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Just because you are soft doesn't mean you are not a force. Honey and wildfire are both the colour gold.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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Soulmates aren't the ones who make you happiest, no. They're instead the ones who make you feel the most. Burning edges and scars and stars. Old pangs, captivation and beauty. Strain and shadows and worry and yearning. Sweetness and madness and dreamlike surrender. They hurl you into the abyss. They taste like hope.
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Victoria Erickson
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Half of me is filled with bursting words and half of me is painfully shy. I crave solitude yet also crave people. I want to pour life and love into everything yet also nurture my self-care and go gently. I want to live within the rush of primal, intuitive decision, yet also wish to sit and contemplate. This is the messiness of life - that we all carry multitudes, so must sit with the shifts. We are complicated creatures, and ultimately, the balance comes from this understanding. Be water. Flowing, flexible and soft. Subtly powerful and open. Wild and serene. Able to accept all changes, yet still led by the pull of steady tides. It is enough.
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Victoria Erickson
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Although I deeply love oceans, deserts and other wild landscapes, it is only mountains that beckon me with that sort of painful magnetic pull to walk deeper and deeper into their beauty. They keep me continuously wanting to know more, feel more, see more.
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Victoria Erickson
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Rather than fearfully shutting down your sensitivity, dive in deeper into all possible feeling. As you expand, keep only those who are not afraid of oceans
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Victoria Erickson
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Promise to stay wild with me. We'll seek and return and stay to find beauty and the extraordinary in all the spaces we can claim. We'll know how to live. How to breathe magic into the mundane.
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Victoria Erickson
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I wanted to ask you about your vision of perfection in an imperfect world, or what side of the earth calls out to you when you touch a physical globe, or maybe about your greatest heartache and how you still go on as your world continues turning, or what you do with a memory once lodged inside your bones that;s still breathing, and burning. But you're still a stranger, and I'm overly polite, so I'll ask all about your day when I'd rather know about your life.
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Victoria Erickson
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To be fully human is to be wild. Wild is the strange pull and whispering wisdom. Itβs the gentle nudge and the forceful ache. It is your truth, passed down from the ancients, and the very stream of life in your blood. Wild is the soul where passion and creativity reside, and the quickening of your heart. Wild is what is real, and wild is your home.
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Victoria Erickson
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Solitude isnβt loneliness. Solitude is when the entire serene universe seems to surround and hold you quietly.
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Victoria Erickson
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If you inherently long for something, become it first. If you want gardens, become the gardener. If you want love, embody love. If you want mental stimulation, change the conversation. If you want peace, exude calmness. If you want to fill your world with artists, begin to paint. If you want to be valued, respect your own time. If you want to live ecstatically, find the ecstasy within yourself. This is how to draw it in, day by day, inch by inch.
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Victoria Erickson
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Like most sensitive souls, you already know youβre sensitive. You soak up othersβ moods and desires like a sponge. You absorb sensation the way a paintbrush grasps each colour it touches on a palette.
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Victoria Erickson
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Donβt dismiss the elements. Water soothes and heals. Air refreshes and revives. Earth grounds and holds. Fire is a burning reminder of our own will and creative power. Swallow their spells. Thereβs a certain sweet comfort in knowing that you belong to them all.
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Victoria Erickson
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You can be both soft and intense. Both vulnerable and strong. Both traditional and rebellious. Both romantic and realistic. Both feminine and oceanic yet filled with slow burning fire. There is possibility inside of paradox. There is a universe of different perceptions.
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Victoria Erickson
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Sometimes someone isnβt ready to see the bright side. Sometimes they need to sit with the shadow first. So be a friend and sit with them. Make the darkness beautiful.
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Victoria Erickson
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Often times, a person will think they know you by piecing together tiny facts and arranging those pieces into a puzzle that makes sense to them. If we don't know ourselves very well, we'll mistakenly believe them, and drift toward where they tell us to swim, only to drown in our own confusion.
Here's the truth: it's important to take the necessary steps to find out who you are. Because you hold endless depths below the surface of a few facts and pieces and past decisions. You aren't only the ripples others can see. You are made of oceans.
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Victoria Erickson
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What if I told you that if you simply mix starlight, solitude, silence and softness, you may just learn everything you've ever needed to know about everything you hadn't known?
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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And you cannot build a home for your worth inside of another being.
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Victoria Erickson (Rhythms and Roads)
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Women are powerful, and I see them stifle this every. single. day. Stop looking to be saved and hiding your magic. Stop tossing aside your voice and valid emotions. Stop wasting your time with fake friends and chasing men like they're cures.
