American psychoanalyst and writer
Clarissa Pinkola Estés (born January 27, 1945) is a first-generation American writer and Jungian psychoanalyst. She is the author of Women Who Run with the Wolves (1992), which remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 145 weeks and has sold over two million copies.
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Alternative Names:
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
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Three things differentiate living from the soul versus living from ego only. They are: the ability to sense and learn new ways, the tenacity to ride a rough road, and the patience to deepen love over time. The ego, however, has a penchant and proclivity to avoid learning. Patience is not the ego's strong suit. Enduring in relationship is not Raven's forte. So it is not from the ever-changing ego that we love another, but rather from the wild soul.
Home is a sustained mood or sense that allows us to experience feelings not necessarily sustained in the mundane world: wonder, vision, peace, freedom from worry, freedom from demands, freedom from constant clacking. All these treasures from home are meant to be cached in the psyche for later use in the topside world.
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.
من غير الممكن معالجة قضايا الروح عند المرأة بأن ننحت لها هيئة تتلاءم مع الشكل الذي تحدده بعض الثقافات غير الواعية, كما أنه ليس بمقدورنا أن نقولبها في شكل أكثر عقلانية يرضى عنه هؤلاء الذين يزعمون أنهم وحدهم حملة لواء الواعي. لا, من غير الممكن؛ لأن ذلك هو بالفعل ما حدا بالملايين من النساء اللواتي بدأن كقوى طبيعية مؤثرة أن يصبحن كالغرباء في ركب الحضارة, بل ينبغي أن يكون الهدف هو استعادة وإنقاذ الشكل الطبيعي الجميل لروح المرأة.
Substance abuse is a very real trap. Drugs and alcohol are very much like an abusive lover who treats you well at first and then beats you up, apologizes, gives you nice treatment for a while, and then beats you up again. The trap is in trying to hang in there for the good while trying to overlook the bad. Wrong. This can never work.
For instance, I see in the talented women in my practice that soulskin theft can come through relationships that are not in their rightful skins themselves, and some relationships are downright poisonous. It takes will and force to overcome these relationships, but it can be done, especially if, as in the story, one will awaken to the voice calling from home, calling one back to the core self where one’s immediate wisdom is whole and accessible.
I’ll tell you right now, the doors to the world of 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.
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.