Authors: Clarissa Pincola Estes
ADDENDUM
In response
...
In response to readers asking about various aspects of my work and life, we have expanded some sections of this work in small ways, adding several anecdotes, clarifications, and various additional notes, expanding the afterword, and publishing here a prose-poem for the first time that was part of the original manuscript. All of these ministrations were done carefully and without disturbing the cadence of the work.
Three years later
...
Many readers have written to express appreciation, to share news of their reading groups who have been studying
Women Who Run With the Wolves
, and to send blessings and inquiries about future works. They have read this book
carefully and closely, and often more than once.
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In all, I have been gently astonished to find that the spiritual roots of my work, even though quietly stated in the subtext of the book, were so evident to so many readers. My warmest gratitude for readers’ blessings sent our way, their kind words, thoughtful insights, great generosities of heart,
beautiful
gifts made by hand, and their abundant gestures for strengthening and sheltering— such as including my work, the welfare of my family and loved ones, and myself—in their everyday devotions. All these gestures are preciously held in my heart.
Long ago, but not so far away
...
Here I will try to comment on some of the interests that readers have conveyed to us.
Many have asked about how the writing of
Women Who Run With the Wolves
began. “The writing began long before the writing began.”
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It began by being born
into the unusual and quixotic family structures that
El
destino
had prepared for me. It began with decades of being filled up by heartbreaking beauty and seeing much hope-lost in cultural, societal, and other kinds of storms. It began as the result of loves and lives both harsh and dear. “The writing began long before the writing began”—this I can say with confidence.
The actual physical writing by hand began in 1971, after a pilgrimage from the desert to my homeplace where I asked for and received blessings from my elders to write a special body of work rooted in the song-language of our spiritual roots. Promises were given by all in many directions then, and have been kept all these years and to the letter... the most important being, “Do not forget us and what we have suffered for.”
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Women Who Run With the Wolves
is the first part of a five-part series encompassing one hundred tales on the inner life. The entire twenty-two hundred pages of work took just over twenty years to write. In its essence, the work strives to de-pathologize the integral instinctual nature, and to demonstrate its soulful and essential psychic ties to the natural world. The basic premise that runs through all my work asser
ts that all human beings are born
gifted.
On voice
...
The work was purposefully written in a blend of the scholarly voice via my training as a psychoanalyst, and equally so, in the voice of the traditions of healing and hard work that reflect my ethnic origins—immigrant, lower working class, and
Católicos
all. The heritage of my growing up is the rhythm of labor, and this shapes me first and foremost as
una poeta,
as poet.
As it represents both a
psychological and spiritual document, various bookshops have placed
Women Who Run With the Wolves
in several sections at the same time: Psychology, Poetry, Women’s Studies, and Religious Studies. Some have said it defies category,
or has begun a new one of its own. I do not know if this is so, but, at its root, I hoped it would be as much an artwork as a psychological work on spirit.
A reader’s note
...
Women Who Run With the Wolves
strives to assist the conscious work of individuation. The book is best approached as a contemplative work that is written in twenty-some sections. Each section stands on its own.
Ninety-nine percent of the letters we receive relate how the reader is reading the work not only to themselves, but also to and with a loved one: mother to daughter, granddaughter to grandmother, lover to lover, and in weekly or monthly reading groups. Because the work cannot be read in a week or a month's time, it lends itself to being studied. The work itself invites the personal lives of each reader to be weighed against what is proposed there, decided for or against, passed close to, deepened, returned to, and seen through an ongoing maturation process.
Take your time reading. The work was written slowly over a long period of time. I wrote, went away, and thought about it,
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came back and wrote some more, went away, thought some more, and came back and wrote some more. Most people read this work the way it was written. A little at a time, then go away, think about it, then come back again.
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Remember
...
