Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Can’t do anything right. Try to make it better. Makes it worse instead. Duckling had no business in that house. But you see what happens when one is desperate. One goes to the wrong place for the wrong thing.

Then a something that is sustaining appears out of nowhere to assist you, and then disappears into the night, leaving you wondering, Was that a person or a spirit? It might be a sudden gust of luck that brings something very needed in through your door. It might be as simple a thing as a respite, a let-up in pressure, a small space of rest and repose.

While exile is not a thing to desire for the fun of it, there is an unexpected gain from it; the gifts of exile are many.

if she builds it, others who have been looking for a long time will mysteriously arrive one day enthusiastically proclaiming that they have been looking for this all along.

Rather than understand that the beauty of her soul shines through when she is being herself, the woman changes the subject and effectively snatches nourishment away from the soul-self, which thrives on being acknowledged, on being seen.

They want you to be exactly the same today as you were yesterday. They wish you not to change with the days, but to remain as at the beginning of Steaming Time.

“civilized behavior,” I always worry for those who are too well behaved; they often have that “faint soul” look in their eyes. Something is not right. A healthy soul shines through the persona

Instead of making survivorship the centerpiece of one’s life, it is better to use it as one of many badges, but not the only one.

Thriving, not just surviving, is our birthright as women.

the body is considered to have two sets of ears, one for hearing in the mundane world, the other for hearing the soul; two sets of eyes, one set for regular vision, another for far-seeing; two kinds of strength, the strength of the muscles and the invincible strength of soul. The list of twos about the body goes on.

To be thought ugly or unacceptable because one’s beauty is outside the current fashion is deeply wounding to the natural joy that belongs to the wild nature.

Although a woman may not be able to stop the dissection of culture and lands overnight, she can stop doing so to her own 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.

The Self need not carry mountains to transform. A little is enough. A little goes a long way. A little changes much. The fertilizing force replaces the moving of mountains.

The symbol of shoes can be understood as a psychological metaphor; they protect and defend what we stand on—our feet. In archetypal symbolism, feet represent mobility and freedom.

Etymologically, the word instinct derives from the Latin instinguere, meaning “impulse,” also instinctus, meaning “instigation,” to incite or impel via an innate prompting. The idea of instinct can be valued positively as an inner something that when blended with forethought and consciousness guides humans to integral behavior. A woman is born with all instinct intact.

A woman can be outwardly polite and even cynical, but inwardly hemorrhaging.

Yes, but secretly so that she can have no help and no mentor. Is the performer risking putting out completely original work or is she presenting pale imitations so that she becomes mime instead of exemplar? What about the ambitious woman who is pretending to be not ambitious, but who is heartfelt toward accomplishments for herself, her people, her world? She is the powerful dreamer, yet consigns herself to struggle forward in silence. It is deadly to be without a confidante, without a guide, without even a tiny cheering section.

olden times, the devil, the soldier, the shoemaker, the hunchback, and other images were used to portray the negative forces in both earth nature and human nature.15

When the collective is hostile to a woman’s natural life, rather than accept the derogatory or disrespectful labels that are placed upon her, she can and must, like the ugly duckling, hold on, hold out, and search for that which she belongs to—and preferably outlive, out-thrive, and out-create those who vilified her.

scientists speculated that when a creature is exposed to violence, it will tend to adapt to that disturbance, so that when the violence ceases or the creature is allowed its freedom, the healthy instinct to flee is hugely diminished, and the creature stays put instead.17

“learned helplessness,”

Artists know. When you stir vibrant colors together, you get a color called mud. Not mud that is fertile, but mud that is sterile, colorless, strangely dead, that does not emit light. When painters make mud on the canvas they must begin all over again.

“He who cannot howl, will not find his pack.”

If we delve into the symbol of animal hide, we find that in all animals, including ourselves, piloerection—hair standing on end—occurs in response to things seen as well as to things sensed. The rising hair of the pelt sends a “chill” through the creature and rouses suspicion, caution, and other protective traits. Among the Inuit it is said that both fur and feathers have the ability to see what goes on far off in the distance, and that is why an angakok, shaman, wears many furs, many feathers, so as to have hundreds of eyes to better see into the mysteries. The sealskin is a symbol of soul that not only provides warmth, but also provides an early warning system through its vision as well.

in folklore the ego is portrayed as a creature of appetite, often symbolized by a not very bright human or animal surrounded by forces very mystifying to it, and over which it attempts to gain control.

