When seeking guidance, don't ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice. - Clarissa Pinkola Estés

What does this wildish intuition do for women? Like the wolf, intuition has claws that pry things open and pin things down, it has eyes that can through the shields of persona, it has ears that hear beyond the range of mundane human hearing. With these formidable psychic tools a woman takes on a shrewd and even precognitive animal consciousness, one that deepens her femininity and sharpens her ability to move confidently in the outer world.

The mother, if she commits herself to life and builds a vast storehouse of knowing inside of her, is her children’s bastion. She has a relationship with her children forever as mother. And she has the wisdom, hopefully, to know when to let go and let them lead their lives on their own. But she also is there when they come back and need something. There has to be a prototype for the mother who remains mother forever.

Like my kith and kin before me, I swagger-staggered in high heels, and I wore a dress and a hat to church. But my fabulous tail often fell below my hemline, and my ears twitched until my hat pitched, at the very least, down over both my eyes, and sometimes clear across the room.