Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype (Book Review)
Updated: 4 days ago
Author: Clarissa Pinkola Estés Ph.D. is a Mexican-American writer and Jungian psychoanalyst. She works as a psychoanalyst and cantadora (keeper of the old stories).
Dr. Estés specializes in Post-Trauma Recovery, providing psychological support for war veterans, earthquake survivors, those traumatized by school shootings, and 9/11 victims.
Publisher: Sounds True, 2009 Abridged Audiobook. This original audio edition was published three years before the print edition of Women Who Run With Wolves was released by Ballantine Books in 1992. The book became a New York Times bestseller for 145 weeks.
Genres: Mythology, Social Sciences, Psychology, Feminism, Religion and Spirituality
Why I Chose It:
I've been thinking about the portrayal of Circe and Calypso in Homer's Odyssey, who use magic powers and are sometimes portrayed as cruel witches. After reading Embracing the Old Witch in the Woods, I started thinking about how women are exiled for following their own wisdom, intuition, strength, and independence.
This brief Audiobook (free on the Libby library app) was so interesting, different, and insightful that I listened to it twice. The author tells stories with suspense and gives insights with a voice that rocks and soothes like a lullaby.
Summary
This is an insightful look revealing the deep truths behind layers of societal teachings against women running free. The author reveals how a woman might reconnect with herself and find new life. The author illustrates ideas with enduring myths and stories from around the globe, and explains these tales in new and empowering ways.
Session 1
What does it Mean to Run with a Wolf, to be Wild?
Dr. Estes compares women to wolves, saying both are portrayed as cunning, treacherous and untrustworthy. However, she says both run free, unspoiled, their rhythms uninterrupted by others. She tells stories to help women find the wild, natural, authentic soul inside her. She uses the term wild to mean intuitive, creative, untamed, with unrestricted ideas or movements. She encourages women to find and nourish their internal being and act according to it. She explains that society, parental expectations, or patriarchal religion can all work to tame or restrict a woman, but when she is freed, she can create, sing, and dance. Creativity does not only refer to the arts (painting, poetry, dance). It involves bringing to fruition ideas from inside: gardening, decorating, community organizing, speaking, leading. The book helps a woman identify and break free from expectations or societal restrictions that make her feel like she is the walking dead.
Dr. Estes tells a tale of Laloba, who collects a wolf's bones and sings over them, and the creature comes alive, fleshed out with fur or hair. The wolf transforms into a woman running free; the hair represents the ideas that are higher than base thoughts. The bones are the indestructible force of the human spirit, the indestructible aspect of ourselves, the self that is unspoiled by society. We need to gather all of our bones, our parts, and then sing our soul over to bring to mind who we are and what we can be. Within us is our soul, the potential to be fleshed out again.
Reflections:
This idea of breaking free resonates with many exvangelicals. They have been told not to trust their own intuition or ideas, but instead to fall in line with the ideas and expectations of others. They have been told to submit to rules set by husbands, fathers, priests, or pastors. They have been permitted very few opportunities to make decisions, take risks, and learn from experiences.
However, Jesus trained women, gave them opportunities to learn, and commissioned them to teach. Jesus did not silence women, but gave them space to ask questions. Jesus came to bring freedom from the external law, encouraging us to keep our eyes on him and follow our internal conscience.
Feeling of Not Belonging
Dr. Estes tells the story of the Mistaken Zygote, where you feel like you don't belong in your birth family. Perhaps you understand from infancy that you are wrong, improper, taken captive, contained, domesticated. It could start with drugged births, scheduled feedings, early toilet-training, not being permitted to follow their internal rhythms or spread their wings. Women are given two choices: be a self-sacrificing mother, be an innocent, sweet virgin. Veils are laid down to keep girls from their wild, instinctual nature. The familial rules may be supplemented by the "Thou Shalt Nots" of religion. When a woman's creative, sensual side tries to break free and dance, she is restrained by guilt or shame.
Reflections:
Women, more often than men, feel like an imposter, undeserving of praise, not confident in their abilities or ideas, not comfortable in their own skin. In Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christianity, the woman is compared to Eve and called sinful, undeserving of praise, but cursed by God with monthly cycles and pain in childbirth. Women are taught they can either be innocent maids (like Virgin Mary), self-sacrificing mothers (like Mother Mary) or Prostitutes (like Mary Magdalene or the Samaritan Woman at the Well).
