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Clarissa Pinkola Estés Quotes

Follow Author 2407 followers

“ It is worse to stay where one does not

belong at all than to wander about lost for a
while and looking for the psychic and
soulful kinship one requires
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves
Tags: inspirational

Like · 562

“ I hope you will go out and let stories, that is

life, happen to you, and that you will work
with these stories... water them with your
blood and tears and your laughter till they
bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves
Tags: life, living

Like · 538

“ There is probably no better or more reliable

measure of whether a woman has spent
time in ugly duckling status at some point or
all throughout her life than her inability to
digest a sincere compliment. Although it
could be a matter of modesty, or could be
attributed to shyness- although too many
serious wounds are carelessly written off as
"nothing but shyness"- more often a
compliment is stuttered around about
because it sets up an automatic and
unpleasant dialogue in the woman's mind.

If you say how lovely she is, or how beautiful

her art is, or compliment anything else her
soul took part in, inspired, or suffused,
something in her mind says she is
undeserving and you, the complimentor, are
an idiot for thinking such a thing to begin
with. Rather than understand that the
beauty of her soul shines through when she
is being herself, the woman changes the
subject and effectively snatches
nourishment away from the soul-self, which
thrives on being acknowledged."

"I must admit, I sometimes find it useful in

my practice to delineate the various
typologies of personality as cats and hens
and ducks and swans and so forth. If
warranted, I might ask my client to assume
for a moment that she is a swan who does
not realzie it. Assume also for a moment
that she has been brought up by or is
currently surrounded by ducks.

There is nothing wrong with ducks, I assure

them, or with swans. But ducks are ducks
and swans are swans. Sometimes to make
the point I have to move to other animal
metaphors. I like to use mice. What if you
were raised by the mice people? But what if
you're, say, a swan. Swans and mice hate
each other's food for the most part. They
each think the other smells funny. They are
not interested in spending time together,
and if they did, one would be constantly
harassing the other.

But what if you, being a swan, had to

pretend you were a mouse? What if you had
to pretend to be gray and furry and tiny?
What you had no long snaky tail to carry in
the air on tail-carrying day? What if
wherever you went you tried to walk like a
mouse, but you waddled instead? What if
you tried to talk like a mouse, but insteade
out came a honk every time? Wouldn't you
be the most miserable creature in the
world?

The answer is an inequivocal yes. So why, if

this is all so and too true, do women keep
trying to bend and fold themselves into
shapes that are not theirs? I must say, from
years of clinical observation of this problem,
that most of the time it is not because of
deep-seated masochism or a malignant
dedication to self-destruction or anything of
that nature. More often it is because the
woman simply doesn't know any better. She
is unmothered.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves
Tags: modesty

Like · 495

“ Sometimes the one who is running from the

Life/Death/Life nature insists on thinking
of love as a boon only. Yet love in its fullest
form is a series of deaths and rebirths. We
let go of one phase, one aspect of love, and
enter another. Passion dies and is brought
back. Pain is chased away and surfaces
another time. To love means to embrace and
at the same time to withstand many
endings, and many many beginnings- all in
the same relationship.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves
Tags: love, relationships

Like · 446

“ Having a lover/friend who regards you as a

living growing criatura, being, just as much
as the tree from the ground, or a ficus in the
house, or a rose garden out in the side
yard... having a lover and friends who look
at you as a true living breathing entity, one
that is human but made of very fine and
moist and magical things as well... a lover
and friends who support the ciatura in you...
these are the people you are looking for.
They will be the friends of your soul for life.
Mindful choosing of friends and lovers, not
to mention teachers, is critical to remaining
conscious, remaining intuitive, remaining in
charge of the fiery light that sees and knows.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 419

“ Be wild; that is how to clear the river. The

river does not flow in polluted, we manage
that. The river does not dry up, we block it.
If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to
allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to
stream, letting anything come, initially
censoring nothing. That is creative life. It is
made up of divine paradox. 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.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves
Tags: creativity, wilderness

Like · 394

“ The doors to the world of the wild Self are

few but precious. If you have a deep scar,
that is a door, if you have an old, old story,
that is a door. If you love the sky and the
water so much you almost cannot bear it,
that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life,
a full life, a sane life, that is a door.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 390

“ The way to maintain one's connection to the

wild is to ask yourself what it is that you
want. This is the sorting of the seed from the
dirt. One of the most important
discriminations we can make in this matter
is the difference between things that beckon
to us and things that call from our souls.
Nowhere can this be seen more clearly than
in the choice of mates and lovers. A lover
cannot be chosen a la smorgasbord. A lover
has to be chosen from soul-craving. To
choose just because something
mouthwatering stands before you will never
satisfy the hunger of the soul-self. And that
is what the intuition is for; it is the direct
messenger of the soul.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 349

“ When seeking guidance, don't ever listen to

the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap
them with blessing, cajole them, but do not
follow their advice.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 343

“ Go out in the woods, go out. If you don't go

out in the woods nothing will ever happen
and your life will never begin.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves
Tags: beginnings, initiation, inspirational

