Clarissa Pinkola Estés Quotes

Among wolves, when the bitch leavers her pups to go hunting, the young ones try to follow her out of the den and down the path. She snarls at them, lunges at them, and scares the bejeezus out of them till they run slipping and sliding back to the den. Their mother knows that they do not yet know how to weight and assess other creatures. They do not know who is a predator and who is not.

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.

Even if one has friends, those friends may not be suns.

This wilderwoman is the prototypical woman ... no matter what culture, no matter what era, no matter what politic, she does not change. Her cycles change, her symbolic representations change, but in essence, she does not change. She is what she is and she is whole.

This is our meditation practice as women, calling back the dead and dismembered aspects of ourselves, calling back the dead and dismembered aspects of life itself. 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. Our work is to apprehend the timing of both; to allow what must die to die, and what must live to live.

Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to the dreamland, that lead to love and learning, that lead us back to our own real lives as knowing wildish women.

Yet there also comes a time to row away from all that, to experience a different vantage point, to emigrate back to the land of one’s own kind. Let there be no more suffering, no more attempting to figure where you went wrong. The mystery of why you were born to whomever you were born to is over, finis, terminado, finished. Rest for a moment at the bow and refresh yourself in the wind coming from your homeland.

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.

"وهناك طريق آخر لتقوية الاتصال والرابطة مع الغريزة, وهو ألا تسمحي لأي شخص أن يقمع طاقتك الحيوية... التي هي اعتقاداتك, أفكارك، مثلك العليا، قيمك، افتراضاتك، أهدافك. وفي هذا العالم يوجد أقل القليل من "صح/خطأ" أو "طيب/شرير", إلا أنه يوجد فيه "مفيد" و "غير مفيد". وهناك أيضاً أشياء تكون أحياناً مدمرة وبالمثل أشياء مولدة. ولكن _كما تعلمين_ الحديقة ينبغي تقليبها في الخريف من أجل إعدادها للربيع. فهي لا تزهر طوال الوقت. ولكن اجعلي دوراتك الداخلية هي التي تملي المنحنيات الحلزونية الصاعدة والهابطة لحياتك, ولا تتركي تحديدها لشخص آخر من خارج نفسك."

Another way to strengthen connection to intuition is to refuse to allow anyone to repress your vivid energies... that means your opinions, your thoughts, your ideas, your values, your morals, your ideals. There is very little right/wrong or good/bad in this world. There is, however, use and not useful.

Who among us does not know at least one female loved-one who lost her instincts to make good choices for herself, and was forced therefore to live a marginal life or worse? Perhaps you yourself are that woman.

Así fue como comprendí que esta tierra, de la que dependía nuestro alimento, nuestra existencia, nuestro descanso y nuestra posibilidad de descubrir la belleza, tenia que ser tratada de la misma manera en que deseamos tratar a los demás y a nosotros mismos. Cualquier cosa que le ocurra a ese campo también nos ocurre en cierto modo a nosotros.

It is difficult to sneak little shreds of life this way but women do it every day. When a woman feels compelled to sneak life, she is in minimal subsistence mode. She sneaks life away from the hearing of “them,” whoever the “them” is in her life. She acts disinterested and calm on the surface, but whenever there is a crack of light, her starved self leaps out, runs for the nearest life form, lights up, kicks back, charges madly, dances herself silly, exhausts herself, then tries to creep back to the black cell before anyone notices she is gone.

Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don’t waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on. That is what we are doing with this tale. We are listening to its ancient message. We are learning about deteriorative patterns so we can go on with the strength of one who can sense the traps and cages and baits before we are upon them or caught in them.

I am convinced, both as psychoanalyst and as cantadora, that many times it is the things of nature that are the most healing, especially the very accessible and the very simple ones. The medicines of nature are powerful and straightforward: a ladybug on the green rind of a watermelon, a robin with a string of yarn, a weed in perfect flower, a shooting star, even a rainbow in a glass shard in the street can be the right medicine.