Women Who Run with the Wolves

“Intuition is the treasure of a woman’s psyche. It is like a divining instrument and like a crystal through which one can see with uncanny interior vision.”

Women’s intuition has frequently been denigrated by patriarchal culture as an irrational feature of the female psyche. The author emphasizes the reverse by asserting that intuition leads to deeper truths inaccessible to logic.

“To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.”

This quote articulates the age-old dilemma of whether to please others or oneself. Those who choose to please others may gain society’s approval at the cost of their own identity.

“The instinctual nature has the miraculous ability to live through all positive boon, all negative consequence, and still maintain relationship to self, to others.”

Animals, unlike humans, accept life as it is and move through its up and down cycles with grace. Humans ask why life has to be the way that it is.

“She is the wildish aspect of relationship, the one of whom men are most terrified [...] and sometimes women also, for when faith in the transformative has been lost, the natural cycles of increase and attrition are feared as well.” 

The author positions Death as a divinity that men in particular fear, even though death is merely part of a natural cycle of renewal. The fear of death arrests all future development in an attempt to eradicate dissolution, which is an intrinsic aspect of creation. 

“Rather than seeing the archetypes of Death and Life as opposites, they must be held together as the left and right side of a single thought. It is true that within a single love relationship there are many endings.” 

The author stresses the continuity of experience rather than its polarity. Like life itself, love relationships go through cycles of growth and decay. Beyond decay lies regeneration. Those who inhibit the process never get that far. 

“The most destructive cultural conditions for a woman to be born into and to live under are those that insist on obedience without consultation with one’s soul, those with no loving forgiveness rituals, those that force a woman to choose between soul and society.” 

Cultural norms are particularly harsh toward women because of the tradition of controlling feminine energy. An insistence on obedience and conformity is soul killing. No Wild Woman would ever side with society over soul. 

“Here is the promise from the wild psyche to all of us [...] The memory of it is a beacon that guides us toward what we belong to, and for the rest of our lives.” 

Women innately recognize their kinship with primal nature. Even though their lives may be artificially constructed by the dictates of others, an inner impulse remains. Women continue to look for the authentic self in spite of all external contradiction. 

“I always worry for those who are too well behaved; they often have that ‘faint soul’ look in their eyes. Something is not right. A healthy soul shines through the persona on most days and blazes through on others. Where there is gross injury, the soul flees.” 

A desire to conform is a death sentence for the soul. The physical body expresses this murder by a vacant look in the eyes. The windows of the soul are empty because the premises have been vacated. 

“When women are relegated to moods, mannerisms, and contours that conform to a single ideal of beauty and behavior, they are captured in both body and soul, and are no longer free.” 

Body shaming has pernicious effects: Destructive cultural norms invade a woman’s psyche through her body. When women don’t conform to physical ideals, or to society’s behavioral standards, they often succumb to shame instead of celebrating themselves, just as they are. 

“Too much domestication breeds out strong and basic impulses to play, relate, cope, rove, commune, and so forth. When a woman agrees to become too ‘well bred’ her instincts for these impulses drop down into her darkest unconscious, outside her automatic reach.” 

Just like a wolf, the Wild Woman cannot be domesticated. A woman who allows herself to conform to expectations loses touch with everything spontaneous in her nature. To lose a sense of play is to lose one’s soul. 

“Addiction begins when a woman loses her handmade and meaningful life and becomes fixated upon retrieving anything that resembles it in any way she can.” 

Living an authentic life carries with it the reward of joy and exhilaration. Trading authenticity for the approval of others drains away enthusiasm. The woman who makes this trade must rely on props to make her feel good. As with any addiction, the palliative of choice will end up killing her. 

“Oh, there are as many ways to lose the soulskin as there are women in the world. The only way to hold on to this essential soulskin is to retain an exquisitely pristine consciousness about its value and uses.” 