Retrieval and return are the goals of mastery.

woman who has developed an impeccable persona but who is all crippled up with trying to maintain it. Well yes, she is crippled, but look at how nice she looks, look at how good she is, look at how well she’s doing.

The “dark night of the soul” has almost become a catchphrase in certain parts of the culture.

Yet women continue in their day-to-day routines, looking sheepish, acting guilty and smirky. “Yes, yes, yes, I know,” they say. “I should, but, but, but ...” It is the “buts” in their sentences that are the dead giveaways that they have stayed too long.

She does not realize that by sacrificing her need for return, she teaches her children to make the very same sacrifices of their own needs once they are grown.

The great healer archetype carries wisdom, goodness, knowing, caregiving, and all the other things associated with a healer. So, it is good to be generous and kind and helpful like the great healer archetype. But only to a point. Beyond that, it exerts a hindering influence on our lives. Women’s “heal everything, fix everything” compulsion is a major entrapment constructed by the requirements placed upon us by our own cultures, mainly pressures to prove that we are not just standing around taking up space and enjoying ourselves, but that we have redeemable value—in some parts of the world, it is fair to say, to prove that we have value and therefore should be allowed to live. These pressures are introduced into our psyches when we are very young and unable to judge or resist them. They become law to us ... unless or until we challenge them.

The most important thing I can tell you about the timing of this home cycle is this: When it’s time, it’s time. Even if you’re not ready, even if things are undone,

Discontent is the secret door to significant and life-giving change.

The drummer is able to frighten things away, as well as to evoke them. The singer carries messages back and forth between the great soul and the mundane self. By nature and tone of voice the singer can dismantle, destroy, build up, and create. The storyteller is said to have crept close and listened to the Gods talking in their sleep.19 So

Long ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one.20 To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily.

like amphibians: We can live on land, but not forever, not without trips to the water and to home. Overly civilized and overly oppressive cultures try to keep women from returning home. Too often, she is warned away from the water until she is thin as a dime and dimmed in light.

We are evoked in the way creatures are evoked by sun and water. We are made so alive that we in turn give life out; we burst, we bloom, we divide and multiply, we impregnate, incubate, impart, give forth.

The loss of clear creative flow constitutes a psychological and spiritual crisis.

When a river is tainted, everything begins to die off because, as we know from environmental biology, every life form is dependent on every other life form.

The “Harpy Syndrome” destroys via denigration of one’s talents and efforts, and through a most disparaging internal dialogue.

It may also be that a woman’s creative process is misunderstood or disrespected by those around her. It is up to her to inform them that when she has “that look” in her eyes, it does not mean she is a vacant lot waiting to be filled. It means she is balancing a big cardhouse of ideas on a single fingertip, and she is carefully connecting all the cards using tiny crystalline bones and a little spit, and if she can just get it all to the table without it falling down or flying apart, she can bring an image from the unseen world into being. To speak to her in that moment is to create a Harpy wind that blows the entire structure to tatters. To speak to her in that moment is to break her heart.

love my creative life more than I love cooperating with my own oppression.”

Lay out nourishment for the creative life. Although many things are good and nutritious for the soul, most fall into Wild Woman’s four basic food groups: time, belonging, passion, and sovereignty. Stock up. These keep the river clean.

We want to put ourselves in a situation where, like the plants and trees, we can turn toward the sun. But there has to be a sun. To do this we have to move, not just sit there. We have to do something that makes our situation different. Without a move, we are back out on the streets selling matches again.

Just holding the idea and the patience to rock it are what some women might call a luxury. Wild Woman says it is a necessity.

There were once Goddess cults that were in some part devoted to irreverent female sexuality. The rites were not derogatory, but were concerned with portraying parts of the unconscious that remain, yet today, mysterious and largely uncharted.

Women desire to live in a solely female atmosphere from time to time,

To see through the nipples is certainly a sensory attribute. The nipples are psychic organs, responsive to temperature, fear, anger, noise. They are a sensing organ as much as the eyes in the head.

This no doubt is the other gift of women’s jokings and shared laughter. It all becomes a medicine for the tough times, a strengthener for later. It is good, clean, dirty fun.