Material things, better jobs, and other people- they won't fill your gap. Only you can do that. Life is short. Rise up and step back into your awesome, innate power. You are compassion and creative force and divine life itself. You are a Goddess.
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Victoria Erickson
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I love getting older. My understanding deepens. I can see what connects, I can weave stories of experience and apply them. I can integrate the lessons. Things simply become more and more fascinating. Beauty reveals itself in thousands of forms.
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Victoria Erickson
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And sometimes you find yourself back where you started, but stronger and softer all at once.
Swim inside the ocean of tenderness, yet build boundaries on the sand.
An open heart is a paradise to protect.
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Victoria Erickson (Rhythms and Roads)
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Give yourself a winter night,
long candles, unfamiliar music,
a typewriter, keyboard,
an instrument, or canvas,
to set fire to your mind.
Surrender.
Be with art.
Let the room become a constellation,
trust it and ride.
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Victoria Erickson (Rhythms and Roads)
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To know someone deeply
is to know a universe
contained in skin.
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Victoria Erickson (Rhythms and Roads)
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When you have an ancient heart and childlike spirit you must feel deeply but go lightly. To trace and learn the language of waves. How all the seas carry secrets, yet still move freely.
I am still learning how to be water.
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Victoria Erickson
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When connections are real, they simply never die. They can be buried, or ignored or walked away from, but never broken. If you deeply resonated with another person or place, the connection remains despite any distance, time, situation, lack of presence, or circumstance. If youβre doubtful then just try it β go and visit a person or place and see if thereβs any sense at all of the space between now and then. If it was truly real, youβll be instantly swept back into the moment it was before it left β during the same year and place with the same wonder and hope, comfort and heartbeat. Real connections live on forever.
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Victoria Erickson
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Be around those who crave new galaxies in you.
The light through your veins.
Poetic science.
Wider vision.
Gentler strength.
The moon in your chest.
Gravitational pulls.
Possibility everywhere.
Stars in your eyes.
Expanding horizons.
Something wild.
Something fervent.
Something stunning.
Something divine.
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Victoria Erickson (Rhythms and Roads)
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Letβs not travel to tick things off lists, or collect half-hearted semi-treasures to be placed in dusty drawers in empty rooms. Rather, weβll travel to find grounds and rooftops and tiny hidden parks, where weβll sit and dismiss the passing time, spun in the cityβs web, βtil weβve surrendered, content to be spent and consumed. I need to feel a place while Iβm in it.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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The greatest gift anyone could give anyone is for the other to feel worthy, adored and more than enough for all that they are.
This is a gentle reminder that the people you surround yourself with in every direction should feel both uplifting and safe to your mind and heart.
Not confusing, not draining, not controlling, not vague, not calculating, not unreliable, not cold, not dismissive, and not manipulative.
Donβt mess around with the energy you take into your body and being, work wise, friendship wise, and relationship wise.
Life is too short and delicate for these damaging things.
Itβs really that simple.
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Victoria Erickson
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Air is equal parts
oxygen, daydreams
And possibility.
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Victoria Erickson (Rhythms and Roads)
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Soulmates arenβt the ones who make you happiest, no. Theyβre instead the ones who make you feel the most. Burning edges and scars and stars. Old pains and pangs, captivation and beauty. Strain and shadows and worry and yearning. Sweetness and madness and dreamlike surrender. They hurl you into the abyss. They taste like hope.
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Victoria Erickson
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I see you standing there with a mouthful of poetry yet a head full of doubt. You are sharp yet softening while needing to be split open and poured out.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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Remember, that it's beautiful to live in a body built for feeling, and live intensely on a planet exuding intensity.
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Victoria Erickson
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Be water. Flexible and soft. Subtly powerful and open. Wild and serene. Able to carry and accept all changes, yet still led by the pull of steady tides. It is enough.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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Wait for the moon. Wait for nothing less than what steals your breath.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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Sure. I'll make small talk. Chit chat.
Discuss the ins and outs of a "typical" day.
Pass the time lightly. Say tiny things.
I'm happy to tread surfaces with a smile,
and will. Sometimes.
Yet- when I look at you,
I know there are layers.
Dimensions. Collections of ancient wisdom.
Roads. Stories on stories on stories.
Core needs.
There is humanness.
This is where I light up.
This is where I thrive.
You can't be caged in a pool for long.
Not when you're someone
who wants oceans.