Women are constantly bombarded by outer obligations and inner expectations. Staying eternally vigilant, to keep the enemy at bay, is the price of freedom. 

“The exact answer to ‘Where is home?’ is more complex [...] but in some way it is an internal place, a place somewhere in time rather than space, where a woman feels of one piece.” 

The author defines “home” as being grounded. A woman who is disconnected from her inner Wild Woman will always seek a place external to herself for shelter. Consequently, she will never find her way home. 

“The medial woman stands between the worlds of consensual reality and the mystical unconscious and mediates between them.” 

The author invites all women to become a composite being. Most are already adept at navigating outer reality. Most are hopelessly clumsy at wandering through the realm of the unconscious. The search for the inner Wild Woman inevitably leads to the creation of the medial woman. 

“We know that we cannot live the confiscated life. We know there is a time when the things of men and the people and things of the world must be left for a while.” 

Most women are human doings rather than human beings. Searching for the Wild Woman within requires extensive periods of introspection. These timeouts run contrary to the demands of the culture and of significant others who would prefer an around-the-clock servant to a self-actualized woman. 

“A single creative act has the potential to feed a continent. One creative act can cause a torrent to break through stone.” 

The time spent in self-actualization or the creation of art would generally be viewed by the culture as self-indulgent, yet self-expression has a ripple-through effect. Creating inspired work will, in turn, inspire others. 

“To create one must be willing to be stone stupid, to sit upon a throne on top of a jackass and spill rubies from one’s mouth. Then the river will flow, then we can stand in the stream of it raining down.” 

Forces that block creative flow, like the external voice of a critic or the internal voice of self-censorship are both aimed at discouraging experimentation. Worrying about looking foolish causes a woman to live in a calculated way, killing the creativity that thrives on spontaneity. 

“But there is no Creativity Patrol or Soul Police to intervene if we insist on starving our own souls. There is just us. We are the only ones to watch over the soul-Self and the heroic animus.” 

Society has institutions to protect children and animals from neglect. Yet, we are the only guardians of our own psyches, where so much unseen damage and self-abuse take place. 

“When women are out in the cold, they tend to live on fantasies instead of action. Fantasy of this sort is the great anesthetizer of women.” 

Living off dreams instead of making them come true becomes more dangerous than taking risks. Isolation inhibits action. Women who have given up rarely ask for help, even when it is readily available. They believe it is already too late. 

“The problem of secret stories surrounded by shame is that they cut a woman off from her instinctive nature, which is in the main, joyous and free. When there is a black secret in the psyche, a woman can go nowhere near it.” 

Women who carry secrets create their own inner dungeons. They have walled off the secret from intruding on consciousness. Sadly, walling off a part of consciousness will restrict their access to the Wild Woman, who might be able to free them from their self-imposed incarceration. 

“Although there will be scars and plenty of them, it is good to remember that in tensile strength and ability to absorb pressure, a scar is stronger than skin.” 

Women who hold secrets do so to avoid pain. The author says that taking the hit is far less painful in the long run than living with the fear of potential discomfort. Scars can heal and become stronger than skin. Dreaded imaginary injuries cannot. 

“What it is we are hungering for can never be fulfilled by a mate, a job, money, a new this or that. What we hunger for is of the other world, the world that sustains our lives as women.” 

Women who trade self-awareness for material comfort can never be entirely satisfied by the objects they accumulate; the dissatisfaction deep in their psyche, which refuses to go away, implies that this is never an even exchange. They have traded riches of the spirit for material gain. 

“When we come up out of the underworld after one of our undertakings there, we may appear unchanged outwardly, but inwardly we have reclaimed a vast and womanly wildness. On the surface we are still friendly, but beneath the skin, we are most definitely no longer tame.” 

The author draws a parallel between the attitude of the Wild Woman and the wolf. Women who have connected with their primal nature are wily and wary. No matter how civilized they appear on the surface, they have no intention of being captured or domesticated.