WOMEN who run with the WOLVES

By: Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

“A healthy woman is much like a wolf–robust, inventive, loyal, fierce.

Yet separation from her wildish nature causes a woman to be meager, ghostly, anxious about leaping, fearful to create new life. With the wild nature as ally and teacher, we see not through two eyes only, but through the many eyes of intuition. With intuition we are like the starry night; we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes.

The archetype of the Wild Woman carries los bultos, all the bundles for healing and meaning. She carries all the medicines of stories, words, and songs, all the mending tools of dances, signs and symbols. She is both vehicle and destination. She is the essence of the female soul.

No matter how many times she is cut back, or called unsafe, dangerous, useless or mad, she rises through the psyche regardless. Even la sombra, the most restrained woman, keeps a secret place for the wild nature. Even la cautiva, the most captured woman, is waiting for an opportunity to hightail it to freedom.

All women are born gifted. To live close to the instinctual nature does not mean to become undone. It means to establish one’s creative territory, find one’s pack, be in one’s own body with certainty and pride. It means to act on one’s behalf, to find what one belongs to. It means to rise with dignity, to proceed as a powerful being who is friendly but never tame.

The Wild Woman is the one who thunders in the face of injustice. She is the one who keeps a woman going when she thinks she’s done for. The Wild Woman is fluent in the language of dreams, images, passion and poetry. No act of love or social justice occurs without her. She lives in women everywhere; in the barrios and in the boardrooms, in the prison and on the mountain at the fire, in the penthouse suite and on the night bus to Brownsville. She is mother of el duende, the goblin wind of creativity. She leaves footprints behind for us to try on for size.

Whether you are possessed of a simple heart or the ambitions of an Amazon, whether you are trying to make it to the top or just make it through tomorrow, whether you be spicy or somber, regal or roughshod—the wild nature belongs to you. She truly belongs to us all. The issue is simple. Without us, Wild Woman dies. Without Wild Woman, we die.”