🐍 Loving the Rebel Into a Revolutionary

For as long as I can remember, there’s been a voice inside me that refuses to play along. She’s loud. She’s disruptive. She doesn’t want to fit in or follow the rules. She is the part of me that glares at authority, that laughs at systems, that whispers, “No, not this way — there’s another way.”

I’ve spent much of my life fighting with her.

The Rebel.

She’s made my journey messy, complicated, and at times, incredibly lonely. When everyone else seemed to fall in line, my Rebel made me question, resist, push back. She didn’t want to do what she was told — not by teachers, not by bosses, not even by me.

And for years, I believed something was wrong with me because of her.

The Exile of the Rebel

Growing up, most of us are trained to believe that being “good” means being compliant. We’re rewarded for sitting still, for coloring inside the lines, for following the rules. The Rebel doesn’t like rules. She doesn’t care about lines. She wants to rip the coloring book apart and draw her own shapes.

But in a world that prizes obedience, she isn’t celebrated. She’s shamed. Labeled as “difficult,” “too much,” “unruly.”

That shame seeps deep. It teaches us to exile her, to silence her, to put her in the basement of our psyche where she can’t cause trouble.

That’s what I tried to do for so long. I told myself she was dangerous, untrustworthy, embarrassing. She threatened the fragile acceptance I thought I needed to survive.

So I fought her. I disciplined myself. I tried to be who I thought others wanted me to be.

But here’s the truth: the Rebel never goes away.

You can bury her, but she doesn’t die. She waits. She plots. And sometimes, she bursts out at the most inconvenient times, leaving you to pick up the pieces.

The Teacher’s Wisdom

Recently, a teacher shared with me a truth that changed everything:

The Rebel is not the problem. She is the adolescent stage of something much more powerful.

When we love her, when we bring her home and give her a seat at the table, she begins to mature. She blossoms into the Revolutionary.

The Rebel says, “I don’t want this.”The Revolutionary says, “Here’s the vision for something better.”

The Rebel pushes against.The Revolutionary builds towards.

The Rebel disrupts.The Revolutionary transforms.

And suddenly, all those years of inner conflict began to soften.

Loving the Rebel Free

For the first time in my life, I stopped trying to silence her. I stopped shaming her. Instead, I asked her:

What do you need? What are you protecting me from? What truth are you trying to show me?

The answers stunned me.

My Rebel has always seen differently. She notices cracks in the stories we’re told, hypocrisies in the systems we’re asked to trust. She refuses to swallow lies, even the ones that keep everyone else comfortable.

She’s not here to make me difficult. She’s here to make me free.

And giving her permission to speak, to breathe, to move through me, has been the most liberating thing I’ve ever done.

The Archetype of the Rebel

In Jungian terms, we might call the Rebel an archetype of individuation. She is the psychic force that refuses to be swallowed by the collective.

Every culture, every mythology, has its Rebels: Prometheus stealing fire from the gods, Inanna descending into the underworld, Kali dancing on Shiva’s chest. They defy what “should” be and, in doing so, carve a path for transformation.

But there’s a paradox: the Rebel cannot live forever in rebellion alone. She must evolve.

Without that evolution, the Rebel can turn destructive — burning everything, including herself. But when she is loved into maturity, her fire becomes creative. She becomes the Revolutionary — the one who doesn’t just break down, but builds anew.

The Revolutionary

The Revolutionary carries the vision. She doesn’t just scream at the cracks in the world — she imagines what could rise in their place. She creates the conditions for liberation, not just for herself, but for others.

I’m beginning to see my Rebel with new eyes. She is not my enemy. She is my apprentice stage, my seed form, my raw fire. When I honor her, I give birth to the Revolutionary in me — the woman who knows she was never meant to fit in, because she was meant to remake the shape of things.

The Liberation of Permission

What has been most freeing is the permission.

Permission to not fit in. Permission to ask better questions. Permission to be disruptive, unruly, too much.

Permission to love the Rebel.

Because in loving her, I also love the part of me that has always been awake, always been watchful, always been unwilling to pretend.

And what’s surprising me most of all is this: when I stopped fighting her, I found more peace inside myself than I ever imagined possible.

Living the Experiment

I don’t know exactly where this experiment will lead. I just know that bringing my Rebel home, wrapping her in love, and letting her grow into her Revolutionary nature feels like the truest path I’ve ever walked.

And I wonder — what about you?

• Do you have a Rebel living in you?

• Have you been taught to exile her?

• What might shift if you loved her instead?

  
  

The Rebel in each of us holds the seeds of our unique way of seeing, creating, and becoming. She is the one who insists we were never meant to live small.

And if we’re brave enough to give her what she needs — our love, our trust, our patience — she will grow into the Revolutionary who can change not just our lives, but the world around us.

Closing

So, here I am. Still messy. Still learning. Still walking the wild edges between Rebel and Revolutionary.

And maybe that’s the point — not to get it perfect, not to finally “arrive,” but to keep evolving. To let each season of the self have its place in the great cycle.

This is the work I walk with my clients inside Sovereign Serpent Coaching. We bring home the exiled parts. We tend to the shadowed voices. We learn to love what we once feared in ourselves. And in that love, we discover the deeper magic of who we are.

If you’re curious about exploring your own inner Rebel — or whatever part of you has been silenced, shamed, or hidden — I would be honored to walk with you. You can explore my current offerings here.

Here’s to the Rebels. Here’s to the Revolutionaries. Here’s to the liberation that comes when we stop fighting ourselves and start loving ourselves whole.

With Fire and Reverence,

Leah

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