Awaken Your Wild, Creative Self

Gigi: Hello, hello. Welcome, Makena. And welcome, everyone that’s listening. Thank you so much for being here today. Yeah.

Makena: Great to be here with you as always.

Gigi: So I just came home from recording my portion of the audiobook in our new book. Yay.

Makena: Super exciting. So it’s going to come out in just a couple of weeks here, a few weeks. Should be out by Mother’s Day.

Gigi: Oh, nice. I had so much respect for you doing it when I did it because I only had to do seven pages and the guy was like, please—

Makena: Get this lady out here.

Gigi: And you went through. It is hard work.

Makena: Oh, my gosh. 150 pages or something. Wow. In two days, I think.

Gigi: Did you get a bonus for that or something?

Makena: I will accept the bonus anytime, thank you.

Gigi: Because, I mean, he was just like, lady, you skipped words, you added words, you skipped words. But at the end he goes, you did really well. I was like, sure. After he was a little testy with me.

Makena: So bad for giving you a hard time, probably.

Gigi: Yes, he did a little bit pick on me, actually. So…

Makena: Well, what do you want to share about our topic today, Gigi?

Gigi: Yeah, so we were just trying to figure out, like, what topic. Right. And we start talking, and then you shared with me a beautiful post that you posted a while back called, “I Didn’t Know I Was Wild.” I love that topic.

Makena: I need that in my life right now. So…

Gigi: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Because it’s easy to lose that feeling sometimes, especially after you’ve had a baby and—

Makena: Everything.

Gigi: So. But it’s, I’ve lost that in my life right now, too, just because of a lot of things that are going on. So we want to talk about today, like, becoming more of who you are, your true self. And we thought it’d be super fun just to get in and you read some of that post that you put out, and then we talk about it, what that means to us, and then what the experiences that we’ve had. Because I think that’s so powerful for our listener. Because when we hear other people’s experiences in that way, then it gives us a framework to go, oh wow, I could do that. Or I see something when I hear that. So would you like to start reading it and we’ll go through?

Makena: Absolutely, yeah.

Gigi: And you guys kind of, like, cry.

Makena: Yeah, it’s kind of like a poem, I guess.

Gigi: Yeah.

Makena: Yeah. So, I didn’t know that I was wild.

I had locked away my wildness when I was so young, I could not even remember convincing myself that words like mature, smart, and serious were more fitting to describe me. I didn’t know that I was brave. Minimizing risk was the name of the game. Study hard, make good money. I stretched myself, but not beyond the preset perimeter I judged as safe. I didn’t know that I was a creative force barely contained inside a human body. I thought that I was flesh and blood and stress and structure. I thought the world I experienced was the way things would always be.

Gigi: So the first part there, what did that mean to you, with when you were a child and you transitioned from feeling that kind of inspiration to being, like you said, serious and all of those things?

Makena: Yeah. I think for a long time I didn’t even remember that I was ever a different way. For me, it was like, oh, this is who I am. I’m structured and I’m smart and I’m mature and I’m these kinds of things that I labeled myself as, and I was those things, and I wasn’t a risk taker and I was very practical. And this was basically from, probably twelve or fourteen until definitely my mid-twenties. And so in that, I just—I feel like this first part is just talking about, I thought it would always be that way. I thought that’s who I was, and I didn’t remember anything different, and I didn’t know that I could be anything different.

Gigi: Yeah. And that’s amazing that you went through the transformation of finding out who you are and that you made that and saw that, that you are a little wild and creative and all of those things.

Makena: Right.

Gigi: I mean, it’s a typical thing that we talk about, right? Because we often—our lights are put out at some point, when we’re young, and then we just, we forget who we are. But the truth is, I know you as a little girl, twirl with your twirly skirts, twirling and twirling and twirling all the time and playful and cute. I mean, so many pictures of you, just fun, you know, you’re super fun and super strong and then that, you know that even in the life that you grew up in, your lights went out at one point, right?

Makena: Yeah. We talk about that a lot in the book, right? And that’s kind of what I go into here, is like, how did I start to remember? What was that? What was that process?

Gigi: So, yeah, and I think that’s true for so many of us because again, the systems that we’re in sometimes are the things that make us forget who we are because we have to be a good girl. Or we go to a certain school and you have to behave a certain way or our family has certain beliefs and then we get boxed into those beliefs. And if we don’t agree, then there’s something wrong with us. And so that’s where also I think a lot of our listeners might have had that experience.

