The Way of the Wild Soul Woman: 5 Earth Archetypes to Unleash Your Full Feminine Power

by Mary Reynolds Thompson, Clare Dubois (Foreword)

An initiatory and Nature-based guide to rewilding your soul

• Introduces five Earth Woman Archetypes along with in-depth initiations to help you to unleash your fullest, most authentic, and creative self

• Includes rituals, exercises, meditations, and journal prompts to help you integrate each initiatory stage and embody the ways of a Wild Soul Woman

• Explores how to overcome the core wounding of each Earth Archetype, how the Archetypes can empower you, and how to embody their wisdom

Taking you on a Nature-based journey of transformation and rebirth, Mary Reynolds Thompson reveals how to unleash your full feminine power and discover authenticity, wholeness, creativity, and healing through initiation with ancient Earth Archetypes.

Providing a guided map for rewilding your soul, the author introduces the five archetypes of the Wild Soul Woman’s psyche—the untamed, unashamed, and unstoppable aspects of inner feminine power that many women have forgotten or disconnected from. You will undergo five powerful initiations, each centered on ancient Earth wisdom. You will learn from Desert Woman and her Barren Worlds how to let go of what no longer serves you, from Forest Woman and the Dark Womb how to seed new dreams and nurture them in your depths, and from Ocean and River Woman and her Breaking Waters how to ride the flow of your deepest longings. As Mountain Woman you will experience Giving Birth to a vision as you take a stand for your values, and from Grassland Woman you will learn how to support the Nurturing of the New that has emerged within.

Sharing rituals, exercises, meditations, and journal prompts to help you integrate these five initiatory stages, the author also explores each Earth Archetype’s Challenge (how to overcome a core wounding), the Shift (how the Archetype empowers you to reach for a fuller, more creative life), and the Way (how to embody its wisdom). She shows how, because both women and the Earth were wounded in similar ways across the ages, restoring your connection with Nature and the wisdom of feminine archetypes can help heal both your soul and the world around you.

Woven throughout with inspiring stories of women from around the world who embody these archetypal energies, as well as exquisite illustrations by Kathleen Brigidina, the book reveals how to awaken your inner feminine wisdom and true power. As you reclaim your voice and your visions, you become an unstoppable force of nature. You liberate your Wild Soul.

352 pages, Paperback

Published May 14, 2024

About the author

Mary Reynolds Thompson is a facilitator of poetry and journal therapy dedicated to bringing forth the Wild Soul Story. This new story is rooted in our oneness with nature and a vision of the world in which the wild landscapes of both Earth and soul can thrive. As a little girl, Mary's wild soul was awakened by family vacations spent in Positano on the Amalfi coastline of southern Italy. She slept in mountain caves and rode a pig called Romana over dusty trails. Many years later, she would hike the Himalayas, backpack the Grand Tetons, and brave the blasting winds of Patagonia, deepening her connection to the sacred Earth. "Reclaiming the Wild Soul: How Earth's Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness" was lauded by spiritual leaders and ecologists alike and won a Nautilus Book Award. Her latest book is "The Way of the Wild Soul Woman: 5 Earth Archetypes to Unleash Your Full Feminine Power. Born in London, England, today Mary lives in her beloved landscape of Marin County with her husband, Bruce.

Reviews

[Cathy Roth · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Way of the Wild Soul Woman is one of those books that takes your neat and tidy file folders of ideas, throws them up in the air, and then sifts, shifts and reimagines them as they land on your head leaving you irreparably changed. Author Mary Reynolds Thompson is an award-winning author, poet and pioneer in the global spiritual ecology movement. She writes from her own experience as a typically "chained and tamed" (British) woman of our times and invites us on a courageous adventure to reclaim our Earth-given and driven, unchained and whole, wild woman soul.

In an illuminating journey guided by deserts, forests, mountains, oceans and grasslands this wise author-shaman takes the reader on a developmental tour of our true nature - nature herself. Poems, meditations, writing prompts and exquisite illustrations by Kathleen Brigidina are inspiring and enlightening signposts along the way to our meeting the future as powerful and authentic Earth bound beings.

I am reading The Way of the Wild Soul Woman for the second time in a Book Club with women from all over the world including France, Italy, Germany, Australia, Canada, US and the UK. This is a beautifully written, both fierce and tender, powerful book that speaks to both our personal and global challenges today and guides us through to a possible new world of connectivity, reciprocity, and compassion. Bring it to your book club, your library group and community, but first buckle your seatbelt.

[Salie Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mary Reynolds Thompson holds a circle for women to heal a matrilineal line to return to their power, to their positive celebration of the feminine, to the earth, and to their bodies. In this book, readers can discover which feminine archetype can inspire their dreams and motivate their actions. Every earth-based culture developed practices to honor and seek wisdom from female divinities. Women can seek the divine feminine from their cultural heritage, finding connection with the powers that influenced their ancestors and foremothers. Yet it is even more powerful that in her invitation for wild soul women, Thompson has created transcendent feminine archetypes drawn from global ecosystems that embody, encompass, and emanate a universal feminine.

Desert landscapes urge us to celebrate simplicity and silence. Forests ignite generative peace. Rivers and oceans tap into our cyclical flow. Mountains bring us to the heights of our insightful powers, while grasslands allow us to plant, regenerate, and seed the next generation.

