Woman Who Runs with Wolves
We are all filled with a longing for the wild. There are few culturally sanctioned antidotes for this yearning. We were taught to feel shame for such a desire. We grew our hair long and used it to hide our feelings. But the shadow of the Wild Woman still lurks behind us during our days and in our nights. No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed. ---Clarissa Pinkola Estes

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 creature, has innate integrity and healthy boundaries. The Wild Woman archetype is a feminine manifesto for all women regardless of age, race, creed or religion, to return to their .....roots. Through myth, fairy tale and ean extended soul conversation calls back into life the wild neglected places of the feminine psyche.

Reclaim your Wild Woman Soul
Wildlife and the Wild Woman are both endangered species. Over time, we have seen the feminine instinctive nature looted, driven back, and overbuilt. The spiritual lands of the Wild Woman have been plundered or burnt, bulldozed, and natural cycles forced into unnatural rhythms to please others.
Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion. Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mates and their pack. They are experienced in adapting to constantly changing circumstances; they are fiercely stalwart and very brave.

Llamar o tocar a la puerta means literally to play upon the instrument of the name in order to open a door. It means using words that summon up the opening of a passageway. No matter by which culture a woman is influenced, she understands the words wild and woman intuitively.
When women hear those words, an old, old memory is stirred and brought back to life. The memory is of our absolute, undeniable, and irrevocable kinship with the wild feminine, a relationship which may have become ghostly from neglect, buried by over-domestication, outlawed by the surrounding culture, or no longer understood anymore. Sometimes a word, a sentence or a poem is so resonant, so right, it causes us to remember, at least for an instant..... 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 the 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, or we are not going on without her any longer. Without our wildish nature.
Once women have lost her and then found her again, they will contend to keep her for good, fight hard to keep her.

Like my kith and kin before me, I swagger-staggered in high heels, and I wore a dress and hat. But my fabulous tail often fell below my hemline, and my ears twitched until my hat pitched, down over both my eyes, and sometimes clear across the room. I've not forgotten the song of those dark years, hambre del alma, the song of the starved soul. But neither have I forgotten the joyous canto hondo, the deep song, the words of which come back to us when we do the work of soulful reclamation.

For with her wildish nature their creative lives blossom; their relationships gain meaning and depth; their cycles of sexuality, creativity, work and play are re-established; they are no longer marks for the predations of others; they are entitled under the laws of nature to grow and thrive. Now their end of the day fatigue comes from satisfying work and endeavors, not from being shut up in too small a mindset job or relationship. They know instinctively when things must die and when things must live; they know how to walk away, they know how to stay.

Within every woman there lives a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. She is the Wild Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women. Join in the journey that unfolds in the rich intercultural myths, fairy tales, and stories to reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries we will retrieve, examine, love and understand the Wild Woman. In the next few weeks we will learn The resurrection of the Wild Woman, The dark man in woman's dreams, retrieval of intuition, union with another, finding one's pack, belonging, Skeleton Woman; facing the life/death/life nature of love, body talk, identifying traps, cages and poisoned bait, Sealskin, Soulskin; returning to oneself, boundaries of rage and forgiveness, battle scars, La Selva Subterranea, the river beneath the river, your true soul self.........

Clarissa Pinkola Estees, PH.D. author website