Ever since I was a little girl, I was drawn to sweet peas: vibrant, purply-pink, ruffled flowers that climbed vines around the hills and cricks where I used to explore. They were hallmarks of my childhood; the flowers and I sharing in our wild and untamed nature.
Of course, sweet peas will take over if you let them… and that’s part of what I love about them. They have a freedom and a fight in them, blooming in the bright sunshine of a field or the muddy dampness of a ditch. They’re resilient; powerful. They symbolize gratitude and blissful pleasure. If you allow for it, they awaken your untamed, confident soul.
As a child, I lived with the same full, untamed expression I saw in sweet peas.
I spent days mixing mudpies along the crick. Watching butterflies flutter by. Getting my feet (and clothes) soaked and dirty in the name of exploration. Letting my inner witch lead the way—the unseen spirit guide within me and women everywhere.
Sweet peas have followed me into adulthood, looping the fields I drive by every day, the reminder of those wild and untamed days keeping me close to that child that roamed, free and powerful.
I think often about that girl, the one that’s still inside me, always fighting to come out.
So when I wonder how we can create whimsy, magic, and freedom in a world that feels weighed down by malintent, abuse of power, and greed, it’s that little girl I go back to.
That girl that wouldn’t give into fear; wouldn’t let the awful actions of others bring her down. She’s in all of us, in our innate nature as women. And her power is pure; her power is driven by the desire to lift people up; to band together; to create the freedom for everyone to live in their fullest expression of themselves.
I was walking in the woods with my granddaughter, Lottie, last weekend when she spotted mushrooms. She stopped to tell me, “That’s where the fairies live.”
“Did you see any?”, I asked her.
She excitedly answered, “I did!”
Lottie still has the magic in her; the wild, untamed freedom to embrace nature and whimsy without the weight of the world.
That little girl is in all of us, the witchy spirit that brings a power only we can tap into—wild and free, seeking no approval. Free to be untamed. One that sees fairies and knows change is coming, whether it’s in our control or not.
That’s my guide right now as autumn is in the air with cooler temps, the last tomatoes on the vines, and the last sweet peas roaming the hills. She’s calling me to play and paint bigger, bringing the wild, untamed joy of Lottie and her two friends onto a 30x40” canvas, inviting me to bring the full expression of childhood wonder, joy, and whimsy onto it. It’s not finished; it’ll let me know when it is. (Perhaps in time for my two-woman show coming in November… more about that next month!)
I lost the path of my inner child for a little while. But the sweet peas bring me back every time—and so does Lottie. And so does every woman who still knows where the fairies live.
There's a kinship in that knowing. A quiet, rooted power that doesn't announce itself. It passed from the women who came before us into us, and it's passing now from us into them; into the little girls who stop at mushrooms, who mix mudpies, who haven't yet been told to doubt what they see. Our job is to make sure they never do.
That's the resistance I believe in. Not always loud; often quiet. Expressed in a painting, a walk in the woods, a flower that refuses to be tamed. It lives in the women who gather, who create, who lift each other up. And it's more powerful than anything that tries to diminish it—because like the sweet peas, it doesn't need permission to bloom.