I look to Artemis for all of these reasons. She was the embodiment of femininity in all of its many forms. She was the chaste and innocent child, yet, as the goddess of childbirth, she was not ignorant to the reality of severe pain endured by women, embodying the instinct of protection with a harsh hand. She was a huntress who also defended the forest against those who would seek to harm it rather than coexist with it. The wilderness of Artemis was that of a free, uncontrollable, and wild nature—one which cannot be, and should not be, contained.

Most interestingly, and something only a real academic nerd would know, temples to Artemis sat right at the city limits in the Greek world. Worship to Artemis demanded that those involved step away from civil society’s confines and recognize nature’s beauty and necessity. 

In my own life, I have found my most stable, peaceful self when I return to nature or simply allow myself the space to be silent and still. Experiencing all my feelings and emotions without constraining myself to anyone else’s idea of what I should do has brought joy into my life, which I never thought possible.

With that awareness of self comes the understanding that I am an angry person by nature. I have been angry my whole life; it is the emotion with which I am most familiar. For a long time, I either raged at the world around me or tried to push my anger down, like trying to fill a suitcase with too many clothes—it would never work. I couldn’t control my rage until I stopped seeing it as a bad thing, a character flaw. I rage at what is worth raging at. Once I understood this, my anger became a tool, a motivating force to act.

Artemis was the goddess of a nature that was as kind and peaceful as it was destructive and angry. If I acknowledge that nature is both the tsunami and the sunset, I can allow myself moments of both calm and chaos.