She ran with the wolves...
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Many women call the book “Running with the Wolves” transformational, turning their lives upside down, forcing them to reconsider their true nature.
The author of the book is Clarissa Pinkola Estes, an American writer, PTSD specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst.
We know almost nothing about Estes herself. For example, the fact that she considers herself a cantadora (a Latin American word meaning a collector of old stories, ancient myths, that is, simply a storyteller). We know almost nothing about her life and the history of the book, which became a bestseller.
I managed to study Clarissa’s unusual biography a little and even get in touch with her on Facebook. Today I want to tell you about the facts of the biography of one of the greatest writers of our time, and at the end I want to share a translation of the message that she recently made for everyone who is going through difficult times.
The history of the book “Who Runs with the Wolves”
Dr. Estes always believed that her work in collecting stories would be personally addressed to her daughters. One day, she began to write down several such stories, analyze them, and write them down. Surprisingly, a Colorado company called Sounds True agreed to publish them. The tapes began a kind of underground movement that eventually prompted New York publishers to bid frantically for her book.
The life story of Clarissa Estes.
Dr. Estes was born in 1945 into a mixed family of Mexican and Spanish parents who moved to the United States. However, at the age of 3 years she was given to a foster family. The new parents were semi-literate immigrant farmers from Hungary. She spent her childhood in an immigrant farming community in the Great Lakes Midwest. Only about 600 people lived in the village. As a child, her home was filled with refugees rescued from slave labor and prisoners deported from camps during the war. Clarissa was the first in her family to graduate from elementary school.
Her relatives could neither read nor write, or did it stuttering. But they were wise when it came to farming and farming, and made everything from scratch, from shoes to songs. Thus, from childhood she was immersed in the oral tradition of storytelling, songs and chants, dances and ancient healing methods. Her work was deeply influenced by farmers, shepherds, charioteers, weavers, gardeners, tailors, carpenters, lacemakers, knitters, horsemen and riders from different countries of the old world.
“I was surrounded by poor immigrants,” she recalled, “People who came from everywhere because there were jobs here for those who could not read and write. There were mountain men from Tennessee and Kentucky who brought their banjos and their stories, people from Eastern Europe who brought their music and their stories, Mexicans from the border, black people, all of them with their music and their stories. I would leave the house to walk through the forest, and someone would always tell me their story.”
Later, as a divorced single mother, she went to college with a baby in a sling on her back, while simultaneously agreeing to any job for minimal money. She completed two colleges, graduate school, and a PhD in Jungian psychoanalysis.
When Estes talks, even about ordinary things like the mundane task of promoting books or snippets of her daily life, Clarissa Estes sounds as if she is telling some kind of fairy tale. Her voice is mellifluous, with a gentle whisper of Spanish accent, and she pauses here and there in the way the best storytellers do.
What makes her, or anyone, a true storyteller, she says, is “el duende.” What does it mean - the spirit behind the action, or the passion inside the gesture. The term is often used to describe a flamenco dancer or guitarist. The key to storytelling is the ability to be at the center of what you're talking about, to experience it.
Dr. Estes says she began studying folk tales and myths from different cultures because she felt that classical psychology did not meet the needs of women, especially those who are not of European descent. Through her research and work as a Jungian analyst and her passion as a cantadora, she explains: "I began to fill the space between the great pillars of classical psychology."
According to Estes, the book has this title because women and wolves share common psychic characteristics and are equally misunderstood by the world around them.
Clarissa Estes conveys to us that within a person there is a natural being, full of good instincts, compassion, creativity, carrying within itself Eternal Wisdom. This is our soul. However, this primordial or wild thing is suppressed by modern society as uncivilized and alien. The book helps to revive the natural Self in oneself - the same image of the Wild Woman from ancient legends.
What does Clarissa Estes write about in “The Wolves Runner”?
About how you can revive the Feminine Spirit through “psycho-archaeological excavations” in your own unconscious. She gently advises how to revive in yourself a healthy, clairvoyant, instinctive, living woman from those very ancient legends and myths.
