to be silent just as one must learn to talk.”
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“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”

​From Anaïs Nin, French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of short stories and erotica.  She is acclaimed by many critics as one of the finest writers of female.  

​“We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”

“Creation which cannot express itself becomes madness.”

“It’s all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all.”
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“Take control and choose to focus on what is important in your life. Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.”
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​And my all-time favourite, Clarissa Pinkola Estés, an American writer and Jungian psychoanalyst, and author of Women Who Run with the Wolves and other amazing bodies work.

"If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is the door.”

“Within us is the potential to be fleshed out again as the creature we once were. Within us are the bones to change ourselves and our world. Within us is the breath and our truths and our longings – together they are the song, the creation hymn we have been yearning to sing.”

​“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories... water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.”
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It’s time for a new story. A story of remembering and celebrating who we are at our core robust, strong, filled with life force, inventive, courageous, creative and audacious women of soul and verve. 

“She remembered who she was, and the game changed.”
Lalah Delia