Clarissa Pinkola Estés Quotes

"I've seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write... and you know it's a funny thing about housecleaning... it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A woman must be careful to not allow over-responsibility (or over-respectabilty) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she "should" be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only."

If you have yet to be called an incorrigable, defiant woman,
don't worry, there is still time

This explosive psychological 'sneaking' occurs when a woman suppresses large parts of self into the shadows of the psyche. In the view of analytical psychology, the repression of both negative and positive instincts, urges, and feelings into the unconscious causes them to inhabit a shadow realm. While the ego and superego attempt to continue to censor the shadow impulses, the very pressure that repression causes is rather like a bubble in the sidewall of a tire. Eventually, as the tire revolves and heats up, the pressure behind the bubble intensifies, causing it to explode outward, releasing all the inner content.

The shadow acts similarlyY We find that by opening the door to the shadow realm a little, and letting out various elements a few at a time, relating to them, finding use for them, negotiating, we can reduce being surprised by shadow sneak attacks and unexpected explosions.

As a woman lives them, she will understand more and more of these interior feminine rhythms, among them the rhythms of creativity, or birthing psychic babies and perhaps also human ones, the rhythms of solitude, of play, of rest, of sexuality, and of the hunt.

إننا جميعاً نفيض شوقاً وحنيناً إلى الحياة الوحشية. بيد أن ترياق الحضارة لا يترك لهذا الحنين منفذاً, إلا في أقل القليل. تعلمنا أن نشعر بالخجل من مثل هذه الرغبة، تركنا شعرنا يسترسل ووارينا به مشاعرنا. غير أن ظل المرأة الوحشية مازال ينسل خلفنا ويكمن في أيامنا وليالينا. وبصرف النظر عمن نكون’ فإن الظل الذي يهرول خلفنا, هو في النهاية يمشي على أربع.

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.

The one who re-creates from that which has died is always a double-sided archetype. The Creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature, or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die.

Does a wolf know how beautiful she is when she leaps? Does a feline know what beautiful shapes she makes when she sits? Is a bird awed by the sound it hears when it snaps open its wings? Learning from them, we just act in our own true way and do not draw back from or hide our natural beauty. Like the creatures, we just are, and it is right.

Even in the best of worlds the soul needs refurbishing from time to time.

I have seen this sky every day of my life and I am still in awed by it. That is what the wild is — this intense medicinal beauty. To look at it makes you feel whole.

A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving. Yet, separation from the wildest nature causes a woman's personality to become meager, think, ghostly, spectral. We are not meant to be puny with frail hair and inability to leap up, inability to chase, to birth, to create a life.

"(Young girls) are taught to not see, and instead to "make pretty" all manner of grotesqueries whether they are lovely or not. This training is why the youngest sister can say, "Hmmm, his beard isn't really that blue." This early training to "be nice" causes women to override their intuitions. In that sense, they are actually purposefully taught to submit to the predator. Imagine a wolf mother teaching her young to "be nice" in the face of an angry ferret or a wily diamondback rattler."

"A woman must choose her friends and lovers wisely, for both can become like a bad stepmother and rotten stepsisters.

In the case of our lovers, we often invest them with the power of a great Mage - a great magician. This is easy to do , for if we become truly intimate, it dislike unlocking a lead crystal atelier, a magic one, or so it feels to us. A lover can engender and/or destroy even our most durable connections to our own cycle and ideas. The destructive lover must be avoided.

A better sort of lover is one finely wrought of strong psychic muscle and tender flesh. For Wild Woman it also helps if the lover is just a bit psychic too, a person who can "see into" her heart."

Go. Go right now, and as soon, and as often as you can. Keep going.

إن المحبين الذين يصرون على محاولة الاحتفاظ بكل شيء في أوج وميضه النفسي سوف يقضون أيامهم في علاقة يزداد تحجرها يوماً بعد يوم. فالرغبة في إجبار الحب على الاستمرار في العيش فقط - في أكثر أشكاله الإيجابية - هو ما يؤدي إلى سقوطه ميتاً من أجل ما يولد ما هو أفضل.