Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Paperback

Within every woman there lives a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. She is the Wild Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women. But she is an endangered species. For though the gifts of wildish nature belong to us at birth, society's attempt to "civilize" us into rigid roles has muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls.

In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, many from her own traditions, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries in this remarkable book, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman, and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine.

Dr. Estes has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.

Praise for Women Who Run with the Wolves

"Women Who Run with the Wolves isn't just another book. It is a gift of profound insight, wisdom, and love. An oracle from one who knows."--Alice Walker

"I am grateful to Women Who Run with the Wolves and to Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. The work shows the reader how glorious it is to be daring, to be caring, and to be women. Everyone who can read should read this book."--Maya Angelou

"An inspiring book, the 'vitamins for the soul'for] women who are cut off from their intuitive nature."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Stands out from the pack . . . a joy and sparkle inthe] prose . . . This book will become a bible for women interested in doing deep work. . . . It is a road map of all the pitfalls, those familiar and those horrifically unexpected, that a woman encounters on the way back to her instinctual self. Wolves . . . is a gift."--Los Angeles Times

"A mesmerizing voice . . . dramatic storytelling she learned at the knees of herimmigrant] aunts."--Newsweek

"The work of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, rooted in old and deep family rites and in archetypal psychology, recognizes that the soul is not lost, but has been put to sleep. This volume reminds us that we are nature for all our sophistication, that we are still wild, and the recovery of that vitality will itself set us right in the world."--Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul