Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Within every woman there lives a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. She is the Wild Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women. But she is an endangered species. For though the gifts of wildish nature belong to us at birth, society’s attempt to “civilize” us into rigid roles has muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls.

In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, many from her own traditions, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries in this remarkable book, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman, and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine.

myths and stories of the wild woman archetype

Women who run with the wolves

Mara D Alo Fonseca

When we assert intuition, we are therefore like the starry night: we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes.

A Jungian analyst explores the feminine psyche through stories of "wild women"--the mythological archetype of the strong, primitive woman

Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

Women who Run with the Wolves

Laura Mei

There is something waiting for us at the edge of the woods, and it is our fate to meet it.

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.

The idea in our culture of body solely as sculpture is wrong. Body is not marble. That is not its purpose. Its purpose is to protect, contain, support and fire the spirit and soul within it, to be a repository for memory, to fill us with feeling - that is the supreme psychic nourishment. It is to lift us and propel us, to fill us with feeling to prove that we exist, that we are here, to give us grounding, heft, weight. It is wrong to think of it as a place we leave in order to soar to the spirit. The body is the launcher of those experiences. Without body there would be no sensations of crossing thresholds, there would be no sense of lifting, no sense of height, weightlessness. All that comes from the body. The body is the rocket launcher. In its nose capsule, the soul looks out the window into the mysterious starry night and is dazzled.

In mythos and fairy tales, deities and other great spirits test the hearts of humans by showing up in various forms that disguise their divinity. They show up in robes, rags, silver sashes, or with muddy feet. They show up with skin dark as old wood, or in scales made of rose petal, as a frail child, as a lime-yellow old woman, as a man who cannot speak, or as an animal who can. The great powers are testing to see if humans have yet learned to recognize the greatness of soul in all its varying forms.

Initiation is the process by which we turn from our natural inclination to remain unconscious and decide that, whatever it takes — suffering, striving, enduring 

we will pursue conscious union with the deeper mind, the wild Self.

In a tragedy the heroine is snatched, forced, or drives straight into hell and is subsequently overwhelmed. No one hears her cries, or else her pleas are ignored. She loses hope, loses touch with the preciousness of her life, and collapses. Instead of being able to savour her triumph over adversity, or her wisdom of choices and her endurance, she is degraded and deadened. The secrets a woman keeps are almost always heroic dramas that have been perverted into tragedies that go nowhere.

To create one must be able to respond. Creativity is the ability to respond to all that goes on around us, to choose from hundreds of possibilities of thought, feeling, action, and reaction that arise within us, and to put these together in a unique response, expression, or message that carries moment, passion, and meaning.

In the view of analytical psychology, the repression of both negative and positive instincts, urges, and feelings into the unconscious causes them to inhabit the shadow realm.

Overkill through excesses, or excessive behaviors, is acted out by women who are famished for a life that has meaning and makes sense for them. When a woman has gone without her cycles or creative needs for long periods of time, she begins a rampage of — you name it —alcohol, drugs, anger, spirituality, oppression of others, study, control, education, orderliness, to name a few areas of common excess. When women do this, they are compensating for the loss of regular cycles of self-expression, soul-expression, soul-satiation.

jess

erin alise 

Mina

I was frustrated with her writing style but did not want this book to end.

“We grew our hair long and used it to hide our feelings. But the shadow of Wild Woman still lurks behind us during our days and in our nights. No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed.”
--------------------

I am usually not the type of person, who can read “insightful personal improvement” type of books. You know the kind of books I mean; the books that claim they will empower you while doubling down on every type of cliché self-motivation quote out there. So it really was a surprise that I enjoyed a large chunk of this book, which is essentially an intuitive feminine spirit guide woven around stories.

Right off the bat, I should clarify that it is “that” type of book, in a way. This is a book that can be enjoyed only if you are willing to let go of the uptight, eye-rolling, cynical instincts you have inside. God knows I have a lot of those. Just approach this book with an open mind, otherwise, it can feel forced or cringy. But once you embrace the metaphor and the style, it is really an interesting ride into the instinctual nature we all have inside.

Women Who Run With the Wolves is essentially an elaborate metaphor and guide towards self-discovery, self-love, and self-confidence: it is an exercise in finding, accepting, trusting, and rejoicing in your own identity without restriction. What sets this book apart from the many out there was its poetical, almost mystical style of laying the foundations with fairy tales that tie into psychology. The deep analysis of fairy tale go deeper than can be perceived at first sight; the psychological symbolism, spiritual imagery, and powerful guidelines add up to a mystical but insightful journey without being too performative or insincere.

However, as far as guidance and advice goes, I found it to be poetic, but in most cases, ambiguous in practice. We are shown a pathway, but no tools to advance. The guide is at times too vague and mystical that it is difficult to entangle the real meaning behind it. While I think this is intentional on part of the author, as everyone is individual and might have different approaches to achieving a certain psychological state, a lot of the time, I felt it was too prose-y to be effectual. Combined with the often overly repetitive sections, I could feel my mind-stamina running out towards the end of the book. (Although I should say that each to their own. It might be more useful for a larger audience to explain the same idea in multiple ways, I found it to be too repetitive and hence, a bit boring at times.)

Overall, a very interesting approach with some very interesting and inspirational moments.