The idea that babies are born guilty of original sin and that a child has evil intentions has led some Christians to physically or psychologically harm their children. Bill Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) demanded absolute, unquestioning obedience from children and advocated for spanking children from the age of six months to break a child's from pursuing their interest and curiosity. He categorizes all of the child's initiative as willful resistance that has to be stopped. Gothard has been widely discredited following multiple allegations of sexual abuse, institutional cover-ups, and criticisms of his teachings.
However, Jesus taught that we must become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven, and that if anyone causes a child to turn away from God, that person should be thrown into the sea with a great millstone around his neck. The law of Moses teaches parents to abhor child abuse or child sacrifice. The Psalms teach that God forms the child. A child is born innocent and perfect, but needs to learn empathy, generosity, kindness, and self-discipline.
The Holy Spirit inside the person brings to life these fruits of the Spirit. We need to look inside and be aware of the guidance of the Spirit of Wisdom within.
Instead of seeing the Virgin Mary as only a Mother, we can remember that after the resurrection, she became a priest and bishop in the temple. Instead of thinking of the woman at the well as an unfaithful divorcee, we can see she recognized Jesus as the Messiah, and many in her village believed because of her. Instead of imagining Mary Magdalene as a prostitute, we can honour her as an apostle to the apostles. Instead of thinking of God as an authoritarian male parent, we can think of the Holy Trinity: our Creator who birthed us, God who became flesh in Jesus who came to reconcile and redeem, and Wisdom-Sophia who lives in us today as our counsellor and guide.
Famine and Feeding Frenzy
Rather than sublimating the aspect of the wild, it should be channelled. Good parenting teaches us to accept the lust or passion for a variety of productive initiatives. When women who have been kept in cages are released, they can overindulge in excesses that can kill them. Her lack of freedom is comparable to a wolf that undergoes a lack of food, a famine. Afterward a famine, a wolf will indulge in surplus killing. After breaking free of captivity, a woman may indulge in dangerous, self-destructive behaviour. She needs to break free from external restrictions, but set her own boundaries to take care of herself.
Dr. Estes tells the story of Bluebeard and his fiancée. She can live in a palace and have all the money and food available, but she must follow his rules. There is a locked room that shows his previous wives have died. Finally, she opens a room in the psyche that shows that her feminine nature and instinct are at risk of being cut off and killed. Until she can see that she has been captured and her psychic life is at stake, she can do nothing.
Reflections:
It seems like a reference to "a songbird is in a gilded cage, but it's still a cage", based on the ballad from 1900 A Bird in a Gilded Cage." This ballad by Arthur J. Lamb and Harry Von Tilzer lamented a wealthy marriage lacking freedom and is comparable to the "golden handcuffs" of a good job that they hate, or to a wife who stays in an unbearable marriage in order to avoid poverty, or suffragettes who had funds to live but not to vote or effect change. I read stories of women who escape from purity culture and struggle to set their own morals. Women share that after they escape from a cult-like, controlling Christian environment, they may rebel in small ways (wearing pants, dyeing their hair, getting a tattoo), or in bigger ways (drug or alcohol abuse).
Internal, Intuitive Guide
Dr. Estes tells about a woman married to a farmer in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s who becomes suicidal. She says women have a soul-need to express themselves, to pursue the things that make them feel alive, to develop and blossom. For many, they are first captured in their birth family. As they mature, they have an opportunity to be free and reconnect with their instinctual self and develop who they are. If they marry before discovering who they are, they move from the cage of the parents to the cage of the husband. If the husband is developed, conscious, and wants his wife to blossom, then he will feel rich in spirit when she pursues the ways she might connect to her instinctual self.
Dr. Estes tells the story of Vasilisa, whose stepmother sends her into the woods to get fire from a witch, expecting her to die. Vasilisa strokes the doll in her pocket for guidance. It is like a woman being guided by her intuition, her feminine spirit. Dr. Estes relates the idea to women who are raised in families that don't accept them, who go on big quests, strive for perfection, education and success to prove to their family that they have worth. Vasilisa shows that we can feel worth not by relying on the family of origin but by relying on our intuition, or on our angel-mothers, a fairy godmother, a mentor who can reconnect you with your wild or natural instincts.
