Wild Wolf Woman

Finding the Authentic Woman Within

An Appreciation of:
Pinkola Estés, Clarissa, Women Who Run With the Wolves: myths and stories of the wild woman archetype. New York : Ballantine Books, 1995.

"We are all filled with a longing for the wild...
No matter where we are,
The shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed."

Introduction

Wildlife and Wild Woman are both endangered species when feminine instincts are forced into unnatural rhythms.
Our environment suffers just as our own inner wild nature fades.
Healthy wolves and healthy women share common characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and heightened capacity for devotion; they are relational by nature, inquiring, possessing endurance and strength; intuitive, concerned with their young, their mates, and their pack; adaptable to changing circumstances; stalwart and brave.
Living life as a disguised criatura, creature, forgetting the canto hondo, the deep song; but words come back when we do soul reclamation.
llamar o tocar a la puerta: the fairy tale knock at the door of the female psyche; when these words are heard, old memory is brought to life; kinship with the wild feminine--in our bones we know her.
She comes to us through vision; through sound; through the written and spoken word; a swift "taste of the wild" reminds us we haven't given time to our creative life.
"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."
All women are born gifted; when we understand the wildish nature as a being in its own right (one than animates our inner life), we can begin to develop in ways never thought possible.
Symptoms of a disrupted relationship with our wild nature:
feeling dry, fatigued, frail, depressed, confused, muzzled, unaroused.

feeling frightened, weak, without inspiration, without meaning, stuck, uncreative, compressed.

feeling powerless, shaky, life-sapping choices, inert, uncertain, faltering; afraid to bite back; afraid of the new

Healthy woman is like a wolf: Robust, strong life force, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving.

To find your wild nature means "[t]o 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 fiminine 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 possible."

Simplest and most accessible means of healing: stories, including dream material; interactive trancing, which is proximate to Jung's active imagination; most times the guidng myth or fairy tale can be found, which contains the instruction a woman needs for psychic development.

Teaching women the "craft of making": for example, the symbolic arts of talisman making.

Stories are medicine; stories are embedded with instructions; sometimes the cultural overlays disrupt the stories--e.g., Grimm's fairy tales: the storytellers sometimes purified their stories--old pagan symbols overlaid with Christian ones, so that a wise healer becomes a evil witch, etc.; this is how many women's teaching tales were lost.
Chapter 1: The Howl: Resurrection of the Wild Woman
Stories: La Loba, the Wolf Woman; The Four Rabbinim
Chapter 2: Stalking the Intruder: The Beginning Initiation
Story: Bluebeard
Chapter 3: Nosing Out the Facts: The Retrieval of Intuition as Initiation
Story: The Doll in Her Pocket: Vasalisa the Wise
Chapter 4: The Mate: Union With the Other
Story: Hymn for the Wild Man: Manawee
Chapter 5: Hunting: When the Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Story: Skeleton Woman: Facing the Life/Death/Life Nature of Love
Chapter 6: Finding One's Pack: Belonging as Blessing
Stories: The Ugly Duckling; The Mistaken Zygote
Chapter 7: Joyous Body: The Wild Flesh
Chapter 8: Self-Preservation: Identifying Leg Traps, Cages, and Poisoned Bait
Story: The Red Shoes
Chapter 9: Homing: Returning to Oneself
Story: Sealskin, Soulskin
Chapter 10: Clear Water: Nourishing the Creative Life
Story: La Llorona
Chapter 11: Heat: Retrieving a Sacred Sexuality
Story: The Dirty Goddesses
Chapter 12: Marking Territory: The Boundaries of Rage and Forgiveness
Stories: The Crescent Moon Bear; The Withered Trees; Descansos
Chapter 13: Battle Scars: Membership in the Scar Clan
Story: The Woman With Hair of Gold
Chapter 14: La Selva Subterránea: Initiation in the Underground Forest
Story: The Handless Maiden
Chapter 15: Shadowing: Canto Hondo, the Deep Song
Chapter 16: The Wolf's Eyelash
Afterword: Story as Medicine

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