Psychology, in its oldest sense, means the study of the soul. Although essential and valuable insights have been contributed in the last century and more will be contributed yet, the mapping of human nature, in all its precious variety, is far from complete. Psychology is not one hundred or so years old. Psychology is thousands of years old. The names of many noble men and women who contributed to psychological knowledge are properly honored. But psychology did not begin there. It began with anyone and everyone who heard a voice greater than their own, and who felt compelled to seek its source.
Some have said that my work constitutes “a newly emerging held.” I must say, with all due respect, that the essence of the work
I’ve been given to do is from very old tradition. This kind of work does not fit restfiilly under the category of “emerging” anything. Thousands of people in every generation worldwide, mostly old ones who are often “uneducated” but wise in many ways, have watched over and protected its exact and intricate parameters. It has always been alive and thriving because they have been alive and thriving, and held the work to certain shapes and means.
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A caveat
...
The matter of individual maturation is a custom endeavor. There can be no rote, “do this, then this.” The process of each individual is
unique
and cannot be codified into a “do these ten easy steps and all will be well.” This kind of work is not easy and it is not for everyone. If you seek a healer, analyst, therapist, or counselor, make certain they derive from a discipline that has solid predecessors, that they truly know how to do what they hold themselves out as able to do. Ask friends, relatives, and co-workers whom you trust for their recommendations. Make certain whichever teacher you choose is trained, and adequately, in both methods and ethics.
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Life now
...
I am underground writing and working much of the
time,
but... “there are occasional sightings.” I continue to live as I have lived for many years now... ardently introverted, yet fiercely dedicated to striving to be in the world. I continue to work as analyst, poet, and .writer, as well as caring for my large extended family. I continue to speak on social issues, persevere to record audio, paint, compose, translate, teach, and help to train young psychoanalysts. I teach literature, writing, psychology, mythopoetics, contemplative life, and other subjects at various universities as visiting scholar.
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Sometimes people ask what has been the most memorable event over the past few years. Certainly there have been many, but the one that pierced my heart completely was the happiness of the elders in our family when this work was first published—for them, the first book from one of their own in print ever. A particular image: When my eighty-four-year-old father saw this book for the first time, he cried out in his broken English, “A book, a book, a real book!” And right there in his garden, he began to dance an old
Csibraki
dance from the old country.
The work
...
As
cantadora
(keeper of the old stories), and as an ethnic woman from two cultures, it would be hard
not
to recognize that humans are very diverse culturally, psychologically, and otherwise. Such being so, it seems to me that it would be an error to think that any one way is
the
way. This particular work is offered as a contribution to what is known and what is needed in a true psychology of women—one that includes
all
the kinds of women that exist, and
all
the kinds of lives they lead.
My observations and experiences over these twenty-some years of practice with both women and men have led me to the idea that regardless of one’s state, stage, or station in life, one must have psychological and spiritual strength in order to go forward—in small ways, as well as against the considerable winds that are, from time to time, in effect in every person’s life.
Strength does not come
after
one climbs the ladder or the mountain,
nor after one
“makes it”—whatever that “it” represents. Strengthening oneself is
essential
to the process of striving—
especially before and during
—as well* as after. It is my belief that attention to and devotion to the nature of soul
represente
the quintessential strength.
There is much afoot at any given time that can make a shambles of spirit and soul by attempting to destroy intent, or by pressuring one to forget the important questions: Questions such as, not only what are the pragmatics of a situation, but also “where is the soul in this matter?” One proceeds in life, gains ground, reverses injustice, and stands against the winds, through strength of spirit.
This strengthening, whether with words, prayer, contemplations of various kinds, or by other means, comes from
a numen,
a greatness that rests at the center of the psyche and yet is greater than the whole of the psyche. This
numen
is entirely accessible, must be attended to and nourished. Its existence, regardless of its many appellations, is an incontrovertible psychic fact.
Difficult and rich—this is what a person in an authentic
maturation finds at the essence of it all—and it shows, both inside and outside, on the person who strives toward it. This we know, there is a noticeable difference between a considered life of depth and one based on phantasmagoric beliefs. On this journey toward “true home,” though we may, from time to time, turn back to record or measure from whence we came, we do not turn back in order to turn back.
