BOOK NERD : Kickass Quotes from Women Who Run With The Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD (Part 1 of 4)...

First Things First : This is NOT a book about women.

Sure- "Women" is the first word in the title, but this is a book for us all.

It is a book about Soul... the retrieval of soul to be more specific.

And- that is why I will be exploring it all month long here in every BOOK NERD post, on the podcast, on Facebook, in the newsletter & on video, as it has inspired the theme for July.

It is a theme I have chosen with the utmost intention...

Witches Who Run With The Wolves.

My friend Lenora Henson turned me onto both this book & last week's Care Of The Soul, and I consider that combo to be one of the most radical gifts anyone has ever given me.

I hope that in sharing them here, I will be gifting a similar experience to you.

Women Who Run With The Wolves is a book that demands you spend time with it. It is not a quick, easy read, and to plow through it would be doing yourself a grave disservice.

This is a book that will ask you to read no more than a couple of chapters at a time and then to step back for a period of integration.

Every story presented within (& there are many) is a seed that will take root in the dark soil of your psyche until one day, perhaps before you've even realized what you've planted, it is blooming up & out into every facet of your life...

Until you've grown yourself a wild garden of MAGiCK & rampant desire, a full-bodied expression of the Life-Death-Life cycle in constant motion and the ferocity to protect every blazing inch of it...



★ "...the doors to the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "The craft of questions, the craft of stories, the craft of the hands- all these are the making of something, and that something is soul. Anytime we feed soul, it guarantees increase." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "Analysis, dream interpretation, self-knowing, exploration, all are undertaken because they are ways of backtracking and looping. They are ways of diving down and coming up behind the issue and seeing it from a different perspective. Without the ability to see, truly see, what is learned about ego-self and the numinous Self slips away." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "When a woman is attempting to avoid the facts of her own devastations, her night dreams are likely to shout warnings to her, warnings and exhortations to wake up! or get help! or flee! or go for the kill!" -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "Those who would develop consciousness pursue all that stands behind the readily observable: the unseen chirping, the murked window, the lamenting door, the lip of light beneath a sill. They pursue these mysteries until the substance of the matter is laid open to them." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "The deepest work is usually the darkest." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "One of the least discussed issues of individuation is that as one shines light into the dark of the psyche as strongly as one can, the shadows, where the light is not, grow even darker. So when we illuminate some part of the psyche, there is a resultant deeper dark to contend with. This dark cannot be let alone. The key, the questions, cannot be hidden or forgotten. They must be asked. They must be answered." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "A starved soul can become so filled with pain, a woman can no longer bear it. Because women have a soul-need to express themselves in their own soulful ways, they must develop and blossom in ways that are sensible to them and without molestation from others." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "While much psychology emphasizes the familial causes of angst in humans, the cultural component carries as much weight, for culture is the family of the family. If the family has various sicknesses, then all families within that culture will have to struggle with the same malaise." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "Throughout time there is the mystical sense that any individuation work done by humans also changes the darkness in the collective unconscious of all humans... " -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "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." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "Psychologically, young girls and boys are as though asleep about the fact that they themselves are prey." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "All creatures must learn that there exist predators. Without this knowing, a woman will be unable to negotiate safely within her own forest without being devoured. To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naivete, inexperience, or foolishness," -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "In a single human being there are many other beings, all with their own values, motives, and devices. Some psychological technologies suggest we arrest these beings, count them, name them, force them into harness until they shuffle along like vanquished slaves. But to do this would halt the dance of wildish lights in a woman's eyes; it would halt her heat lightning and arrest all throwing of sparks. Rather than corrupt her natural beauty, our work is to build for all these beings a wildish countryside wherein the artists among them can make, the lovers love, the healers heal." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

★ "Whether you are possessed of a simple heart or the ambitions of an Amazon, whether you are trying to make it to the top or just make it through tomorrow, whether you be spicy or somber, regal or roughshod- the Wild Woman belongs to you. She belongs to all women." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD

 ★ "Some people will not like it if you take a sniff at everything to see what it is. And for heaven's sakes, no lying on your back with your feet up in the air. Bad girl. Bad wolf. Bad dog. Right? Wrong. Go ahead. Enjoy yourself." -Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD



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