Makena: And yet there was a yearning, a deeper knowing, a longing for something more. I thought the something more was a new career. So I took the leap and stepped onto a new path. And it’s true, my life changed, yet so much of me stayed the same. The brave began emerging, but the stress and structure weren’t budging. There were layers and levels like high-rise buildings buried underground. So I kept excavating, moving forward one step at a time. And as each layer of me hit the sunlight, I felt like I could finally breathe another step forward. Dig, deep, breathe, repeat. Action was my mantra. Transformation a necessity. Do you want to stop there or do you want to keep going?

Gigi: I think you just go, go and we’ll talk about it. Yeah, yeah. It’s great to hear it all together. Yeah.

Makena: I grew more alive with every breath, yet more tired with every step. Until one day I laid it all down. I stopped pushing or trying. I stopped pressuring or outlining the way I thought things ought to be. I laid down and closed my eyes to sleep. Dreamless dreams, formless knowings, dream becomings and unbecomings, tears and triumphs, writings and riots of confusion. I forgot who I was or what I wanted. I placed my hopes and dreams at the feet of the Divine, and I prayed. When I woke from the dream, something had changed. I had changed. I stopped trying to fix myself and began to reveal myself. I stopped trying to make things happen and began to dance between desire, inspired action, and surrender. I stopped labeling myself or placing limits on the infinity of my being, which is when it hit me. My longing for something more was only ever meant to open the door to someone more. I discovered my wild in the heart song that vibrates through my body, in the dancing for joy that occasionally touches the edges of ecstasy. I discovered my brave in the bold of my showing up again and again and in my having the courage to—

Makena: Let it all go.

I discovered my creative force when I remembered I am creative force. The unbridled energy of life awakening moves through me in every moment, and it moves through you. So here I stand, wise and wild, serious and playful, soft and strong, remembering and then forgetting who I really am, but always committed to memory, always committing to remember who I am not. I am not my thoughts. I am not my personality. I am not a preconceived identity. These are tiny fragments of my being. I am the moon and the stars. I am infinite potential, and so are you.

Gigi: Nice. So beautiful. Yeah.

Makena: Thank you.

Gigi: So beautiful. Yeah.

Makena: Yeah. What do you want to share about? There’s a lot.

Gigi: The part where you talk about—you got courage but you still had stress and all of those things. Maybe share a little bit about that.

Makena: That was the early part of my transition, right when you started mentoring me, and I stepped into coaching at that time and really made a huge career change. And that took so much courage, especially with the identity I had before of not being a risk taker and really staying in what was safe. That was a really, really challenging thing for me to do, even with your support. And so it was like the brave started coming out and I started to think, okay, I can be brave. But they always say—there’s that line: wherever you go, there you are. And that was my experience. I made this huge change, and I think a lot of people have that experience in different ways in their life. Whatever that change might be, they finally get the courage to do something they’ve been wanting to do, or they get into a new relationship, or whatever it is, and then it’s like, oh, there I am again. I thought things would be different now. 

And that’s what I experienced: I was still stressed in so many ways, and I carried so many of those patterns with me, trying to control everything and perfectionism and a lot of these aspects, which are a part of me, but like I talk about later, they’re not who I am either. Yet they were still there. I thought when my outside circumstances changed that that would change as well. So that’s kind of what that part’s about. Until finally I got to a point where I was just so exhausted. I think of that—I was faced into it so much that I just kind of—that’s the part where I say I laid it all at the feet of the Divine and prayed. 

I was just like, I don’t know how to go forward from here. I can’t keep going the way I’ve been going. Even though a lot was working, I just kind of had to let it all go and let go of trying to control anything, of thinking I knew the way things should go. There was just a really big phase for me of unbecoming, I think, is the best way to put it, before I could come back together as more of who I really was.

Gigi: How could our listener apply what you did there?

Makena: It’s a good question. For me, it took really getting to a place where it was just like—that felt like the only option. But I’m sure there’s a way to do it consciously without having to hit that place. It was really a kind of giving up of control. I don’t know how else to put it. It was like, I’m willing to not guide this thing anymore. For me, it was quite a spiritual experience. That may not be true for everyone, but for me, it was like giving it over to something greater than myself and just saying, you lead the way. I don’t know how this should move forward. And I’m just committed to being true to myself and living the best life I can live and contributing in whatever way I can contribute, and other than that, I’m not going to try to control the outcome here anymore. And that’s ultimately when I found peace. I think a lot of peace. Like I said, it was peeling away the layers of who I thought I was. I was like, I’m not committed to any of that. I’m not committed to being structured or I’m not committed to being smart. I’m not committed to being successful—any of those things. I’m willing to give it all up, and I think that’s a big part of it, is the unbecoming. And it’s interesting because the reason this—

Poem came back into my mind the—

Other day, because I’m in this mom’s group that’s all about the transition into motherhood, which is called matrescence. We were doing this exercise, and the first line popped into my mind—I didn’t know that I was wild. So I went back to find the writing and I shared it in the mom’s group. That part where I talk about kind of laying it all at the feet of the Divine and just unbecoming, and one of the moms was like, oh my God, this speaks to me so much right now, because that’s part of the transition too into motherhood, right? You unbecome who you were before, and you become this new version of you. And if you let yourself, it’s this complete, almost like metamorphosis, like the caterpillar and the cocoon, and hopefully coming out as a butterfly, as a more true version of who you are. Might still be a little bit in the cocoon, but—

Gigi: Yeah.

