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

by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Sometimes lovers begin this way too. At the beginning of a relationship they are only fishing for a little excitement, or a little “help me make it through the night” antidepressant. Without realizing it, they unwittingly enter a part of their own and the other person’s psyches in which Skeleton Woman resides. While their egos may be fishing for fun, this psychical space is sacred ground for Skeleton Woman. If we troll these waters, we are guaranteed to hook her for certain.

We pretend we can love without our illusions about love dying, pretend we can go on without our superficial expectations dying, pretend we can progress and that our favorite flushes and rushes will never die. But in love, psychically, everything becomes picked apart, everything. The ego does not want it to be so. Yet it is how it is meant to be, and the person of a deep and wildish nature is undeniably drawn to the task.

What dies? Illusion dies, expectations die, greed for having it all, for wanting to have all be beautiful only, all this dies. Because love always causes a descent into the Death nature, we can see why it takes abundant self-power and soulfulness to make that commitment. When one commits to love, one also commits to the revivification of the essence of Skeleton Woman and all her teachings.

The relationship begun in all goodwill flaps and sways, and sometimes staggers, when the “sweetheart” stage is over. Then, instead of enacting a fantasy, the more challenging relationship begins in earnest and all one’s craft and wisdom must be called into action.

Refusing to allow all the cycles of life and death in the love relationship causes the Skeleton Woman nature to be ripped from her psychic lodgings and drowned. Then the love relationship takes on a strained “... let us never be sad, let us always have fun” face to be maintained at all costs. The soul of the relationship sinks out of sight, set to drift under water, senseless and useless.

Skeleton Woman is always thrown over the cliff when one or both lovers cannot stand her or understand her. She is thrown over the cliff when we misapprehend the use of transformative cycles: when things must die and be replaced by others. If lovers cannot stand these Life/Death/Life processes, they cannot love one another over and beyond hormonal aspirations.

Love costs. It costs bravery. It costs going the distance, as we shall see.

To love means to stay with. It means to emerge from a fantasy world into a world where sustainable love is possible, face to face, bones to bones, a love of devotion. To love means to stay when every cell says “run!” When lovers are able to tolerate the Life/Death/Life nature, when they are able to understand it as a continuum—as a night between two days—and as the force that creates a love that endures a lifetime, they are able to face the Skeleton Woman in the relationship. Then together they are strengthened, and both are called to deeper understanding of the two worlds they live in, one the mundane world, the other, the world of spirit.

The Death nature has an odd habit of surfacing in love affairs just at the time we feel we have won over a lover, just as we feel we have landed “a big fish.” That’s when the Life/Death/Life nature surfaces and scares everyone sideways. That is when more contortions go on about why love cannot, will not, should not “work” for either party concerned. That is where all the diving into the burrow is done. It is an effort to become invisible. Invisible to the lover? No. Invisible to the Skeleton Woman. That is what all the running and hiding is about. But, as we see, there is nowhere to hide.

We see this odd phenomenon in all love affairs: the faster he runs, the more she picks up speed. When one or the other lover attempts to run from the relationship, the relationship is paradoxically invested with more life. And the more life that is created, the more frightened the fisherman becomes. And the more he runs, the more life is created. This phenomenon is one of life’s central tragi-comedies.

What one fears can strengthen, can heal.

So here the Death Woman chases the man across water, across the boundary of the unconscious to the conscious land mass of the mind. The conscious psyche becomes aware of what it has caught and tries desperately to outrun it. We do this constantly in our lives. Something fearsome raises its head. We aren’t paying attention and keep pulling it up, thinking it is some booty. It is a trove, but not the kind we’ve imagined. It is a treasure we’ve unfortunately been taught to fear. So we attempt to run away or throw it back, or prettify it and make it what it is not. But this will not work. Eventually, we all have to kiss the hag.

There is a saying that when the student is ready the teacher appears. This means the interior teacher surfaces when the soul, not the ego, is ready. This teacher comes whenever the soul calls—and thank goodness, for the ego is never fully ready. If it were solely up to the ego’s readiness to draw this teacher to us, we would remain essentially teacherless for life. We are blessed, since the soul continues transmitting its desire regardless of the ever-changing opinions of our egos.

For modern lovers the idea of “taking space” is like the fisherman’s little snowhouse, where he thinks he is safe. Sometimes this fear of confronting the death nature is distorted into “begging off,” trying to keep only the pleasurable sides of the relationship going without dealing with Skeleton Woman. That will never work. It causes lovers who are not “taking space” immense anxiety, for they themselves are willing to meet Skeleton Woman. They have primed themselves, they have reinforced themselves, they are attempting to keep their fears balanced. And now, just as they are ready to untangle this mystery, just as one or the other is about to drum on the heart and sing up a life together, one lover cries “Not yet, not yet” or “No, not ever.”

If it is love we are making, even though we are apprehensive or frightened, we are willing to untangle the bones of the Death nature. We are willing to see how it all goes together. We are willing to touch the not-beautiful5 in another, and in ourselves. Behind this challenge is a cunning test from the Self. It is found even more clearly in tales where the beautiful appears ugly in order to test someone’s character.

What is the not-beautiful? Our own secret hunger to be loved is the not-beautiful. Our disuse and misuse of love is the not-beautiful. Our dereliction in loyalty and devotion is unlovely, our sense of soul-separateness is homely, our psychological warts, inadequacies, misunderstandings, and infantile fantasies are the not-beautiful. Additionally, the Life/Death/Life nature, which births, destroys, incubates, and births again, is considered by our cultures the not-beautiful.

What must I give more death to today, in order to generate more life? What do I know should die, but am hesitant to allow to do so? What must die in me in order for me to love? What not-beauty do I fear? Of what use is the power of the not-beautiful to me today? What should die today? What should live? What life am I afraid to give birth to? If not now, when? If

“Ignorance is not knowing anything and being attracted to the good. Innocence is knowing everything, and still being attracted to the good.”