Remembering our inner wild <em> Martina's Regenerators story <em>

Once upon a time, behind nine mountains and nine rivers, lived a wild girl. A firekeeper.

This wild girl tended to a fire that crackled in the fireplace in her cabin on a lake, swaddled amongst the mountains of Slovenia.

Our wild girl lived in a world where what’s real and what’s imagined were one. A world where the past and the present danced with eternity.

Her friends were the fire she so lovingly tended. The cabin. The mountains that watched over her. The lake where she swam and bathed.

Her friends were the forest trees she climbed, the stones and branches she picked on her wanderings, and the moss she gathered.

She played and was friends with the beautiful creatures of the world around her: frogs, salamanders, fireflies, snakes, wolves.

The wild girl’s world was as living and breathing as she was.

As with all wild girls who feel adventure within them, one day, she was pulled to journey far away from home.

She packed her bag, and walked a path beyond the land of the nine mountains and the nine rivers.

As the wild girl journeyed, she found herself reaching a threshold, the threshold that all wild girls eventually cross. Our wild girl became a maiden.

As our maiden continued adventuring, she found herself in a new world. A place where time had been stretched onto its back into a linear arrow. A place full of strange mountains, formed of concrete, steel and glass. A place far away from her cabin and her fire. Far from her mountains, lakes, her creature friends. A place where the wildness of her world wasn’t permitted to sing.

The maiden who had been a wild girl made new friends in this world, found new places, new homes.

Time continued to tick forward and the maiden became a mother, birthing first her own little girl, and then her own little boy.

As she got to know these two children, she found that this world had specific demands and ideas of who she should be as a mother.

And the world felt both too quiet and too loud. Too empty and too full.

While our mother who had been a maiden who had been a wild girl found comfort in parts of her life within this ‘Brave New World’, she also began to feel this world asked too much of her. It asked her to be tamed. To set aside her wild nature and the memories of her life amongst the mountains. To make herself small, to be less frightening to others, and to set aside play – for here, life was serious.

But the wildness of girls and women never stays tamed for long.

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We join our tamed woman now one dark night, curled up in her bed.

Lost in the silent desperation of a cold, harsh, steely world, something fractures.

And through the fracture, something spills out of her soul, whispering of a distant but familiar echo of a long-forgotten forest. The one she had known when she lived in the cabin, tended her fire, sang songs with the mountains, and was friends with the other wild creatures.

The call of the forest becomes louder and louder, its Slavic tones becoming clearer and clearer, ushering her in her mother tongue and that of her ancestors.

Deep in her body, something awakens. Something remembers.

And so, our tamed woman once again sets off on a journey, this time in search of the forest that calls to her.

Following familiar songs, in time her footsteps once again tread on familiar lands. She retraces old paths as her body remembers the warmth of the fire in her cabin, for so long untended.

With each step closer to the forest, something thaws, something loosens. Something unleashes within our so-called tamed woman.

She moves towards the forest’s edge, her body quickening with the crackle of nerves and excitement.

Her heart beats, and the calls she hears grow louder, woven amongst the music of the forest. The air thickens with the earthy scent of fallen leaves and fir trees. The soft crinkles of fire and flames curl their fingers to her in the distance.

As she peers into the depths of the forest, mighty and oversized shadows greet her, dancing between the trees. She pulsates with fear as the shadows dare her to join them, asking if she’s brave enough.

Description: Watercolour collage of forest trees, with the orange wisps of a campfire just visible in the middle.

There is no turning back now, the longing unshakable.

Her breath catches, and she takes another step.

Our woman crosses the threshold into the forest, her eyes familiar to the darkness now.

Another step, and she is by the fire whose flames had beckoned her.

And as she takes in the fire, she finds herself faced with an intense gaze and the ridged face of a hag, a witch, a crone – the one who knows of all our darkest fears, secrets, and desires.

A jolt of lightning runs through her body, telling her to run away but she is fascinated and affixed.

A deeper part of her stirs.

She has to step forward, now.

Or risk being lost forever.