Reflections:
The doll in Vasilisa's pocket reminds me of the indigenous images of the wise grandmother, and the ancient Jewish-Christian idea of Lady Wisdom. While she is largely ignored by evangelical Christianity, Lady Wisdom has a long history in Proverbs and in Catholic and Orthodox theology and in many traditional Christian hymns. Jesus promised to send the Spirit to live in us as our guide, making us temples of God. A woman might take a moment to pray, meditate, or seek wisdom by grounding herself, tapping on her cross necklace, caressing a smooth painted rock or a special ring, smelling a flower or candle. Evangelical women who may reject these ways of connecting to their intuitive self will accept another way of reaching out to the Spirit, using essential oils made of plants mentioned in the Bible.
Options to reconnect with your internal nature:
Don't conform to ideas without examining them first. Ask yourself what you truly want. Does the idea come from what is offered, or from your soul? Ask yourself what you are hungry for.
Don't allow anyone to compress your vivid energies: opinions, thoughts, ideals, values, morals. Instead of asking what's right or wrong, ask what is effective or ineffective, what is destructive and what is engendering/birthing. Permit your feelings to exist in their season, just as winter must be permitted in its season. When you bury your ideas, they eventually explode in destructive ways.
Examine your cultural, religious, and parental values. Look at what you have been told "I must...", or "I must not..." This exercise gives you an idea of messages that have been placed in you so that you play a role in service of an orderly or hierarchical society. It's like a computer virus that interferes with your ability to hear wisdom from your heart, soul, psyche, and creative spirit. Avoid people who enforce these messages and douse your own ideas, passions, or initiatives.
Session 1 is summarized by encouraging women to allow their hearts to flower. Be spontaneous but not reckless. It's never too late to blossom. Put your hand to what your heart and soul say would be interesting, exciting, or fulfilling for them. Generally, it is best to allow yourself to feel. Be with people who encourage you. Choose a partner who looks at you like a living, growing thing and wants you to flourish. The wild woman is the one who dares, creates, invents. We have to struggle to preserve this internal uniqueness, to resist being tamed into something that you are not.
Session 2
The bones must all be gathered together and sung over, and then become flesh, then become a woman running and laughing with her hair streaming in various colours. The bones of our soul life need to be regathered and sung over to bring that aspect of ourselves into the foreground.
This process involves 3 aspects:
Reclamation & Focus
At some point in your life, you suddenly know something in your bones. It comes from deep within you, and you need to reclaim it. Dr. Estes contrasts the evil witch common in the Grimms' fairy tales with the Russian story of Babayaga, a witch who is both young and old, both good and bad, both giver of life and slayer of life.
Reclamation
We're talking about reclaiming the soul, psyche, the matter, earthy, moist, and dirty. Some aspects of the feminine are not beautiful and pure. It could be not worrying about appearance, makeup, and grey hair. Going back to the natural state allows a woman to discover the mysteries that lie in her bones. Through intuition, imagination, reading, and talking to others, we may be able to reclaim what might be the remnants, the very bones of our existence. She talks about women in some tribes going away from the tribe during the menstrual cycle, where they don't have to do, be, or meet expectations of others.
Focus
We have to be focused to manifest our creative life to the outer world. We need to figure out earthy, realistic steps to bring about our ideas. The more able you are to think and develop your idea, the more you can bring focus to your projects, dreams, hopes, desires. Dr Estes relates the story of the Little Matchmaker, who lives in a world of dreams, and she dies. She is alone, unfocused, in a fantasy land, disenfranchised, separated from other people who could help us and from the inner spirit that can guide us to some concrete steps to fulfil our ideas.
If our highest goal is surviving, we cannot put together our bones and live a new life. The highest goal is to thrive. We must be with real people who warm us, endorse and exalt our creativity. The first step of focus is to take our ideas to a place where there is support for them. She urges people to read books on how to carry projects through to fruition.
Dr Estes tells the story of Three Gold Hairs to describe how to regain focus once you have lost it. An old man is scrawny, cold, bald, and carrying a small lighted lantern. He labours towards a cabin, but his light goes out. A woman picks him up, gathers him in her arms on her rocking chair in front of a roaring fire, and she rocks him and comforts him. He grows younger, his muscles grow stronger, and his hair grows out. Once he is well, the woman plucks out three gold hairs from his head. Then the man leaves, flies away, and becomes the sun.
When we lose focus, we need to sit still in peace and comfort to renew ideas. Breathe, focus internally. Maybe the idea is difficult to bring to fruition because it has become stale, old, or the focus is lost. The light is the idea. The fire, warmth, comfort, and rocking have to occur, and some ideas (hairs) have to be thrown away. For example, writing must be edited, and good writing must be thrown away in order to give focus to the finished work.