Speaking the language of nature, Thompson gives us new words and concepts that can initiate women into the medicine we need in this crucial time of Earth transformation.

[Lisa Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once again, poet, teacher, ecowarrior, and healer Mary Reynolds Thompson puts pure power into the reader's hands. While the system of five archetypes appears to be simple (and the book is so well organized), Thompson surprises us again and again with new aspects of each archetype. I love how she weaves in her own complex life stories -- as well as many inspiring stories of other women we should know. Plenty of exercises encourage participation and active growth -- on personal, community, and planetary levels.
I'll be gifting copies to my loved ones.

[Renee Blodgett · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Way of the Wild Soul Woman by Mary Reynolds Thompson invites women to come home . . . back to themselves. Her soulful and authentic narrative is refreshingly direct at times, delivering the verbal medicine you most need to hear even if it hits a sensitive chord or sets off a trigger at times. Think of it as a potent and poetic roadmap for women longing to reclaim their deepest wildness, authenticity, and earth-rooted wisdom. With eloquence and a grounded spiritual tone, Thompson introduces readers to five profound Earth Woman Archetypes—Desert Woman, Forest Woman, Ocean & River Woman, Mountain Woman, and Grassland Woman—each embodying distinct energies, lessons, and initiations that mirror the cycles of nature and the inner landscape of a woman’s journey. Each archetype offers transformational initiations through symbolic journeys, raw truths, and creative awakenings.

At the heart of the book is a sacred invitation to remember that we are nature—not separate from it. This is something I’ve always innately known as a woman and even practiced it as a child. It’s as if that innate wisdom gets beaten out of us as we get older. Thompson reminds us we can reclaim it any time, at any age, regardless of our circumstances. This tapestry of soul remembrance encourages us to not just hear a different truth with our minds but with our bones, breath, and body.

Each archetypal section includes immersive rituals, meditations, journaling prompts, and evocative exercises designed to probe you inward. Not all younger women have been taught that “We’re not good enough, to wait in line, stay quiet or be nice.” There’s healing that can happen between generations. It starts with awareness, and with it, a commitment to not pass on these unhealthy beliefs. That commitment leads to ending a long overdue vicious cycle of Patriarch rules and dictates. Rather than fear this inner work, we need to embrace it.

She is an amazing storyteller, weaving in mythic examples to make her point. Thompson’s background in poetry and classical writing is a bonus. Her words jump off the page with clarity but also an urgency for us to wake up the inner soul of our being. The Way of the Wild Soul Woman helps you navigate transitions, find your passion and provide tips and exercises to live a life in deeper communion with yourself and the natural world.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are a woman who thought you had it figured out, who thought you had done your part in the fight for equality, who can’t believe we are still in that fight, this book is for you. I’m convinced our struggle comes from not claiming what we uniquely offer to the world. We learned how to compete as men (in skirts). We’ve learned how to play the games. But, we haven’t owned the gifts we have been given to do things differently. We haven’t asserted our authority. This book helps us to see who we really are. It empowers us to honor our strengths offered by our ancestors, the landscapes. Read it. Fall in love with yourself again. Rise up. And! If you gather regularly with a group of women, this is a perfect offering to be studied in community.

[Kate THompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the moment I saw the beautiful cover I knew I was on a passionate journey. Mary Reynolds Thompson is a wise guide using her own experience in the world and in the imaginal and literary realms to take us deeply into our own capacities as women to come into presence again.
The exercises and invitations will sustain me for a long time to come and are a wonderful addition of my own practice of writing to understand myself in the world.
Connecting with natural landscapes is a way of coming home, seeing the archetypes is a deepening of this experience, a fresh lens to see the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual worlds of existence.

[Isaya Gabriel · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re a woman and live on earth in 2025, you NEED to read this book and get to meet the five Earth Woman Archetypes. This book is both an initiation into the magic of wild womanhood and a reconnection with Mother Earth and the way She can support Her as we support her. Mary Reynolds Thompson’s powerful writing, mind-boggling journaling prompts and altogether "down to Earth" wisdom (pun intended) will accompany you as you uncover the Archetypes hidden in the landscape, both internal and outer. With Mary as your guide, your journal as a treasure map and your pen as a magic wand, empower yourself and unleash your wild creative authentic self.

[Sarah Diop · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me so long to get through, but I think that was the point. I read the first bit, desert woman so quickly and related to her, but soon realized I’ve experienced each of the wild woman archetypes in different times in my life. I also read the end quickly and I think that’s because I’ve gone through a full cycle. There is a lot of reflection and tools in this book, but it can feel very repetitive. I was ready for the next wild woman before each chapter closed. I think it could have been shortened but that might be my perspective because I’ve done most of this inner work already. But, I think I would enjoy one of her workshops!

[Sandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange book.. possibly judged so unfairly as I saw myself in more than one of the wild women.
I think it should be read by anyone with leftover ideas from their childhood.
Life is most assuredly a progressive thing, and maybe learning to recognize yourself is one
of the most important things.
That said, I am not sure I agree with the author, but I did read the book with expectations and some of them were realized.

[Sharon Fortier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a journey through 5 accessible archetypes! I am gaining a deeper sense of who I am!