by Artemis Wilder
The Wilderness Within
A walk through my inner wilderness
A field guide to becoming, belonging, and learning to live inside your own mind.
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Welcome
Welcome to the Wilderness
There is a wilderness inside each of us. A place made of thoughts we don’t always understand, stories we inherited, fears we learned to live with, desires we don’t always know what to do with, and parts of ourselves we’ve spent years trying to tame. There are beautiful places in there. There are dark ones, too. There are familiar paths we walk without thinking, paths that lead us toward the same people, the same patterns, the same reactions, the same disappointments. And then there are the paths we haven’t taken yet.
Sometimes we wander into them by choice. Sometimes life pushes us off the trail. Sometimes we get completely lost. And sometimes, getting lost is exactly how we find something we didn’t know we were looking for. This is my field journal from that wilderness. I’m not here because I’ve figured it out. Quite the opposite. I’m here because I haven’t.
And sometimes you have to walk through the same forest three or four times before you realize you’ve been carrying the map upside down.
A. Wilder
I’m here because I have spent a lot of time trying to understand the strange conversation that happens between my heart and my mind. The stories I tell myself. The voice that tries to protect me and sometimes sabotages me. The ways I run toward things I want and away from things I need. The ways fear disguises itself as wisdom, and avoidance disguises itself as peace. I’m fascinated by the strange, beautiful, frustrating work of becoming a person you actually resonate with deeply.
Start Here
How to Read the Wilderness Within
Before you wander in: what the categories mean, how the field notes work, and how to get the most from them.
Field Notes
A few recurring trails through the inner wilderness.
The Mind
The thoughts, stories, beliefs, loops, and voices that shape the way we experience our lives.
The Heart
Desire, vulnerability, longing, grief, joy, connection, and all the things the heart knows before the mind has words for them.
The Parasite
That voice inside us that learned how to keep us safe but sometimes keeps us small.
Relationships
The mirrors we find in other people and the patterns we repeat in connection.
Becoming
The uncomfortable space between who we have been and who we’re becoming.
The Wilderness
The spiritual questions, mysteries, and places where certainty falls away.
What You’ll Find
What You’ll Find Here
There won’t be a formula. There won’t be five steps to becoming your best self. There won’t be a promise that if you think the right thoughts, say the right affirmations, or heal enough of your childhood, life will suddenly become easy. I don’t believe that’s how this works.
Instead, you’ll find observations, questions, contradictions, stories, and things I’m still learning. Writing on the mind and the heart, relationships and connection, fear and joy, self-sabotage and self-trust, spirituality and psychology, identity and belonging, and the strange space between who we are and who we’re becoming.
Come Walk With Me
Maybe you’ve confused anxiety with intuition. Maybe you’ve called avoidance peace. Maybe you’ve spent so much time trying to become a better version of yourself that you’ve forgotten to be the person standing here, right now.
Not perfection. Not enlightenment. Awareness. The willingness to look, to question, to notice, and to become a little less afraid of your own wilderness.