5. Women who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

[lady-jem.livejournal.com]

5. Women who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Clarissa Pinkola-Estes

Okay, maybe I shouldn't include this one here, since I started it before I started the 50-book challenge, but I've been reading it in little sips between other books and I only now finished it. (This is my second reading of it, by the way--I got a lot out of it at age 23, and I got a lot--a different lot--out now at 40.)

Pinkola-Estes is a Jungian psychologist  and cantadora who looks at the fairy tales of different cultures, deconstructs them and mines them for archetypal wisdom.  Her premise is that many women in Western culture have allowed ourselves to be "domesticated," losing touch with our primal instincts and inherently wild nature, and that the journey to wholeness requires a re-connection with this wildish nature.

It's a fascinating book, and one which completely changed my outlook on my own life and growth 17 years ago the first time I read it, and now again as a woman on the other side of youth. Highly recommended.
--J

Comments

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarissa_Pinkola_Est%C3%A9s

Thank you for posting about her - I think I had somehow managed to dismiss her as pop-psych and hadn't realized she had done all kinds of other stuff too (including PTSD work!).

[tanyahp.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting: I was just about to post on this book myself! I'm reading it through for the second time right now, and I find even more beautiful words of wisdom in it the second time around!

[bulliciosa.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad you posted this because I've been chipping away at this book one and off for the past six years. It's a fantastic book, from what I've read so far, and strongly back your recommendation.

Great graduation present for the strong, wild young women in your life. (A wonderful, understanding and loving aunt gave me mine after I graduated from high school and it really helped me along the way into adulthood.)

[triciasullivan.livejournal.com]

I love her audio recording of 'The Creative Fire' and also 'Theatre of the Imagination' but I've never sat down and read this one despite having given it to people as a gift...maybe it's time, on the far side of 40, to take a look myself!

Thanks for posting.

[leana106.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this! I had started the book years ago, but put it down when I couldn't keep up my school reading and my leisure reading. I'm going to have to go pick it back up.