The purpose of reclamation and focus is to get right down to the bones of your life: your pleasure, joy, passion, and drive. It's where your bliss is, in the words of Joseph Campbell. That's why we need to connect with the wild or natural woman inside us. Be still and see what is before you. You'll find and reclaim your own voice, values, imagination, memories, and stories.
Reflections:
If we are in survival mode, putting out fires, handling crises, then we are not able to focus on greater goals, the things that are important, fulfilling, and will give us a zest for living. In the evangelical world, many women are working all hours in order to gain the honours of serving a husband and children. They may sacrifice sleep, food, and self-care. It moves them into survival mode, just getting through the day.
It is interesting in our busy world to put a higher value on time to sit, think, dream, and imagine. It reminds me of this quote:
All [people] dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous... for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible." T E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)
Christians, especially Evangelicals, have written off meditation as an Eastern practice. However, the holy men in the Bible meditate, and Jesus often went alone to meditate and pray. The purpose of repetitive liturgies is often to appeal to emotions, to stop thought and open the mind to the spirit.
Rhythm and Relationship
Dr. Estes talks about the rhythms of the monthly cycle, and relates it to the cycle of ideas, which hibernate, grow, blossom, are cut back, and regenerate in their season.
You cannot have a marriage mate who attempts to destroy your personal rhythm. One animal cannot cause another to breed or give birth out of season. There is an intrinsic order. If one marries, one needs a mate who understands your need to live as a natural woman, or who is interested in learning and bringing that out in you. A beautiful relationship means planting a seed and watering it.
A common mistake is for a woman to think that a relationship may complete her or that a husband will solve her problem. A wolf is not consumed with mating. The ritual and seasons will take care of that. A relationship needs space for being apart and together. The connection must come through the soul.
Dr. Estes suggests that in Jungian psychology, a woman's true mate is within. For example, in a fairy tale, a princess is not saved by a prince. The fairy tale makes sense when thinking about the inner masculine aspect of the female. Your relationship with another person cannot take predominance over your relationship with yourself, or you lose yourself, and your natural self will be captured and subjugated. The inner feminine is dead. A relationship is intended to create, not to destroy. Marriage is not about one person submerging or disappearing into another, but about two people becoming more than two. If a mate trashes all your ideas, it's a destructive relationship... it leads to heartbreak. Presenting an idea means putting forth energy, and it needs to be met by commensurate energy. A relationship creates energy. It's like two elements sparking to become something new and bigger; two people encouraging one another in their individual ideas and passions. If you are with someone who kills off your ideas or silences your voice, you will not be able to live as a wild or natural woman.
Dr. Estes tells the story of La Llorona, which translates to "the weeping woman." In the story, the heartbroken woman is barred from heaven until she brings her lost sons. It's a story of a woman who kills her offspring, her own potential, her ideas because of a man. A woman needs to be attentive to their personal rhythms and have friends who respect their rhythms and nurture her inner, creative life, and be able to teach friends or a mate how to nurture her.
Reflections:
This idea of finding and uniting the masculine and feminine within yourself is addressed in Maureen Murdock's 1990 book, The Heroine's Journey. Murdock suggests that a woman must break free from her family of origin and the structures or bonds of feminine roles imposed on her from childhood. The typical journey shows a proactive woman leaving the prescribed bonds of feminine roles, facing risks, gathering allies, facing those who oppose the exercise of her masculine attributes, and finally integrating the masculine and feminine aspects within herself.
Using these ideas, I can reframe the tale of Sleeping Beauty to be about a woman whose dreams and initiatives lie dormant until she gives breath to her masculine side. Rather than teaching a woman that she needs a male hero-saviour, the fairy tale shows a woman on an internal quest for her masculine and feminine aspects. Being true to her whole, authentic self revivifies her and brings her new life.
I believe that the Bible endorses this idea of each person finding and nourishing their masculine and feminine sides. In Genesis, the male and female are both told to be fruitful and are both told to have dominion over the earth. Throughout the Bible, we see God described in both male and female metaphors. Jesus talks about the Spirit giving new birth to our lives. We see Peter and Paul refer to themselves as mothers giving birth to spiritual children. The Bible says that God gives us each gifts, without reference to gender, and that the Spirit bears the same fruit in us, regardless of gender. God leads us to green pastures, where we shall not want or lack for anything. I believe Jesus when he says that he did not come to judge but to save (John 12:47) and that he protects his sheep from those who would steal, subjugate, or kill us and that he offers abundant life (John 10:10). It seems to me that these suggestions for connecting with our authentic self are going to bring us closer to the Holy Spirit in us, closer to the unique gifts God gave each individual, and closer to the conditions to make us flourish with an abundant life.
