Meet Laura
experience designer
The Beginning of Wild Awake Woman
For much of my life, I believed what many women are taught to believe: if I worked hard enough, achieved enough, and checked all the right boxes, fulfillment would naturally follow.
For much of my life, I believed what many women are taught to believe: if I worked hard enough, achieved enough, and checked all the right boxes, fulfillment would follow.
So I did what was expected. I built a career as a CFO in construction, raised a family, embraced every role, and kept moving forward. From the outside, my life looked successful.
Then I hit 45 and lost my job.
I was dazed and lost, numb in a way I would only find words for later. On my own trainer’s advice, I became a personal trainer. About five years in, I knew it wasn’t it, and the question I had been avoiding finally had my attention.
Where have I left myself?
I asked it in the ordinary places, because that is where the answer lives. My calendar. The yes I gave too fast. The project that stopped being fun and kept going anyway.
What I found was that I had handed myself over in pieces, one reasonable decision at a time.
I wasn’t fully living my life. I was managing it.
Midlife didn’t feel like a crisis. It felt like an invitation.
An invitation to question the definitions of success I had inherited, step away from the noise, and find out what was actually true for me.
I stopped searching for the next answer and started creating space to hear my own.
I chose to slow down. I spent time in nature and with the horses, traveled with intention, and said yes to experiences that invited reflection.
I’ve owned horses for over 40 years, and they were the first to show me what I’d been doing. Meri showed me most clearly.
“When Meri chose to take those few steps back, she wasn’t rejecting me. She was reflecting me.”
It took time to let go of a lifetime of expectations and proving. With every intentional choice I felt more like myself, and eventually I could see the shape of what I had been doing.
Release what no longer fits. Reclaim what has always been yours. Rise into what is next.
I call it The Wild Awake Way.
It wasn’t overnight. Letting go of a lifetime of expectations and proving took time. But with every intentional choice I felt more like myself, and eventually I could see the shape of what I had been doing.
Release what no longer fits.
Reclaim what has always been yours.
Rise into what is next.
I call it The Wild Awake Way.
Today, I live differently.
I measure my life by how present I am within it. My work is an expression of who I am and what I believe.
Wild Awake Woman grew from that. It lives at Wild Awake Ranch in Parker, Colorado: a pasture, four horses, a long table, and room enough to hear yourself think. Women come for a Thursday dinner, a Sunday afternoon, a day with the horses, or a journey further from home.
Every one of those experiences is designed so a woman can remember who she’s been all along.
Find your way to the ranch. There’s a place for you here, and the gate is open.
What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
-Mary Oliver