Makena: I don’t know. Does any of that feel more practical for people to take and run with, or do you see something?

Gigi: Well, I think what I see from what I teach and have taught over the years, and I think I worked with you on during some of these times, is it’s the not looking on the outside, but looking on the inside. And it really comes from your desires. What do you want? What is it that brings you alive? Like we always say, what lights you up? Because if you look deep inside of you and you really go with that, instead of putting your reasoning or your practicality on top of it, and sometimes it can be something so different than what you’re doing in your life right now, and that’s a little scary for people.

Makena: Yeah. I was just looking at the later part of it to try and remember how I found it. Yeah. The brave I talked about, and then I said, I discovered my creative or I discovered my wild, and the heart song that vibrates through my body and the dancing for joy that occasionally touches the edges of ecstasy. So that’s, I think, what you’re talking about with the aliveness piece, right? It’s like, what taps into that for you?

Gigi: Yeah. What’s that—and desire—what’s the thing that you really, or maybe it’s not you really, really want. It’s like, in the back of your mind, you have this dream, you see yourself in it, and sometimes we have moments and experiences where we’re doing something and you think, wow, I feel like myself, like right now, and the more you can tap into that, that is part of tapping into who you’re becoming. Because I know when we sat on that bed in Amsterdam and I said to you, you need to be doing photo shoots, and you were already doing them, and that was already bringing—that was, you were expressing yourself, right? You were starting to be creative. And when you went fully into that, it opened up a whole new part of yourself.

Makena: Absolutely.

Gigi: Such a simple thing.

Makena: Yeah, and that’s the part about I discovered my creative force when I remembered I am creative force. And the unbridled energy of life awakening moves through me in every moment, and it moves through you. I think that’s what you’re talking about. 

We talk about this in chapter nine of the book, which is “Finding My Soul Shine,” which is the creative force of life moves through all of us, but it moves through all of us in different ways. 

The way that it moves through you, the way we find that out, is what brings you alive, like you’re saying. It’s what, what are those things that when you’re doing them, you forget about time, you feel more like your true self.

And for me, photo shoots is one of the biggest.

So when you had me start doing those and you really pushed me on that—I talk about that too, how scary it is to do the things that are closest to our heart and soul—but when you pushed me on that and I started to do them, I discovered a whole different side of myself. I was like, whoa, who is this? So much creativity got unlocked, and I hadn’t felt that part of me before, at least not that strong, and it was very much like, wow, this is a whole different person that I’m getting to know here, which was such a cool experience to get to know myself again as a new version of myself in my twenties and thirties. I mean, really in my thirties at that point. I think that’s so much of what the poem is about. 

I think as people, we get set in thinking we know who we are.

We think we know who we are, and we know what life is, and we stop being curious, and we just assume it’s going to be, you know, it’ll change or we’ll go through different things, but it’ll kind of always be this way, and we’ll kind of always be this way. But I think that’s part of your huge brilliance, is you don’t do that. We were just talking about that the other day. Someone was just talking about how people get older and they get set in their ways. And we were saying that you’re so different, you, Gigi, in this, and that you’re always reinventing yourself and you’re always curious and exploring new things and learning new things, and it’s so much of what keeps you youthful, I think.

Gigi: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Makena: I really feel that spark.

Gigi: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The curiosity and that following your curiosity, tapping into your aliveness and then whatever brings you alive, following that curiosity, doing things around that. For example, when I went to that recording studio today, it was so interesting because I thought, oh my gosh, I should have been a rock star.

Makena: Gigi was hoping she was there to record some music.

Gigi: Like, I shouldn’t be reading this, I should be singing or something. Not that my voice is that good, but it’s interesting. That sparks something in me always. And it took me back to these memories, even back in my thirties, when I wanted to go learn sound engineering for music. I had a time where I seriously thought about it. And so those kind of things, you clock those in. And I thought about it, I was like, okay, I’m going to write this down because there’s something here and something in my evolution that I want to play with here.

Makena: Yeah, I love that.

Gigi: Yeah, and that’s how you start to notice. I also, watching shows and all these things, I think I told you, I feel in me this whole feeling of writing maybe not even a book, but writing a book so I can get a screenplay out of it. I have this idea, and I—couple ideas, and that is inspirational to me. So I watch all the shows now and think about how I would write my show and everything.

