Women Who Run with the Wolves: Written by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, 1996 Edition, Publisher: Random House USA Inc [Mass Market Paperback] Unbound

A gift for a special friend. Perfect

I don't normally leave reviews, but in this instance I feel utterly compelled to do so. When I am enjoying a book, I devour it completely, having started this book in that same tradition, I reached page 18 and realised that this is not how this book should be read. So I started again. This isn't a book. It's a journey. It is written to be dissected and digested carefully and thoroughly. Each word, line, paragraph and chapter need to be read, 're read and absorbed before proceeding to the next.I encourage you to read this as a learning text, my copy is overflowing with post it's highlighting singular words, phrases and whole beautiful chunks of text that resonate with me.Insightful, inspiring, intuitive and incredibly intelligent are just a few words out of a thousand that I will use to describe Women Who Run With The Wolves. You can travel to the far corners of the earth searching for answers as to why you feel lost, searching, anxious and misplaced in this world, but the utterly remarkable storytelling talents and patient teachings of Clarissa Pinkola Estés have helped me understand why I often feel that way and how I can take steps to change it.A pleasure and a delight to read, humourous and emotional. I found alot of somewhat astonished joy, in her incredible technique of being able to so accurately and poetically articulate how my soul is feeling.I can not praise this book enough! Can you tell? It is a "bible" of sorts to me, a gift to all humankind, a guide of self discovery, recovery, acceptance and a path to our natural and rightful power of self.Life and self affirming, truly truly a literary gift to the world. I shall be buying every woman I know a copy and will hopefully share in their enlightened journeys of growth. I will also encourage them (and you) to write footnotes and thoughts in the margins and fill it with your own truths and learnings that you discover along the way.Far beyond everything I hoped it would be. So deeply beautiful. An astounding accomplishment.

Having read all the pseudo feminist clap trap about how great this is I bought it to read. I'm a psychologist so acquainted with the theories and models inherent within the book. What I became impatient with was all the pseudo feminine power claptrap. I get so fed up with women feeling the need to "empower" themselves etc. How insecure it makes us seem that we have to constantly find reasons to reach for the so called wild women inside. What about the wild person . I would have liked an explanation regarding what it is exactly since the inherent human (no mammalian) need to keep touch with our wild side is NOT a female need or imperative but a need for all living creatures. It becomes therefore a gimic to direct it to the eagerly awaiting female readership.I would also argue that most women are in contact with the wild as women can be as vicious as a she wolf if we would be honest enough to admit it . I find it pathetic to say that all daughters should be encouraged to read this. It's the old 'them and us' stance again. If all humans maintained their respect and links to the wild mammalian creatures that we are and accept how bad and vicious that makes us at times weather male or female we would increase the respect for all creatures and possibly not wish to continue our attempts to obliterate each other in wars etc. Wolf packs are very territorial, yet although the scapegoat they kill for meat and territory like most humans at war. We 'clever' apes have also become a bit warped and kill for more psychological reasons and that includes many many women. All mankind needs to reach the wild within and do away with the human need to destroy for psychological need and that includes rising above the need to do it for so called reasons of faith or possession . Mother nature is a wiley old bird and possessional /sex drives still rule us . Female instincts to nurture make us kid ourselves that we are the caring sex. Crap , male and female are essentially the same and ruled by drives mainly sex and survival. There's nothing wilder that seeing a female human fighting to keep her mate or protect her young . We humans are too superior or we think we are . Try feeling superior in the wilderness surrounded by real wolves/bears! Intelligence is relative . It's about time women stopped feeling the need to separate themselves as something special and men stopped doing the same for different reasons. Humans are humans the world over and our todrives will always remain the same. The book should have been about contacting the power of the wild human but I suspect strongly that it would not have sold as well. Feminism just like any other segregating dogma increases the possibility of making people feel supported and marginalises others . I found the book rather boring and very pretentious.

This book is quite a poetry written in prose. A lot of repetition and different metaphors used to describe same theme/ idea. I think author intentionally did that, so every reader can find her own way to understand the meaning behind topic, but be ready for long and not easy reading, even though you got the idea, you will be going through many different metaphors to describe same think over and over again. I think it's spiritual book more than psychological. If you never read anything spiritual and you are not familiar with any spiritual ideas like 'higher self', this book can open your mind and eyes to new ideas, and I can see how it can be life changing for some people. However if you read spiritual books before, integrate spirituality, mindfulness in your daily life, and you would like to go deeper, this book will extend your knowledge a little bit further but not too far.