Published by Rider, 1998, softcover, index, 537 pages, condition: new.
In the classic Women Who Run With The Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estes tells us about the 'wild woman', the wise and ageless presence in the female psyche that gives women their creativity, energy and power. For centuries, the 'wild woman' has been repressed by a male-orientated value system which trivialises women's emotions. Using a combination of time-honoured stories and contemporary casework, Estes reveals that the 'wild woman' in us is innately healthy, passionate and wise.
Thoughtfully written and compelling in its arguments, Women Who Run With The Wolves gives readers a new sense of direction, a self confidence and purpose in their lives.
This book saved my life. I was seriously struggling with an enormous amount of class-related stress, centered around a completely unsuspected attack on my creative potential. After a few months of being shredded mentally and creatively by the people I'd expected to lean on for support and physically by the demands of moving to a new country, I was at a horrible place, alternating between periods of blind rage and near suicidal depression, and for the first time in my life I was watching my ability to create dim and all but vanish. I had two weeks to pull together a film shoot with a script that I needed to edit and then direct, I knew no one, I had no idea what I was doing and felt like I was running into a brick wall with everyone but one of my tutors, a woman who I've subsequently given a copy of WWRWW (she loves it).
This book brought me through that time. My level of self-awareness as both a woman and a product of my culture has reached a new peak, and through Estés' writing I have made one of the most difficult and empowering decisions of my life. This is a book for anyone who has ever asked why, and then shushed themselves. This book is a loud, shameless 'prayer for the still kept in cages' (thank you Tennessee Williams), and as it boldly refutes the constraints imposed upon a wild nature by propriety, society, and that nature itself it cannot help but resemble a tall glass of water in the middle of the desert. Buy this book. Read it. If it offends with cliché, force yourself to ignore it and take in the message anyway.