The inner stirring gets louder and louder, her heart beating faster and faster, and her feet moving closer and closer – towards the witch, towards the fiery flames.

Just one more step and the hag reaches out her wrinkled hand.

Our woman pauses, and the forest, her breath, the fire, all pause in silence alongside her.

And then, she slips her own hand into the hag’s. She feels the textured, life-worn, coarse skin rubbing at her palm.

And as their hands meet and as their eyes meet, studying each other, it is as though something comes unhinged. The wild girl, the maiden, the mother, and the crone are woven together into the fabric of who our woman is – The Wise One Who Knows.

And she remembers the song of the mountains, the language of fire and the creatures she once called friends.

The Wise One Who Knows – our wild girl, our maiden, our mother, our crone – returned to her cabin, swaddled by the mountains to tend to her fire, to once again befriend the creatures of the land, sea and skies, and to listen to the song of the wilderness.

And to this day, if your soul stirs and calls you to wander the dark forest, you might hear the song of the wind, carrying the scent of fir trees and the echo of the fire. As The Wise One Who Knows calls to the souls who need to remember their inner wild.

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Our wild girl’s name is Martina Gobec.

We could have told Martina’s story in the way we have been told to tell these types of stories.

This other story could have started with her career as an experience and innovation designer and strategist. And how she said ‘yes’ to stepping into leadership.

It might have taken us through her journey from designer to leader to coach. We would have spoken about her qualifications, and how she moved into systems coaching and culture design.

The story would have told us very clearly and explicitly how it was that she came to say ‘yes’ to joining the Regenerative Leadership Journey in 2023, after delivering a session on family constellations to the 2022 cohort.

Maybe next, we would have shifted focus to the friends Martina made on the course, with whom she continues to travel.

Perhaps when we reached ‘The End,’ we would have focused on how regenerative practice is starting to be woven into her family life, imbued and rich with ancestral rituals.

We could have told a tale of how Martina is fulfilling the legacy of her maternal ancestors who fought for freedom, by making sure her own regenerative practice is infused with learning and unlearning about white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism and systems of oppression.

Maybe, if we were to come back to Martina’s story another day, this is the story that would have been told.

But today, Martina’s story didn’t wish to be told this way.

Martina’s story wished for us to hear about the wild girl.

And to hear about how wild girls can find their way home to the old witch in the woods, the Baba Yaga.

This wild girl wished to speak of walking with her fears through the darkest, deepest, wildest forest, only to find the warming fires of home.

Eventually, we must listen to what our inner wild has to say. Because if we don’t heed that call, that wilderness within us – seemingly tamed – may destroy us from within.

Martina’s culture work, and organization and relationship systems coaching revealed to her how everything is connected; webs of patterns and nodes and complexity.

And Martina’s regenerative journey helped her ground what she thought she knew of systems back into the living world; to remember how everything within that web is teeming with life and with stories.

For Martina, regenerative practice and leadership is, at its heart, a remembering of this essence, this truth: that there is no separation between the real, the imagined and the mythical. It means coming from a place where you feel and experience deeply all living beings as your kin. And how everything and everyone belongs in that connection.

For Martina, regenerative practice means being in Right Relationship with these real and imagined worlds. Being in Right Relationship with ourselves, our ancestors, the folklore of our linages, each other, land. Being in Right Relationship with the learnings and wisdoms of those who came before us and those who will come after.

Regenerative practice is the dance of the wild child, the youngster, the adult and the elder within us. It’s a cyclical, archetypal journey; the way Life itself flows.

Perhaps sometimes, we need to hear our stories told as folklore. To hear our real and imagined selves brought to life in this ancient way of learning. To reconnect with the art of mythmaking, which is so often forgotten and lost to us. To remind our teams and communities that this is the true work that matters. It is from within those stories that a more beautiful world can be created.

And more than anything, from which we can rediscover the beautiful, wild, creative creatures that live within us.

contributor bio

Martina Gobec is a relationship-first coach for leaders, change-makers and teams, a culture designer, and the Founder of Thought Wardrobe. She was part of the 2023 Regenerative Leadership Journey of Regenerators Academy. This is her story of remembering.