This is a kind of fairy tale for adults, written in metaphorical language, created from images that are distant, but at the same time accessible to everyone. No wonder Estes is the winner of the famous Keeper of the Lore Award, approved by Joseph Campbell.
The Wolves Runner has now been translated into 40 languages and spent 145 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. But what's even more impressive is that Dr. Estes has been practicing as a therapist for over 40 years, helping war veterans, victims of the Armenian earthquake, and families who lost loved ones in the September 11 tragedy.
The therapist's work is her main one.
Today I want to share a message from Clarissa Pinkola Estes , which is addressed to everyone who is going through difficult times.
“Friends and girlfriends, do not lose heart. We were created for these times. Lately I have been hearing from many who are deeply confused. They are concerned about the state of affairs in our world now. Ours is one of almost daily amazement and righteous anger at the degradation of what matters most to civilized, forward-thinking people.
You are right in your assessments. The brilliance and pride that some aspired to in approving such heinous acts against children, the elderly, ordinary people, the poor, the defenseless, the helpless, is breathtaking. And yet, I urge you, I ask you, please do not waste your spirit mourning these difficult times. Don't lose hope. Especially because we were created for these times. Yes. For years we studied, practiced, trained and just waited for our participation.
I grew up on the Great Lakes and know a seaworthy vessel when I see one. As far as awakened souls are concerned, there have never been more capable vessels in the world's waters than now. And they are able to signal to each other like never before in human history.
Look at the mast of the ship: millions of boats of righteous souls are floating on the water with you. Even though your veneers may shake with every wave in the storm's whirlpool, I assure you that the long logs that make up your keel are made of big wood. This forest withstands storms, holds together, does not break, and moves forward no matter what.
The dark time of day tends to make us lose our minds over how much is wrong or uncorrected in the world. Don't get too hung up on it. There is also a desire to relax by focusing on what is beyond your control, on what has not yet happened. Don't focus on it. It's like using up the wind without raising the sails.
We are needed and that's all we can know. And although we meet resistance, we will even more so meet great souls who will welcome us, love us and guide us, and we will recognize them when they appear. Didn't you say that you believe? Didn't you say you swore to listen to a greater voice? Didn't you ask for mercy? Don't you remember that to be in grace means to obey a greater voice?
Our task is not to fix the whole world at once, but to reach out and fix that part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, insignificant thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to help some part of this poor suffering world, is a help immeasurable. It is not given to us to know what or whose actions will cause a critical mass to incline toward the enduring good.
What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of actions, adding, adding, adding more, continuing. We know that to establish justice and peace on Earth, not everyone is needed, but only a small, determined group of people who will not give up the first, nor the second, nor the hundredth time.
One of the most calming and powerful things you can do when intervening in this turbulent world is to stand up tall and show your soul. The soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul casts sparks, and can send flashes upward, creates signal lights, and makes things around light up. To show the lantern of the soul in such troubled times as these is to be undaunted and at the same time show mercy to others; both are acts of great courage and great necessity. Struggling souls catch the light of other souls who are fully illuminated and ready to show it. If you want to calm confusion, this is one of the most powerful things you can do. There will always be times when you feel exhausted and frustrated.
I, too, have experienced despair many times in my life, but I don’t have a chair for despair. I won't flirt with him. I won't let him eat from my plate. The reason is this: deep down, I know something, just like you. And this is that there can be no place for despair when you remember why you came to earth, who you serve and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours. These are the words and deeds of the one who brought us here. In the same spirit, I hope you will write on your wall: when a large ship is moored in the harbor, it is safe, there can be no doubt about it.
But are big ships built for this?
Pinkola Estes Quotes
Most often we wound others in the same place where we wounded ourselves.
1) If you want to destroy something, be cold. Once feelings, thoughts or actions freeze, relationships become impossible. Wanting to part with something in ourselves or let someone go, we stop paying attention to the person, inviting him and noticing him, we try not to meet him, not to see him and not to hear him.
2) If you restrain yourself too much, it may turn out that there is almost nothing to restrain.
3) Trying to be ourselves, we alienate many people, while trying to speak... ...show full text...
Age is measured by mental scars.
It is admiration for the past that gives us freedom, not living in the past.
People who don't approve of your life are not worthy of your attention.
Outwardly, a woman can behave politely and even cynically, but in her Soul she bleeds.
Dissatisfaction is the secret door that leads to important and life-giving change.
It is necessary to endure what you see and not close your eyes.
Runner with the Wolves
It’s easy to dream of perfect love and do nothing - it’s like anesthesia, from which you may never wake up, unless you grasp with all your might something valuable, but still inaccessible to our understanding. For the simple-minded and suffering, the miracle of the soul is that you will still accidentally stumble upon a treasure, even if you treat it with indifference or contempt, if you did not intend, did not hope or did not want to find it, if you consider yourself unworthy or unprepared.
To love means to stay when everything in you screams: “Run!”
Don't waste time hating your failures. Failures teach more than successes. Listen, learn, move forward.
Loneliness is not a lack of energy or movement, as some believe, but a gift from the treasury of primordial freedom that the soul gives us.
Whenever they begin to tell a fairy tale, night immediately falls. In whatever place, at whatever hour, at whatever time of year it happens, as soon as you start a fairy tale, the starry sky and the white moon peek out from behind the roofs and hang over the heads of the listeners. Sometimes, by the end of the fairy tale, dawn comes in the room, and sometimes a fragment of a star or a shaggy patch of stormy sky remains. And what remains is the treasure that has to be worked with, that has to be used in the creation of the soul.
Choose a person as if you were blind. Close your eyes and feel that you are thinking about this person. About his kindness, loyalty, insight, devotion, about his ability to take care of you and take care of himself as an independent being. Although our culture influences many things and what we see with our outer eyes is very important, what we see and perceive with our inner eyes when our eyes are closed is much more important.
…by trying to be ourselves, we alienate many people, and by trying to give in to the desires of others, we alienate ourselves. This is an excruciating tension that must be endured, but the choice is clear.
"Runner with the Wolves"
Mental hunger must be satisfied immediately, without waiting for it to push you to gluttony.
"Runner with the Wolves"
Forgive. It is important to remember that “ultimate” forgiveness is not resignation. It is a conscious decision to stop harboring hostility, including giving up the desire for revenge. Only you decide which debt to declare as non-payable. Some choose complete forgiveness, forever freeing the person from any compensation for damage. Others prefer to stop “mutual settlements” and forgive the remaining debt. Still others let the person go, not wanting any compensation from him, neither emotional nor... ... show full text ...
Healthy she-wolves and women have certain common mental characteristics - acute sensitivity, playfulness of disposition and deep devotion. Women and she-wolves are related by nature: they are inquisitive, endowed with enormous endurance and physical strength. They are characterized by deep intuition, careful care for their offspring, their spouse and the community as a whole. They skillfully adapt to constantly changing circumstances, are fierce in their loyalty and are unusually courageous.
However, both of them were always subject to bullying, oppression and false accusations of gluttony, insincerity and excessive aggressiveness; they were considered less worthy than their persecutors. They have become objects of hunting for those who dream of purifying not only the forest thickets, but also the wild corners of the soul - to destroy the instinctive so that not a trace remains of it. The predatory attitude of the ignorant towards wolves and towards women is strikingly similar in its manifestations.
Estes Clarissa Pinkola “Running with the Wolves. Female archetype in myths and tales."
Aesthetics was closer to me than athletics, [3] and it determined my only desire: to remain an enthusiastic wanderer. I preferred the earth, trees and caves to chairs and tables - I felt that it was in these places that I could press myself to the cheek of the Lord. The rivers always asked to visit them after dark, they always had to come to the fields so that they would have someone to rustle their stories with. A forest fire was supposed to be lit only in the dark, and fairy tales were supposed to be told only in the distance... ... show full text ...
We all yearn for the primeval. Culture offers little choice of antidotes to this melancholy. We have been taught to be ashamed of such attractions. We grew long hair and got used to hiding our feelings under it. But day and night the shadow of the Primordial Wild Woman lurks behind our backs. Wherever we step, this shadow sneaks behind us and - definitely - rests on all fours.