Makena: So that’s so cool. I love that. Yeah, yeah. And you really taught me to do that, to follow those threads.

Gigi: Yeah, always. And those bring you out into different ways of seeing yourself. Different ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Elements of surprising yourself.

Makena: So I think that there’s the longing in so many of us, especially at different stages in our lives. Like I say, the longing for something more, and that’s often when women come to us. On some level, they’re desiring something more. In this particular context, what we’re talking about is what happens is they often get something more as they go through this process, but they also discover someone more. 

And that’s so much of it, is they discover, oh, myself, but more of myself, more of who I really am. Some of it, I think, is a remembering of who we were kind of when we were younger, and some of it’s a becoming of more of who we were meant to be in this lifetime. I think that’s, I think that’s one of the greatest pleasures in life, other than, of course, being in service, and there’s many. But that can be a part of it too—is you discover yourself in being in service to others. But yeah, it’s one of the greatest joys in my experience is that experience of discovery, of becoming.

Gigi: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Makena: Which is really what the book ended up being about, is my journey of that.

Gigi: Yeah.

Makena: And then it’s kind of a guide for other women who want to go on that journey or who are somewhere on that journey. Many women already are, and it’s just different lessons and tools and experiences. We learn so much through stories, right, of how I did that, and, yeah, so that was kind of the idea and the inspiration behind it.

Gigi: Nice. Yeah. So those of you that are listening, if you can take, I think, again, listening to this beautiful, beautiful poem, and then also just some of Makena’s stories of her remembering, you can probably take little nuggets out and think of what are those aspects for you, what are those little baby steps that maybe you could take to tap into your wild also. They start with a little bitty seed. Like, you did your first photo shoot, you had no idea that you would be doing so many more, as it came, but you knew you loved it. There was energy there. There was vitality. And when you feel that vitality and energy, it’s so important to continue to do that, to follow that line of energy.

Makena: Yeah. I think I showed you guys this wall in another episode, but I’ll show it again for those of you watching visually. For those of you listening, I’ll just have to describe it, but this is my wall here in my office, which is just some of my favorite photos from talk about tree I’ve done over the years. And they’re very, very creative. You can also go on—I have an Instagram that’s just my photos, kind of like a portfolio. It’s Makenamadonna, M-A-K-E-N-A Madonna, and you can see some of my crazy photo shoots there, so super fun. I was going to say, though, too, the other side, I think, tapping more into that, absolutely. 

But if you’re not sure, if that feels like you don’t even know how to get there, we do have exercises in the book where we go much, much deeper. So if you haven’t gotten a copy, it’s called “The Wisdom that Raised Me: A Daughter’s Journey into Wholeness, Wisdom, and Womanhood,” and you can get it on Amazon. 

But the other thing is thinking about what are the aspects of how you perceive yourself or who you think you are that feel a bit like stifling or something. 

Like, what are those ways that you would describe yourself right now? Like, for me, thinking of myself, if I start to think of myself as serious and structured and mature and some of these words, it’s not that those things aren’t true about me sometimes, but they can also feel like a box. They feel like I’m stuck within this certain view of myself that I’ve come to understand is only one tiny little piece of the puzzle. 

And so you could use those as a jumping-off point to go, if I’m this, what else am I? Or, if I’m longing for something more, what is that? There’s a great exercise where you can write qualities that you admire in other people. And then when you look at that list of qualities, like you think, what do I admire about my favorite author, or what do I admire about my best friend, or whoever, then you look at those qualities and usually you’ll see certain ones kind of repeat. The idea behind the exercise is that the ones that repeat or really any of them are qualities that exist within you that you haven’t actually fully self-actualized yet.

Gigi: Yeah.

Makena: And I love that exercise because it’s kind of like, oh, the longing for something there or the recognition of something is somehow tapping into your own desire. So I think that’s another interesting take on it, to really see what is it. Like wild. I wanted to step into more wild. Okay, so that was a longing.

And then how I did it was—

Makena: Through, like you said, following my desire and following my curiosity and aliveness. So those are some thoughts.

Gigi: Yeah, awesome, great, excellent. Well, I think it’s exciting to see what the next evolution of your wild is now that you’re a mama, huh?

Makena: I think that’s going to be our next podcast episode, right? Yeah, we’re like, I think I need a little of this right now. We’re going to do another Gigi coach me on air episode here and have her just tell me how to unlock my wild in this chapter. So we’ll discover it together. So those of you who are mamas out there, you can listen into that one. So, yeah, we’ll see you all next time.

Gigi: Okay, bye.

Makena: Bye.