Clarissa Pinkola Estés

"Compliance causes a shocking realization that must be registered by all women. That is, to be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves. It is a tormenting tension and it must be borne, but the choice is clear."

First of all, I have to say that trying to choose a favorite quote from this book is absolutely ridiculous. Every page had at least one mind or soul blowing nugget for me.

This was not an easy book show more for me to read. If fact, quite often it felt like required reading for an undergraduate women's studies course. But, I vowed not to take a light-hearted reading break like I did nearly a decade ago and to power through to the end.

It wasn't difficult because it was boring or overly challenging. It just felt like every sentence had the power to change me and had me thinking deeply about my past, present, and future. There is much to digest here if you want to connect with the wild woman inside of you.

And, trust me, YOU REALLY, REALLY DO.

I was gifted the book back when I was still married, but it sat on my shelf until about a decade ago when I read the first third. This launched me into a belated initiation into wild womanhood. Although I did myself a disservice by not finishing it back then, living wildly didn't leave me a whole lot of time to do so!

Now, as I prepare to move into the house I built out of my dreams where the jungle touches the sea in Panamá, I finally got around to finishing it.

So much wisdom, love, and support of women on these pages! So many reminders and so much validation. And, just the guidance I needed for my latest chapter...and onward.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes helped to fill a massive gap in my life. She's my surrogate mom and will always be one of my guides. show less

Not an easy book to explain or review but I'll try. I've heard of this book before (it was first published in 1992 and I know back then I would not have been interested), and recently found it at a local used bookstore. The cashier said, "Oh, this is a wonderful book! I loved it!" I can't remember the last time a bookseller raved about a book that I had up for purchasing.

The author is a Jungian analyst and also a storyteller. What this means for this book and its readers is that she tells show more the story of many myths -- there were just a few that I was familiar with, such as "Bluebeard" and "The Ugly Duckling" -- and re-interprets these stories in how it applies to the inner lives of women. The Wild Woman is her way of describing the soul of a woman.

While I question whether these old stories were actually meant as Pinkola Estes interprets them, I found them fascinating analogies of how women, from birth, are constantly told by others in words and/or actions that they should be "this way" or "not that way". This is a never-ending message to women that they cannot simply be themselves. It is not just men, but also other women, who can negatively influence the female soul. The author often uses the behavior of wolves to show how we can learn from them.

There's a lot to think about here and process, so much so that I feel that it deserves a re-read by me. It is not a quick read and it is the type of book that would need to be read at the right time. I would recommend it to others only if I thought they were ready for it -- if not, it would just be something that would be set aside because this book is far more than just re-telling of ancient myths from all over the world.

I have many folded-over pages in this book -- I am averse to folding pages as book-marking, but don't mind doing it (tiny corners!!) when I want to be able to refer back to something. Here are a few excerpts from those folded-over pages.

(note: for the first quote below, the [...] is the author's, and not an indication that I left out part of the quote. The "work" she refers to is helping with psychic development).

"The 'craft of making' is an important part of the work, I work to empower my clients by teaching them the age-old crafts of the hands...among them fetish and talisman making, these being anything from simple ribbon sticks to elaborate sculpture. Art is important for it commemorates the seasons of the soul, or a special or tragic event in the soul's journey. Art is not just for oneself, not just a marker of one's own understanding. It is also a map for those who follow after us". (p. 15)

"At a very mundane level, it is important for a woman having dark man and Bluebeardian sorts of dreams to cleanse her life of as much negativity as she can. Sometimes it is necessary to limit or thin out certain relationships, for if a woman is outwardly surrounded by persons who are antagonistic to or careless about her deep life, her interior predator is fed by this and develops extra muscle within her psyche, and more aggression toward her." (p.71)

"Friends who love you and have warmth for your creative life are the very best suns in the world. When a woman, like the Little Match Girl, has no friends she also becomes frozen by anguish, and sometimes by anger as well. Even if one has friends, those friends may not be suns. They may give comfort instead of informing the woman about her increasingly frozen circumstances. They comfort her -- but that is far different from nurture. Nurture moves you from one place to another. Nurture is like psychic Wheaties.

The difference between comfort and nurture is this: if you have a plant that is sick because you keep it in a dark closet, and you say soothing words to it, that is comfort. If you take the plant out of the closet and put it in the sun, give it something to drink, and then talk to it, that is nurture." (p. 323) show less

I picked up this book because I love folklore, mythology and stories. I was unprepared for the tidal wave of ancestral knowledge that each familiar tale could offer me. The author examines a collection of popular stories in granular detail. She lovely isolates each piece and shares both its history at how it can be applied to the psychology of women. What do these stories tell us about how to love, how to grow, how to grow old? What do the warn us of? What can they teach us about show more ourselves?

This text is deep and even after the hundreds of pages in this volume, I felt like there was still so much more to learn. These cultural stories are not shared merely as a means of entertainment on a dark night, but as an ever evolving guide for those with a willingness to hear. show less

Sometimes the universe delivers just the book you need, at just the right time, and for me this is one of those books. Spotted in the non-fiction section at our local charity book sale, I hadn’t heard of this book before, but something drew me to pick it up and take it home. Maybe it was the mythology promised on the front cover, or maybe it was the wolves and Wild Women that I knew hid within. Either way, this was just the transformational book that I needed this year - irregardless of show more the fact that it took me almost 5 months to read. In each chapter author Estés shares a folkloric tale and then proceeds to examine it in terms of feminist theory, psychology, and for its storytelling mythos. Throughout the stories the emergence of the Wild Woman is prominent, and while the book may begin as a collection of tales and anecdotes it quickly moves into the realm of self-affirming ethos. For me, at this particular point in my life, the book served as a reminder of the Wild Woman inside that was buried for far too long. So now it’s time to collect the bones, rove the world, and most importantly to Howl at what brings me joy. show less