Letters from Grenada

Women Who Run With the Wolves (Clarissa Pinkola Estes) was published in 1992 and my mom got it right away, which means I was 15 when I first read it. Which explains a lot about me and my particular brand of weird. I’m won’t even attempt here to distill the book into something neat and pithy. “Myths and stories of the wild woman archetype”? That’s a topic better suited for a PhD thesis than a blog post.

I offer the following excerpt for your consideration:

“She comes to us through sound as well; through music which vibrates the sternum, excites the heart; it comes through the drum, the whistle, the call, and the cry. It comes through the written and the spoken word; sometimes a word, a sentence or a poem or a story, is so resonant, so right, it causes us to remember, at least for an instant, what substance we are really made from, and where is our try home.

These transient “tastes of the wild” come during the mystique of inspiration ” ah, there it is; oh, now it has gone. The longing for her comes when one happens across someone who has secured this wildish relationship. The longing comes when one realizes one has given scant time to the mystic cookfire or to the dreamtime, too little time to one”s creative life, one”s life work, or one”s true loves.

Yet it is these fleeting tastes which come both through beauty as well as loss, that cause us to become so bereft, so agitated, so longing that we eventually must pursue the wildish nature. Then we leap into the forest or into the desert or into the snow and run hard, our eyes scanning the ground, our hearing sharply tuned, searching under, searching over, searching for a clue, a remnant, a sign that she still lives, that we have not lost our chance. And when we pick up her trail, it is typical of women to ride hard to catch up, to clear off the desk, clear off the relationship, clear out one”s mind, turn to a new page, insist on a break, break the rules, stop the world, for we are not going on without her any longer.

Once women have lost her and then found her again, they will contend to keep her for good. Once they have regained her, they will fight and fight hard to keep her, for with her their creative lives blossom; their relationships gain meaning and depth and health; their cycles of sexuality, creativity, work, and play are reestablished; they are no longer marks for the predation of others; they are entitled equally under the laws of nature to grow and to thrive.

When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer worlds. When women are close to this nature, the fact of that relationship glows through them. The wild teacher, wild mother, wild mentor supports their inner and outer lives, no matter what.

So the word wild here is not used in its modern pejorative sense, meaning out of control, but in its original sense, which means to live a natural life, one in which the criatura, creature, has innate integrity and healthy boundaries. These words, wild and woman, cause women to remember who they are and what they are about. They create a metaphor to describe the force which funds all females. They personify a force that women cannot live without.“

Posted on February 4th, 2010 under Grenada • Tags: archetypes, books, GPOYW, mythology, photo meme, PHOTOS, tumblr. •  Print This Post •  Email This Post • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback