Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD - Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
(Ballantine, 1992/1995)
I first read Women Who Run With the Wolves just after college, late 1994/early 1995, by recommendation from a younger teammate on the Princeton Women’s BB team. I loved the stories and the life lessons and symbolism they contained. I think ‘Skeleton Woman’ remains my favorite tale (Chapter 5, p132) but I am also quite partial to ‘Hymn for the Wild Man: Manawee’ (Chapter 4, p116) as well as ‘The Crescent Moon Bear’ (Chapter 12, p347) and ‘The Handless Maiden’ (Chapter 14, p389). Dr. Estes speaks a lot about bones, starting with “Singing Over the Bones” as the introduction to her insightful and inspiring book. I am sure I pulled my references to bones from her work, “... cradled in the boney hands of all those that have gone before." (p224, TKC) There is a depth to the stories and the concepts that Dr. Estes writes about and every time I read Women Who Run With the Wolves I discover new insights and hidden treasures I had missed previously. I have read Women Who Run With the Wolves from front to back four times - first in ~ 1995 and again in 2010, 2011, and at the end of 2013. I have given my mom and sisters copies and a few friends, as well. I have suggested the book to others and I have thought about starting a book group centered on the concepts found and described in Women Who Run With the Wolves. Dr. Estes has been my teacher for many years now and her wisdom and wild warmth have inspired and instructed me, allowing me to pull up the skeleton I thought I had lost many years ago and bring my banished self back to life. |
Top of the page: Statue depicting the legendary she-wolf that suckled orphaned twins Senio and Aschio - the mythical founders of Siena - that greets visitors as they enter the walled city of Siena.
Picture at right: View from coastal trail on the northwest coast of Italy that leads from Porte Venere to Campiglia.
Picture at right: View from coastal trail on the northwest coast of Italy that leads from Porte Venere to Campiglia.