Women Who Run With The Wolves

The Literary Café

I was tickled pink when local artist Pamala Bird invited me to be part of her Art Talk on “Feminine Archetypes Around the World and Through The Ages” at the Canyon Community Center in Springdale on July 16 at 5 p.m.

Realizing that my knowledge on the subject had waned, I pulled a few choice books off my bookshelf and started studying again.

Reading Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ “Women Who Run with the Wolves” held me intellectually captive for days.

“I am built close to the ground and of extravagant body.” So writes the Jungian analyst and cantadora storyteller in her 1993, No. 1 New York Times best-seller. Remaining on the prized list for two years, Estes uses multicultural myths and folk and fairy tales — stories that she calls soul vitamins — to help women reconnect with the healthy, instinctual, visionary attributes of the Wild Woman archetype.

The wild and instinctual nature, according to Estes, means “to establish territory, to find one’s pack, to be in one’s body with certainty and pride regardless of the body’s gifts and limitations, to speak and act in one’s behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one’s cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as we can.” Wow!
She stresses that balance is necessary and good, and that women should beware of overdoing it in any area of their lives, even in creative work.

The entire book is a poem! I so enjoy Estes’ use of language and imagery and the various interpretations of stories and the universal and profound themes hidden underneath the layers of seemingly simple tales.

A note that I had scribbled on the back page in 1993 said, “Intriguing. Food for thought.” Clearly, Estes’ book had not had the same powerful impact with me 17 years ago as today.

Oh, thank goodness for the wisdom of maturity!

I recently watched the documentary “Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird” by filmmaker Mary Murphy. A few days later, while chatting with a small group of college journalism students about the 50-year history of the famed classic of modern American literature, I learned that none of them had read the book in high school or college.

I was horror-struck!

In 1961, Harper Lee, an unknown white woman from a small town in Alabama, won a Pulitzer Prize for her groundbreaking novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Released at the height of the African-American struggle against Jim Crow segregation, the book played a pivotal role in raising the country’s awareness of racism.

Go out beneath the naked night: From Women Who Run with the Wolves

"Creativity is a shapechanger. One moment it takes this form, the next that. It is like a dazzling spirit who appears to us all, yet is hard to describe for no one agrees on what they saw in that brilliant flash. Are the wielding of pigments and canvas, or paint chips and wallpaper, evidence of its existence? How about pen and paper, flower borders on the garden path, building a university? Yes, yes. Ironing a collar well, cooking up a revolution? Yes. Touching with love the leaves of a plant, pulling down "the big deal," tying off the loom, finding one's voice, loving someone well? Yes. Catching the hot body of the newborn, raising a child to adulthood, helping raise a nation from its knees? Yes. Tending to a marriage like the orchard it is, digging for psychic gold, finding the shapely word, sewing a blue curtain? All are of the creative life.

Aw...you have to know how much I love this post. I create....therefore I am! Plain and simple, it the very essence of me and something I could not live without. As ever-important as food, water and sunshine...to my health, my sanity and my soul! I strive to add a little (okay, sometimes a LOT) of creativity to everything I do, from the smallest things to the largest! And I simply ADORE creative people. They are the driving forces that spin my world around! Such a fabulous quote, thank you for sharing!

Women who run with the wolves, myths and stories of the wild woman archetype

Women who run with the wolves, myths and stories of the wild woman archetype

Women who run with the wolves, contacting the power of the wild woman

The curse of the werewolf, fantasy, horror and the beast within

Because she can