Rage and Release
It is normal for a woman who has been trapped and oppressed and who is aware of her pressing drive to create and initiate, to be filled with rage. The alternative is Identification with the Oppressor, thinking like them, taking their values as your values, enforcing your own subjugation. Instead, release the rage in a healthy way. The rage keeps us tied to memories of being oppressed, unfairness, and hurt. Rage takes us away from our creative life. The conduit that carries creativity also carries passion. When feeling rage or anger, it clogs up the conduit to creativity. This is a cyclical process. The idea is not to get rid of it but to stop fixating on it as the main aspect of your life. You don't escape your history, but you can use it to generate ideas and initiatives.
Be patient with your own rage. Be loving to yourself. Dr. Estes tells the story of the Tiger's Eyelash. A woman goes on a heroic journey in order to get a cure for her husband's anger and PTSD from war. The moral of the story is not to put up with a grumpy, angry husband. It's about giving kindness and time to the one who is upset or enraged. Do this for others and for ourselves. The woman was not aware of her resources and creativity in handling her husband's behaviour. Give yourself some spiritual food - it could be poetry, art, or good food. Calm down, wait; the rage will weaken. Be forgiving. Usually it's childhood or formative experiences that made you feel limited, or that killed your inner natural self. Recognize the trauma, bless it, contain it, and leave it.
Dr. Estes tells about the concept of Descansos. This is the practice of placing descansos in the form of roadside crosses or markers where a person died suddenly, or their life suddenly changed that person's life forever.
Dr. Estes says that women have died a thousand deaths before the age of twenty. They've gone in a direction, pursued a dream, held a hope or dream, shared an idea, but these have been cut off. It is helpful to recognize these deaths. Descansos is where you look at your life, draw a line on a large sheet of paper connecting the ups and downs in a graph. Mark the little deaths and the big losses. Mark the dark times with a little cross. Mark the things that need to be mourned, the roads not taken. Acknowledge them, remember them, and leave them behind. Lay your rage to rest. Many women in their thirties or forties come to a point of exhaustion, disappointment, or emptiness. Broken dreams may make them feel hopeless and bitter. If instead, she can return to her instinctual nature, she will be revivified and reborn.
The wild woman is an endangered species. We need to give birth to the natural woman in ourselves and others. Be the old woman in the rocking chair. Nurture the ideas. Be patient and bold. Find relationships that reverberate with your rhythm.
"Forgive a little, forget a little, and create a lot, and the grandmothers of your great-great-granddaughters will remember you and honour you."
Reflectons:
Evangelical Christians often warn women not to allow the root of bitterness to exist in them. However, they also tell women not to express rage or anger, or even injustice. If women cannot express themselves, it will keep us tied to bitterness and keep us in survival mode.
At some time in my past, I did this line, marking the times of sadness and disappointment, as well as the successes and mountain-top high moments. I believe it was helpful for me to identify and let go of these things that had caused me to feel disappointed or sad. It was also helpful for me to see and appreciate the successes and highlights.
Along the same lines is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as an alternative to reacting on impulse based on my feelings. Instead, I've learned to name how I feel, acknowledge it, accept it, and commit to acting in a way that is in line with my values.
I have learned the importance of self-care, self-love, and having patience with myself and my recurring feelings of anger, disappointment, or jealousy. I call it giving myself grace. God offers me grace, and I accept it. I am aware of both my inner masculine and inner feminine. I see how I am energized when I pursue my passions, interests, and learning. I call it following God's call.
Elaine Ricker Kelly Author is empowering women with historical fiction about women in the Bible and early church and Christian blogs about women in leadership, church history and doctrine. Her books include:
Forgotten Followers from Broken to Bold, Book 1, A Novel (2022)
The Sword: A Fun Way to Engage in Healthy Debate on What the Bible Says About a Woman's Role (2023)
Because She Was Called from Broken to Bold, Book 2, A Novel of the Early Church (2024)
Walk with Mara on Her Healing Journey: 21 Steps to Emotional Resilience (2024)
Finding Her Voice from Broken to Bold, Book 3, Acts of Early Female Apostles: A Novel (2025)
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