Copyright 2009- All Rights Reserved
It is useful to make sure that we understand how the word wild or Wild Woman is used by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her book, Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. Wild is not used in negative sense, meaning out of control, but “in original sense of living a natural life, one in which a creature has innate integrity and healthy boundaries.” Wild is defined as: Occurring in a natural state, not cultivated; Uninhabited or uncultivated region, not inhabited; Extravagant; fantastic.
Though we are born with our wildish nature, we women have been “civilized” into rigid roles and that has “muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls.” We are repressed, captured, pushed down, forbidden, cut back, diluted, tortured, weakened, sanitized, unnatural, consumed by others.
Estes tells us: “Within every woman there is a wild and natural creature, a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. Her name is Wild Woman but she is an endangered species.”
“The Wild Woman,” says Estes, “is the female soul… the source of the feminine…all that is of instinct, of the worlds both seen and hidden… all the instincts and knowings needed for our lives.”
Dr. Estes contends that when we women lose touch with the instinctive soul, we live in a state where we are cut away from our basic source. The purpose of her book of stories is to help women find a way to live their instinctive lives.
She says:
“This is a book of women’s stories, held out as markers along the path. The stories were chosen to embolden you. They are for you to read, contemplate, and follow toward your own natural-won freedom, your caring for self, animals, earth, children sisters, lovers, and men. …the doors to the world of Wild Woman are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”
You might ask: What fruit, what flowers, what life nourishment—spiritual, emotional, physical, mental—for body and soul is there in these stories?
One answer is in this quotation from Estes. “If a story is seed, then we [the listeners] are its soil,” says Estes. The stories in the book are “seeds” and women or the listeners are the “soil.” Living things are born in and from the soil. Living things are nourished and nurtured there. Living things are protected and given strength and sustenance there. Hopefully, the fruit or flower that will bloom from the listener’s “soil” is a woman's inner life being set in motion which leads a woman back to her own real life as "knowing wildish women.”
Estes believes that “stories are medicine… with such power that we need only listen” to find remedy, restoration, repair of any lost psychic, soul or spirit drive. Such is her goal in this book of intriguing tales, myths, stories. I urge you to listen to these stories to find your way to healing paths. Listen to them and find your way to the Wild Woman within you.
Wild women live their instinctive lives...their true lives.
Do you?
Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. Publisher-Ballantine Books, 1992.
End
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Woman Series: Women Who Run with the Wolves-Part I
Copyright 2009- All Rights Reserved
I’ve always loved fairy tales, myths—stories. My mother and father told and read me stories when I was a child. When I learned to read, stories—fairy tales, comic books, movies—were my first love. Although some cultures, those of Latin America, of middle Europe, of Africa, still pass stories along, American culture tends to think of stories as only the stuff of childhood and that these things should be left behind us after we come of age. That is a mistake, I believe.—an attitude that misses the point of stories.
What is it about stories that I love…that people love? Why do they transfix us so? I believe the answer lies in this: Stories are a vessel, a construct, a vehicle that we have deliberately created to transport, through time and space for ourselves and each other, precious and essential information for living—ideas, knowings, wisdom, consciousness, learning, hope, touch and connection, nourishment and warmth, support and encouragement to keep going.
They were meant to give us heart as we pick our way over the paths of life. If we tell them to each other as adults and we listen, they reveal the markers of life’s journeys: growing up, adulthood, growing old, birth and rebirth, trials and ordeals, dangers and safe harbors, loss and endurance, sacrifice and hope, transformation and light.
This is certainly true of the book of stories I have just finished reading called Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I recommend its hope to the defeated, the cynical, the pessimist. I recommend its wisdom to the curious, the sophisticate, the intellectual. I recommend its love and warmth to the isolated, the fearful, the lonely and disconnected. It is a wonderful book: Comforting. Supportive. Encouraging. Challenging.
Using multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, Dr. Estes’ book helps women reconnect with our buried healthy, instinctual selves and inner lives. The stories that Estes has collected and retells in her book are fascinating; the explanations of what the stories mean are intriguing. They whisper the secrets of a woman’s core being, her spirit, her soul…how to discover, find, reclaim my true feminine nature, how to heal those precious gifts of feminine instinct, knowing, wisdom (“wildness”) that has been mislaid, buried, waylaid, stolen, denied. Her stories console me, reassure me, teach me to rely on and trust my instincts. They gently release me from what has bound me: social convention, cultural roles, childhood wounds, family history, adult injuries, shame, guilt, secrets, betrayals, fears, traps, learned coping behaviors that have turned into strangling vines.
End Part I
I’ve always loved fairy tales, myths—stories. My mother and father told and read me stories when I was a child. When I learned to read, stories—fairy tales, comic books, movies—were my first love. Although some cultures, those of Latin America, of middle Europe, of Africa, still pass stories along, American culture tends to think of stories as only the stuff of childhood and that these things should be left behind us after we come of age. That is a mistake, I believe.—an attitude that misses the point of stories.
What is it about stories that I love…that people love? Why do they transfix us so? I believe the answer lies in this: Stories are a vessel, a construct, a vehicle that we have deliberately created to transport, through time and space for ourselves and each other, precious and essential information for living—ideas, knowings, wisdom, consciousness, learning, hope, touch and connection, nourishment and warmth, support and encouragement to keep going.
They were meant to give us heart as we pick our way over the paths of life. If we tell them to each other as adults and we listen, they reveal the markers of life’s journeys: growing up, adulthood, growing old, birth and rebirth, trials and ordeals, dangers and safe harbors, loss and endurance, sacrifice and hope, transformation and light.
This is certainly true of the book of stories I have just finished reading called Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I recommend its hope to the defeated, the cynical, the pessimist. I recommend its wisdom to the curious, the sophisticate, the intellectual. I recommend its love and warmth to the isolated, the fearful, the lonely and disconnected. It is a wonderful book: Comforting. Supportive. Encouraging. Challenging.
Using multicultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, Dr. Estes’ book helps women reconnect with our buried healthy, instinctual selves and inner lives. The stories that Estes has collected and retells in her book are fascinating; the explanations of what the stories mean are intriguing. They whisper the secrets of a woman’s core being, her spirit, her soul…how to discover, find, reclaim my true feminine nature, how to heal those precious gifts of feminine instinct, knowing, wisdom (“wildness”) that has been mislaid, buried, waylaid, stolen, denied. Her stories console me, reassure me, teach me to rely on and trust my instincts. They gently release me from what has bound me: social convention, cultural roles, childhood wounds, family history, adult injuries, shame, guilt, secrets, betrayals, fears, traps, learned coping behaviors that have turned into strangling vines.
End Part I
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