We are all filled with a longing for the wild. There are few culturally sanctioned antidotes for this yearning. We were taught to feel shame for such a desire. We grew our hair long and used it to hide our feelings. But the shadow of Wild Woman still lurks behind us during our days and in our nights. No matter where we are, the shadow that trots behind us is definitely four-footed.
Interpretation
This quote expresses a deep-seated desire for freedom and the natural instincts that society often teaches us to suppress.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes highlights the intrinsic connection between humans and the wild, suggesting that despite societal restrictions and cultural shame associated with our primal instincts, there exists an enduring yearning for freedom and authenticity. The metaphor of the 'wild woman' symbolizes the untamed aspects of our nature that continue to exist within us, reminding us that our true selves rebel against the confines of social norms, urging us to reconnect with our wild essence.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about reconnecting with nature during an environmental conference.
Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation- in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation. The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.
Tears are a river that takes you somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.
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.
Stories are medicine. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, act anything - we need only listen.
There's a reason poets often say, 'Poetry saved my life,' for often the blank page is the only one listening to the soul's suffering, the only one registering the story completely, the only one receiving all softly and without condemnation.
To love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings- all in the same relationship.
If there is nothing you can share with other people, try to be close to Things, they will not abandon you; and the nights are still here and the winds that move through the trees and across many lands; everything in the world of Things and animals is still filled with happening, which you can take part in.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens, you have made them bright, precious and fair.
We need the discipline of magic, of consciousness-change, in order to hear and understand what the earth is saying to us. And listening to the earth, doing the rituals the land asks us for, giving back what we are asked for, will also bring us healing, expanded awareness and intensified life.
Cedars are terribly sensitive to change of time and light - sometimes they are bluish cold-green, then they turn yellow warm-green - sometimes their boughs flop heavy and sometimes float, then they are fairy as ferns and then they droop, heavy as heartaches.
Some people mistakenly think nature is very nice and benevolent and never betrays.
On a day when the wind is perfect, the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty. Today is such a day.
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