wild woman

I am a wolf woman. A wild woman who has spent much of her life buying into being tamed. Reining in, in an attempt to be more “appropriate” as dictated by our collectively swallowed dulled mindset. Awkwardy shrinking to fit in a box that’s much too small for this soul. But restlessness has me pawing away. And after pawing and pawing, I think I’ve realized that the cage door’s been open all this time. I’ve just been convinced, and afraid, that I can’t make it out there.

That mindset has made prisoners of us, trapped in paralyzing psychology. Somewhere along the line, we’ve picked up this “I can’t” mantra. All of us. But women in particular have a special gift/challenge of being attuned and rooted to something viscerally and spiritually vital, while being pushed into being proper, safe, and reserved. I believe we can shake it, not by revolutionizing our cultural beliefs (which would be great, and may still happen) but by changing our minds, and not giving a shit what other people think of the actions we take after we do. Becoming wild again, not meaning out of control, but rather… after so long, and once again, being in control.

Do not be silent when you are full of fire.

———–

“No matter by which culture a woman is influenced, she understands the words wild and woman, intuitively.

When women hear those words, an old, old memory is stirred and brought back to life. The memory is of our absolute, undeniable, and irrevocable kinship with the wild feminine, a relationship which may have become ghostly from neglect, buried by over-domestication, outlawed by the surrounding culture, or no longer understood anymore.

We may have forgotten her names, we may not answer when she calls ours, but in our bones we know her, we yearn toward her, we know she belongs to us and we to her.”

“Once women have lost her and then found her again, they will contend to keep her for good.

Once they have regained her, they will fight hard to keep her, for with her their creative lives blossom; their relationships gain meaning and depth and health; their cycles of sexuality, creativity, work, and play are reestablished; they are no longer marks for the predations of others…

Now their end-of-the-day fatigue comes from satisfying work and endeavors, not from being shut up in too small a mindset, job, or relationship.”

“Without her, women’s inner eyes are closed by some shadowy hand, and large parts of their days are spent in a semi-paralyzing ennui or else wishful thinking.

Without her, women lose the sureness of their soulfooting. Without her, they forget why they’re here, they hold on when they would best hold out. Without her they take too much or too little or nothing at all.

Without her they are silent when they are in fact on fire.”

“Even the most captured woman guards the place of the wildish self, for she knows intuitively that someday there will be a loophole, an aperture, a chance, and she will hightail it to escape.”

“So, let us push on now, and remember ourselves back to the wild soul. Let us sing her flesh back into our bones. Shed any false coats we have been given. Don the true coat of powerful instinct and knowing. Infiltrate the psychic lands that once belonged to us. Unfurl the bandages, ready the medicine. Let us return now, wild women howling, laughing, singing up The One who loves us so.”

All excerpts from Women Who Run With the Wolves by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, who understands the wild in women.

All photos by The Bone Horse.

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