The Greek Artemis, known to the Romans as Diana, was the virgin goddess of wild animals, hunting, vegetation, chastity, and childbirth. She was the daughter of Zeus and Leto and the twin sister to the god Apollo. Artemis was associated with the moon in contrast to Apollo’s association with the sun. In all Artemis’s many forms and functions, she remained the goddess of wild nature, dancing with the nymphs in the mountains and forests and marshes. She was both Huntress and Mistress of the Animals, their protector. In Greek literature, those who enacted harm to the young and the innocents faced the wrath of Artemis.

I harken back 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, temples to Artemis would sit 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. However, 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.