NOTES
Sometimes I call endnotes such as these
los
cuentitos,
little stories. They are the offspring of the larger text and are meant to be a separate work of ait in and of themselves. They are meant to be read straight through, if one wishes, without referring back to the larger text. I invite you to read them both ways.
INTRODUCTION
Singing o
ver the Bones
This place in the psyche, where the dreams, stories, poetry, and art meet, constitutes the mysterious habitat of the instinctual or wild nature. In contemporary dreams and poetry and in the older folktales and writings of mystics, the entire milieu of the core is understood as a being with a life of its own. It is most often symbolized in poetry, painting, dance, and dreams as either one of the vast elements such as ocean, vault of sky, loam of earth, or as a power with personhood, such as
Queen of Heaven, The White Doe, The Friend, The Beloved, The Lover,
or
The Mate.
From the core, numinous matters and ideas rise up through the person who experiences “being filled by something not-I.” Also, many artists carry
their own ideas and matters born
of ego to the edge of the core and drop them in, sensing rightfully that they will be returned newly infused or washed with the erne's remarkable psychic sense of life. Either way, this causes a sudden and profound awakening, changing, or informing of the senses, mood, or heart of the human. When one is freshly informed, one's mood is changed. When one’s mood is changed, one’s heart is changed. That is why the images and language that arise from that core are so important In combination, they have the power to change one thing into another in a way that is difficult and tortuous to accomplish by will alone. In this sense, the core Self, the instinctual Self, is both healer and life-bringer.
CHAPTER ONE
The Howl: Resurrection of the Wild Woman
CHAPTER TWO
Stalking the Intruder: The Beginning Initiation
Too, in day to day life, there arc plenty of light-stealers and consciousness-killers afoot. In the main, a predatory person misappropriates* a woman’s creative juice, taking it for their own pleasure or use, leaving her whitened and wondering what happened, while they themselves somehow grow more rosy and hearty. The predatory person desires that a woman not heed her instincts lest she perceive that a siphon has been attached to her mind, her imagination, her heart, her sexuality, or whatever else.
The pattern of sunehdering one’s core life may have begun in childhood, fostered by caretakers who wanted the child’s gifts and loveliness to augment the caretaker’s own emptiness and hunger. To be trained thusly gives enormous power to the innate predator and sets one out to be prey for others. Until one’s instincts are put back in proper order, a woman so raised is exceedingly vulnerable to being overwhelmed by the unspoken and devastating
psychic needs of others. Generally, a woman with good instincts knows the predator is insinuated nearby when she finds herself involved in a relationship or situation that causes her life to become smaller rather than larger.
dream scenarios that humans dream. In the
typical dream, the phone will not work, or the dreamer cannot figure out how it works. The phone wires have been cut, the numbers on the keypad are out of order, the line is busy, the emergency number has been forgotten or is not functioning properly. These sorts of telephone situations in dreams are very close in timbre to the misstated or deviously switched message in letters, such as in the folktale ‘The Handless Maiden” when the devil changes a celebratory message to a malicious one.
CHAPTER THREE
Nosing Out the Facts:
The Retrieval of Intuition as Initiation
It is possible to remedy these developmental lags that destabilize the formation of trust, strength, and self-nurturance, for this matrix appears to be built less like a brick wall (that would fall down if too many of the bricks below were removed) and to be woven more like a net. This is why so many women (and men) function quite well even with many holes or lags in their nurturant systems. They tend to favor the aspects of the mothering complex where there is least damage to the psychic net. Seeking wise and nourishing guidance can help to mend this net no matter how many years a person has lived with injury.
families in fairy tales as well, some of the most well known motifs being that of the kindly old couple in the forest who happen upon an abandoned child, and the stepparent who welcomes a child crippled in some way and nurses the child back to health or helps the child to find extraordinary power.