Rewilding in 2022: Final Progress Report

This year, it's fair to say, didn't quite go as I expected. Between February and August, Dai, the Spud and I seemed to constantly shuttle between different illnesses and viral infections. The chronic migraines that blighted my childhood came roaring back and made my life a misery until I was able to start on several medications and a course of acupuncture. In November I was diagnosed with a gastro-oesophagal condition that was intensely painful but which is now managed with medication, and I was also diagnosed with depression and anxiety, which I think I had been masking with my excessive shopping behaviours instead of actually dealing with. I have since begun therapy and will be on a short residential programme next year.

Our little family spent an awful lot of time indoors, either taking care of each other or simply sheltering from the record-breaking sweltering heat during the summer. For a while, it felt as though my one remaining nod to something approaching wildness was the organic veg box I was getting with a half-price discount code, which at least encouraged me to cook from scratch more - a habit I'd neglected - and try out new vegetarian and plant-based recipes. The feral housewife rearing her head perhaps.

One thing I didn't expect this year was that I became much more committed to my self-care. I'm not sure what caused this, I think maybe I was tired of feeling like my own last priority, or perhaps my new collection of medical diagnoses, but I started gradually adding habits like dry body brushing, taking more time choosing my outfits, eating more plants, getting routines in place to keep my house clean and tidy, and daily yoga and then I felt like it kind of snowballed. I started getting out of bed earlier and feeling excited and motivated each day. I found I had more energy, so I started trying new forms of movement like Buti yoga, kayaking, paddleboarding and running. I became amazed and proud of what my body could do, and excited by all the things I could feel it wanted to do as I got stronger. My confidence increased dramatically and I found I was better able to deal with life admin tasks - and life in general. 

As time wore on I found myself developing in different ways. When I stopped dressing daily in Goth style some years ago, someone I used to work with posted an image on my Facebook page that read, "You used to be a wild thing - don't let them tame you," which at the time unsettled me, but in hindsight makes me laugh. I am much wilder now, in my 'basic' dress, than I have been since childhood. As a younger person I was too devoted to my image to do half the things I do now. I used to go to the beach in full make-up, fishnet tights, boots, a faux fur coat and hair extensions - you wouldn't have got me on a paddleboard for all the tea in China. This year I've been more willing to try things, more physically active, and even a bit braver than I have known myself to be before.

Yet I realised that, for three and a half years now, I've written, thought, moodboarded, researched and analysed almost constantly about clothes, shopping and style. This thing that I have been trying to escape from is consuming me. The least interesting thing about me has come to dominate my creative life. 

Speaking of which, what about my style challenges? My 'Mrs Baggins' Style Challenge, and my mission to wear every single piece of clothing in my wardrobe, co-existed very well and after a time became the same thing, interwoven with my no-buy challenge like a triple-strand braid.

When things really started to get interesting was when I took a look back at my childhood for some of the posts I was working on. I started to remember how I had most enjoyed dressing, what sorts of combinations made me feel good. I began layering waistcoats over dresses over jeans, mismatching my earrings, tying scarves around my waist over long skirts. I thought about the adage, said by (I believe) Iris Apfel, 'when you don't dress like everyone else, you don't have to think like everyone else'. I started to receive compliments on my outfits, but the best thing about it was that I felt good, I was having fun, I felt like myself.

It was weird how continuing to wear my own clothes felt like a slightly radical and subversive act at times. I found myself somewhat flabbergasted at the existence of the word 'rewearing'. When I was young, we didn't need a word to express the concept of using the clothes we had bought and owned. How our perceptions and culture around clothing have changed.

I also found that, although the cool style of a friend could still occasionally send me off on a couple of hours' browsing through Vinted and Depop, the distinctions between different clothing styles and labels - such as 'alternative' - came to seem less important to me. At some point mid-browse I would find myself getting bored, as defining myself (or anyone else) by clothing came to seem less and less relevant. Having learned to focus more on my other interests, I naturally found myself returning, over and over, to books, music, cooking, art and nature, and finding less importance in what I did or didn't have in my wardrobe.

Could I still see myself wanting to buy more things in the future? Yeeees, but not in the same manner that I have previously. I have been amazed by how much I can do with what I already have. Interestingly, fast fashion, even second-hand fast fashion, holds less appeal than it ever has. I no longer want to continue accumulating. 'My wardrobe' no longer feels like a semi-abstract concept encompassing all the things that I have yet to buy. Instead, I see a future of creating endless combinations with my existing clothes, visible mending, making and customising my own pieces, and the occasional vintage or charity shop find, spiced up from time to time with commissions from slow fashion artisans or purchases from small businesses on my travels. A simple shift, a change of mindset, and yet I feel so much more grounded and happier in myself.

That said, by early December, I found I did have to make a few purchases - I had almost run out of socks, my everyday bras were no longer fit for purpose, my slippers had split at the seams, and several of my wardrobe staples (favourite T-shirts and jeans) were falling apart. It was a pain to have everything disintegrate at once, but I also felt triumphant - it was probably the first time I had needed new clothing since being post-partum. Replacing my worn-out socks at Christmas was a staple of my nineties childhood and I felt oddly proud to return to it - even if it had taken three and a half years to wear through my existing collection!

I was told that firewalking would change my life, and by the end of August, a month after putting my bare feet on hot coals, I had come to believe that. There was an energy that I could feel rising in me, a new sense of my own power. I was starting to get a feel for the enchanted life I had been yearning for - I didn't, and don't, know exactly how to get there, but I knew how to start, and the seeds are beginning to unfurl. I began by spending less and less time online (it's possible that you'll be seeing less of me on this blog in the new year, but we'll see how that shakes out). I took up my knitting needles and painstaking hand-sewing projects, accompanied by an innate understanding that every stitch, every purchase not made, every mass-produced object not consumed, took me another tiny step in the right direction.

I began clutching at creativity, as if every thought and urge I had suppressed in the all-consuming maelstrom of new-motherhood suddenly came surging to the forefront. Reading poetry. Brewing my own tea from herbs. Making natural dyes. Weaving. Sketching. Playing pennywhistle by firelight. Devouring folktales and stories of women losing and finding themselves in the natural world. Travel plans and festival tickets. Something is beginning to take shape around me, and it's a little bit wonderful and exhilarating and electrifying-frightening all at once. 

This is the rewilding I was looking for. It is slow-coming, creeping up little by little through art and story and the play of starlight on frost, but I can see at last a time approaching - inexorably - when it is me and I am it. I can't imagine ever going back to a life of Primark hauls and spending every waking moment on Instagram. I don't need those crutches any more. 

Inspirational reads this season:

Make, Thrift, Mend by Katrina Rodabaugh

Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist by Paul Kingsnorth

Wintering by Katherine May

Wild by Jay Griffiths

Sustainable Badass by Gittemarie Johansen

You Are Not A Before Picture by Alex Light

Tatterdemalion by Sylvia V. Linsteadt and Rima Staines

A Still Life by Josie George

Other inspiration:

The Hagitude podcast

Workshops and newsletters from Walk the Spiral Path

 I devoured the entire archives of The Hermitage with joy and wonder

I'm going to be taking some time off over Christmas and New Year, and next year I'm considering not sticking to such a regular schedule of posts, but we'll see how that goes. For now, blessings of the season to all of you, and best wishes for 2023.