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Victoria Erickson
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You are not finding your voice.
You are remembering.
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Victoria Erickson
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If you love something, then really love it. If that trip, person, or afternoon opened up new worlds and mindsets, then by all means, write or paint or play about it, or maybe even tell someone, and tell it the way it really is, exactly how it feels. It is beautiful to feel in a body built for feeling, and exist intensely on a planet exuding intensity, because life in itself is both intense and beautiful. Thereβs absolutely no need or reason to pretend otherwise.
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Victoria Erickson
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You donβt need to choose mediocrity when fire exists. Fire is passion and passion is aliveness, and for once, allow your belief to undo your disbelief so destiny can hold you in its ecstatic, flaming grasp.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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If we stay true to our stories and exactly who we are on a deeper level then the right people and circumstances will begin to effortlessly appear. There will be a certain pull. Resonance and familiarity. There will be connection. And there will be more ease.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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You canβt be caged in a pool for long. Not when youβre someone who wants oceans.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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Poems are both the doing and undoing. Electric prayers and sonnets. Hope deeper than blood and bone. Wounds you can place your hand on.
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Victoria Erickson (Rhythms and Roads)
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As life moves we need to move with it, not against it. Transition happens whether weβre ready or not. Of course itβs difficult to let go, to stretch, to accommodate, and to be in between here and there yet- discomfort is inevitable whether you remain in a stagnant story that no longer serves or you decide to choose growth. So choose growth.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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Three things:
1- Stop letting pride win. Don't let it destroy and unravel friendships and loves. We blinked, and it's the holidays again. How many more laps around the sun are left? Life is slippery and fleeting, and distance so cold. Stay humble and warm. Remember what counts.
2- Be unapologetically in love with everything. People and the cosmos. Poetry and oceans. The growth everywhere from roses to your heart to the messes that brought you to this level. The ground beneath you. The feeling. Any feeling. The fact that you can feel at all- forever a privilege.
3- Stay tender. Always tender.
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Victoria Erickson
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Youβll eventually wonder how things wouldβve turned out differently if only youβd written it. Told it. Said it. Did it. Took forward action, wrapped it around you and owned it. Donβt bank on someday. Someday is only and always now. And now.
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Victoria Erickson (Rhythms and Roads)
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How to be weightless: Set fire to the clutter. Infuse boundaries. Allow music to linger long after itβs been felt. Soften. Rip old strings. Find sanctuaries. Touch thresholds. Soak in water. Know your rhythms. Read the words. Become the very poem itself.
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Victoria Erickson (Rhythms and Roads)
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It begins in the undercurrents where it counts. They want your edges, your realities, your dreams, fascinated and captivated, minds meeting in the center, where separate worlds collide. Magnetic magic only deepening in time. So promise me youβll take no one who shies from your oceans. Your tides.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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I love night conversations best. Bonds somehow grow deeper in the dark, our stories climbing to the surface to be seen. These are some of the times that live on longest in our minds- conversations by candle or moonlight with our sleep deprived eyes. When I speak on the heart, Iβm talking about your creative self, your internal self, your intuition, and your source of power.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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Come. Sit with me now. Weβll gaze at the falling sun as it grazes this horizon for I want to talk about simple nothings and silent stirrings, and wild things with someone who means everything.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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Sometimes you must allow your eyes to adjust to a truer shape of something youβd once molded and possibly loved but perhaps never wanted. Something to unravel now, straight from these roots. Something that at some point, you loosened your fingers around. Something that at some stage, you finally outgrew. So allow this chapter to hold you in darkly wrapped nights while allowing desires to just be desires before lighting that flame stemmed from your longing and churned into fuel so when it is time, youβll have enough strength to surrender to fire that holds the burn long enough to finally take flight.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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Stand in the heat of that truth, because you know what? It will always be there. Rather than running from it, be fierce enough to know it. Be courageous enough to let it lead you. Take one small step in that direction. Just one. Walk slowly if you must. Youβll burn brighter and brighter as you go.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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Consider soulmates to also be in the form of friends and animals, the wind, the tides, the plants, pieces of art, and the moon. Great love lives everywhere.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)
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In order to sort out the chaos, complications and confusions, we must come back to the simplest thing we do know. What feels like nourishment? Begin with that.
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Victoria Erickson (Rhythms and Roads)
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I'm not very good at making specific plans. Just meet me under the sky somewhere and be alive with me.
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Victoria Erickson (Edge of Wonder: Notes from the Wildness of Being)