Like · 331

“ The psyches and souls of women also have

their own cycles and seasons of doing and
solitude, running and staying, being
involved and being removed, questing and
resting, creating and incubating, being of
the world and returning to the soul-place.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 264

“ There is a time in our lives, usually in mid-

life, when a woman has to make a decision -
possibly the most important psychic
decision of her future life - and that is,
whether to be bitter or not. Women often
come to this in their late thirties or early
forties. They are at the point where they are
full up to their ears with everything and
they've "had it" and "the last straw has
broken the camel's back" and they're "pissed
off and pooped out." Their dreams of their
twenties may be lying in a crumple. There
may be broken hearts, broken marriages,
broken promises.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 217

“ Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our

lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In
our lives, even though one episode amounts
to a crash and burn, there is always another
episode awaiting us and then another. There
are always more opportunities to get it right,
to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve
to have them. Don't waste your time hating
a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than
success.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves
Tags: inspirational

Like · 214

“ Though her soul requires seeing, the culture

around her requires sightlessness. Though
her soul wishes to speak its truth, she is
pressured to be silent.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves
Tags: freedom, women

Like · 199

“ To be poor and be without trees, is to be the

most starved human being in the world. To
be poor and have trees, is to be completely
rich in ways that money can never buy.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, The Faithful Gardener: A
Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die

Like · 198

“ I've seen women insist on cleaning

everything in the house before they could sit
down to write... and you know it's a funny
thing about housecleaning... it never comes
to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A
woman must be careful to not allow over-
responsibility (or over-respectabilty) to steal
her necessary creative rests, riffs, and
raptures. She simply must put her foot
down and say no to half of what she believes
she "should" be doing. Art is not meant to
be created in stolen moments only.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 195

“ If you have yet to be called an incorrigable,

defiant woman,
don't worry, there is still time
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Like · 193

“ we all begin the process before we are ready,

before we are strong enough, before we
know enough; we begin a dialogue with
thoughts and feelings that both tickle and
thunder within us. We respond before we
know how to speak the language, before we
know all the answers, and before we know
exactly to whom we are speaking.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 175

“ Tears are a river that takes you

somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the
rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver
to someplace better.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Tags: grief, inspiration

Like · 162

“ A Prayer
Refuse to fall down
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
lift your heart toward heaven,
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you from lifting your
heart
toward heaven
only you.
It is in the middle of misery
that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, The Faithful Gardener: A
Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die

Like · 158

“ In mythos and fairy tales, deities and other

great spirits test the hearts of humans by
showing up in various forms that disguise
their divinity. They show up in robes, rags,
silver sashes, or with muddy feet. They show
up with skin dark as old wood, or in scales
made of rose petal, as a frail child, as a lime-
yellow old woman, as a man who cannot
speak, or as an animal who can. The great
powers are testing to see if humans have yet
learned to recognize the greatness of soul in
all its varying forms.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 158

“ I learned about the sacred art of self

decoration with the monarch butterflies
perched atop my head, lightning bugs as my
night jewelry, and emerald-green frogs as
bracelets.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 153

“ Bone by bone, hair by hair, Wild Woman

comes back. Through night dreams, through
events half understood and half
remembered...
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 141

“ A healthy woman is much like a wolf:

robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-
giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal,
roving.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Tags: psychology-spirituality

Like · 141

“ Asking the proper question is the central

action of transformation- in fairy tales, in
analysis, and in individuation. The key
question causes germination of
consciousness. The properly shaped
question always emanates from an essential
curiosity about what stands behind.
Questions are the keys that cause the secret
doors of the psyche to swing open.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 137

“ How does one know if she has forgiven? You

tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance
instead of rage, you tend to feel sorry for the
person rather than angry with him. You
tend to have nothing left to say about it all.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Tags: forgiving

Like · 134

“ Writing, real writing, should leave a small

sweet bruise somewhere on the writer . . .
and on the reader.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Like · 133

“ When a woman is frozen of feeling, when

she can no longer feel herself, when her
blood, her passion, no longer reach the
extremities of her psyche, when she is
desperate; then a fantasy life is far more
pleasurable than anything else she can set
her sights upon. Her little match lights,
because they have no wood to burn, instead
burn up the psyche as though it were a big
dry log. The psyche begins to play tricks on
itself; it lives now in the fantasy fire of all
yearning fulfilled. This kind of fantasizing is
like a lie: If you tell it often enough, you
begin to believe it.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 132

“ It makes utter sense to stay healthy and

strong, to be as nourishing to the body as
possible. Yet I would have to agree, there is
in many women a 'hungry' one inside. But
rather than hungry to be a certain size,
shape, or height, rather than hungry to fit
the stereotype; women are hungry for basic
regard from the culture surrounding them.
The 'hungry' one inside is longing to be
treated respectfully, to be accepted and in
the very least, to be met without
stereotyping.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 132

“ All the "not readies," all the "I need time,"

are understandable, but only for a short
while. The truth is that there is never a
"completely ready," there is never a really
"right time."

As with any descent to the unconscious,

there comes a time when one simply hopes
for the best, pinches one's nose, and jumps
into the abyss. If this were not so, we would
not have needed to create the words
heroine, hero, or courage.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the
Wolves

Like · 129

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