Ashley

A book every single woman should read at least twice in their lives.

Generally uplifting and served its purpose, yet -1 star for general TERF-iness/the general biological essentialism and -1 star for being weird about the birth stuff. I don't think giving birth is an experience necessary for all women to be considered true women.

Safiya 

That was a long read... but I enjoyed every bit of it ! It felt like a long therapy session !
Women Who Run With the Wolves is a guide to introspection. I wouldn't refer to it as exclusively a women's read, but I guess it will profit anyone who opens it.
The book is about healing from any dogmas that were imposed on women, recovering the wildest nature of women, and igniting their creative power in order to live in harmony with Nature through the study of universal archetypes in folk stories or dreams from C.G Jung perspective...
Healing through stories resonated deeply with me, since I come from a storytellers family as well. 
"For us, story is a medicine which strengthens ... the individual and the community."
Although I have never tried to see it through a Jungian grid, but the archetypes present in our stories and hers are almost universal: I tried analysing "Hina" in the same fashion that "Vasalisa" was depicted...
The analogy between Wolves and Wild Women was ultimately staggering: both sharing "The instinctual nature has the miraculous ability to live through all positive boon, all negative consequence, and still maintain relationship to self, to others".
Being a wild woman also means being able to ask questions: "Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open." and then going down the corridors of psyche to find out what is it that we truly root for ?
"What stands behind? What is not as it appears? ... What of me has been killed, or lays dying?" or in !wolfish words the only question to ask is : Where is the Soul ?
I was particularly drawn to the creative feminine life, since its abundance is a good sign of a vital soul:  "Often the creative life is slowed or stopped because something in the psyche has a very low opinion of us, and we are down there groveling at its feet instead of bopping it over the head and running for freedom. In many cases what is required to aright the situation is that we take ourselves, our ideas, our art, far more seriously than we have before. Due to wide breaks in matrilineal (and patrilineal) succour over many generations, this business of valuing one’s creative life—that is, valuing the utterly original, beauteous, and artful ideas and works which issue from the wildish soul—has become a perennial issue for women.
Having experienced that blocus several times in my work, I had my own tricks to escape it and was surprised to find a few written in the book: " Consciousness is the way out of the box, the way out of the torture. It is the path away from the dark man."
Another hack was to be willing to become vulnerable ( poke: Brené Brown) and embracing shame, if shame there will be (which is tbh really rare):
"If you want to create, you have to sacrifice superficiality, some security, and often your desire to be liked, to draw up your most intense insights, your most far-reaching visions."
A major "concept" in the book is recovering the senses of the injuried woman, and strengthening her intuition:
"Another way to strengthen connection to intuition is to refuse to allow anyone to repress your vivid energies ... that means your opinions, your thoughts, your ideas, your values, your morals, your ideals. There is very little right/wrong or good/bad in this world. There is, however, useful and not useful. There are also things that are sometimes destructive, as well as things which are engendering."

To take the world into one’s arms and to act toward it in a soul-filled and soul-strengthening manner is a powerful act of wildish spirit.

Culturally Relatable Passages:
"For instance, women who are raised in families that are not accepting of their gifts often set off on tremendously big quests— over and over, and they do not know why. They feel they must have three Ph.D,s or that they have to hang upside down from Mount Everest, or that they must execute all manner of dangerous, time-consuming, and money-eating endeavors to try to prove to their families that they have worth. “Now will you accept me? No? Okay (sigh), watch this.” "

" A woman wants to be, go, do a big something, and stays home and counts paper clips instead. A woman wants to live life, but saves little shreds of life as though they are string. A woman flows with radiant creativity, and invites her vampirish friends to a group siphon."

"What is this symbol of veiling? It marks the difference between hiding and disguising. This symbol is about keeping private, keeping to oneself, not giving one’s mysterious nature away. It is about preserving the eros and mysterium of the wild nature. Sometimes we have difficulty keeping our new life energy in the transformative pot long enough for something to accrue to us. We must keep it to ourselves without giving it all away to whomever asks, or to whichever stealthy inspiration suddenly happens upon us, telling us it would be good to tip the pot and empty our finest soulfulness out into the mouths of others or onto the ground. Putting a veil over something increases its action or feeling. This is known among women far and wide."

Mantra Material:
 “I love my creative life more than I love cooperating with my own oppression."

'Women Who Run With The Wolves isn't just another book. It is a gift of profound insight, wisdom and love. An oracle from one who knows.' Alice Walker In the classic Women Who Run With The Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes tells us about the 'wild woman', the wise and ageless presence in the female psyche that gives women their creativity, energy and power. For centuries, the 'wild woman' has been repressed by a male-orientated value system which trivialises women's emotions. Using a combination of time-honoured stories and contemporary casework, Estes reveals that the 'wild woman' in us is innately healthy, passionate and wise. Thoughtfully written and compelling in its arguments, Women Who Run With The Wolves gives readers a new sense of direction, a self confidence and purpose in their lives.

Contacting the Power of the Wild Woman

Kate Gravelle

This book took me YEARS to read. I started it long before I knew what Goodreads was. It’s a heavy book with lots to mull over, digest and think upon. It’s good and difficult and soul searching and uplifting.

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

Reviews

Highlights