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Tag Archives: Clarissa Pinkola Estes

winter landscape - winter sunrise

I’ve been trying to keep showing a cheerful front to the world here in this blog, Facebook and elsewhere, but it’s time for a confession. I haven’t done any creative writing in many months.

I’m not ready to go into the reasons at this point. I can only say that I’m facing a challenge bigger than any I’ve encountered thus far, including my husband’s stroke. The good news is that I have learned a lot from that crisis and am using it all now. I am no longer looking for a light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve also discovered that I can light my own way.

My instincts (which have been serving me very well lately and I should have listened to before) are telling me to focus my energy on solving the current crisis and that it is OK to take a break from writing. Sometimes writing is a solace, but pushing myself to write now—even if I had time—would be like a runner trying to train on a broken leg.

I am doing is letting go of the guilt imposed by internal and external critics and trusting myself. I know how to be mindful, how to tell I am being too hard or too easy on myself, how to ask the right questions and find out what I need more of, what I need less of, not only to get through the crisis but to thrive afterwards.

I think we all can do this. As Jane Austen wrote, “We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”

In order to learn to attend to that guide, I’ve been rereading Women Who Run with the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. She writes about women’s need to “go home”, where “Home is a sustained mood or sense that allows us to experience feelings not necessarily sustained in the mundane world: wonder, vision, peace, freedom from worry, freedom from demands, freedom from constant clacking. All these treasures from home are meant to be cached in the psyche for later use in the topside world.” One can “go home” many ways, including going into nature, praying, meditating, making art.

She also writes “if a woman doesn’t go when it’s her time to go, the hairline crack in her soul/psyche becomes a ravine, and the ravine becomes a roaring abyss.” I know from experience that this is true. So while I’m dealing with some crazy-making issues, I’m also doing my Morning Pages (a type of journaling taught in The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron), meditating at every day and finding pockets of time to do smaller projects that sustain my creativity while demanding less time than the writing.

I am not leaving the Riskies, as our new schedule of posting just once a month allows me enough time to do the rest of the work I must do before I can write again. And I will get back to writing. The river hasn’t dried up; it’s only gone underground for a while.

Do you “go home”? How?

Elena

I was going to tell you all about my travels but I’m still getting my life and household back in order. After our 10-day trip, I took my kids on a weekend camping trip with a group from our UU church, then had my parents visit for an overnight, followed the next day by my husband’s cousins from Chicago. The sink is still full of dirty dishes and I can’t even find our camera to upload our Monticello pics!

So I’ll talk to you about a book I’ve been reading on and off this summer: WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I first read about it on a writers’ listserve and recently my friend Therese Walsh urged me to read it.

Having been a sensitive girl, raised full of Catholic guilt, I used to try hard to be “good”, to not make waves, to not seem too different, yet the mold that was prepared for me never quite fit. Over the years, and especially with motherhood, I’ve grown stronger and more assertive. This book is a powerful aid, an exploration of myths regarding the Wild Woman archetype and an exhortation to transcend the boundaries imposed by a judgmental society and dark elements in one’s own psyche.

One chapter that especially spoke to me at this point was 9, on “Homing: Returning to Oneself”. Estes writes that all women need to occasionally return to themselves and practice intentional solitude.

“There are many ways to go home… My clients tell me these mundane endeavors constitute a return to home for them… Rereading passages of books and single poems that have touched them. Spending even a few minutes near a river, a stream, a creek. Lying on the ground in dappled light… praying. A special friend. Sitting on a bridge with legs dangling over. Holding an infant. Sitting by a window in a cafe and writing. Sitting in a circle of trees… Beholding beauty, grace, the touching frailty of human beings.”

Through a summer spent with kids and visiting with friends and family, I’ve managed a few stolen moments to “go home.” I’m feeling the need for a longer stay there, though, along with a bit of guilt for wanting to be alone. I know it’s good for me, but it’s nice to read Estes’s reassurance.

“It is preferable to go home for a while, even if it causes others to be irritated, rather than to stay and deteriorate, and then finally crawl away in tatters.”
“It is right and proper that women eke out, liberate, take, make, connive to get, assert their right to go home. Home is a sustained mood or sense that allows us to experience feelings not necessarily sustained in the mundane world: wonder, vision, peace, freedom from worry, freedom from demands, freedom from constant clacking. All these treasures from home are meant to be cached in the psyche for later use in the topside world.”
“It is better to teach your people that you will be more and also different when you return, that you are not abandoning them but learning yourself anew and bringing yourself back to your real life.”

For me, going home includes walking, journaling, swimming and writing. How about you? How do you go home? Has anyone else read this book? If so, what did you think?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com

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