Clarissa Pinkola Estés Quotes

Fortunately, no matter how many times she is pushed down, she bounds up again. No matter how many times she is forbidden, quelled, cut back, diluted, tortured, touted as unsafe, dangerous, mad, and other derogations, she emanates upward in women, so that even the most quiet, even the most restrained woman keeps a secret place for Wild Woman, Even the more repressed woman has a secret life, with secret thoughts and secret feelings which are lush and wild, that is, natural. Even the most captured woman guards the place of the wildish self, for she knows intuitively that someday there will be a loophole, an aperture, a chance, and she will hightail it to escape.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

To love a woman, the mate must also love her wildish nature.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

A woman must choose her friends and lovers wisely, for both can become like a bad stepmother and rotten stepsisters.In the case of our lovers, we often invest them with the power of a great Mage - a great magician. This is easy to do , for if we become truly intimate, it dislike unlocking a lead crystal atelier, a magic one, or so it feels to us. A lover can engender and/or destroy even our most durable connections to our own cycle and ideas. The destructive lover must be avoided. A better sort of lover is one finely wrought of strong psychic muscle and tender flesh. For Wild Woman it also helps if the lover is just a bit psychic too, a person who can see into her heart.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

When the wildish woman has an idea, the friend or lover will never say, Well, I don't know . . . sounds really dumb [grandiose, undoable, expensive, etc.] to me. A right friend will never say that. They might say instead . . . I don't know if I understand. Tell me how you see it. Tell me how it will work.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged, or cornered. Story greases the hoists and pulleys, it causes adrenaline to surge, shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls, openings that lead to the dreamland, that lead to love and learning, that lead us back to our own real lives as knowing wildish women.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Every creature on earth returns to home. It is ironic that we have made wildlife refuges for ibis, pelican, egret, wolf, crane, deer, mouse, moose, and bear, but not for ourselves in the places we live day after day. We understand that the loss of habitat is the most disastrous event that can occur to a free creauture. We fervently point out how other creatures' natural territories have become surrounded by cities, ranches, highways, noise, and other dissonance, as though we are not affected also. We know that for creatures to live on, they must at least from time to time have a home place, a place where they feel both protected and free

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

When we accept our own wild beauty, it is put into perspective, and we are no longer poignantly aware of it anymore, but neither would we forsake it or disclaim it either. Does a wolf know how beautiful she is when she sleeps? Does a feline know what beautiful shapes she makes when she sits? Is a bird awed by the sound it hears when it snaps open its wings? Learning from them, we just act in our own true way and do not draw back from or hide our natural beauty. Like the creatures, we just are, and it is right.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting one's own numinosity without fleeing, actively living with the wild nature in one's own way. It means to be able to learn, to be able to stand what we know. It means to stand and live.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The most important thing is to hold on, hold out, for your creative life, for your solitude, for your time to be and do, for your very life.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Being real doesn't mean being reckless, it means allowing La Voz Mitologica, The Mythological Voice, to speak. One does that by shutting off the ego for a while and letting that which wishes to speak, speak.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The one who re-creates from that which has died is always a double-sided archetype. The Creation Mother is always also the Death Mother and vice versa. Because of this dual nature, or double-tasking, the great work before us is to learn to understand what around and about us and what within us must live, and what must die.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and laughter 'til they bloom, 'til you yourself burst into bloom.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you,and that you will work with these stories from your life--not someone else's life--water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. That is the work. The only work.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true. These intuitive powers were given to your soul at birth.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Dogs are the magicians of the universe.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

We can see that for the deep work to continue, trying to prove one's worth to the chorus of jealous hags is pointless.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

All creatures must learn that there exist predators. Without this knowing, a woman will be unable to negotiate safely within her own forest without being devoured. To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naivete, inexperience, or foolishness.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Sometimes a woman is afraid to be without security or without certainty, for even a short time. She has more excuses than dogs have hairs. She must just simply dive in and stand not knowing what will happen next.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

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

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and you laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Than Shwe ordered the confiscation of all cell phones and laptops and computers so no reportage could come out of Burma. It seemed clear that a demon, something diabolical, rather than something compassionate and human was in charge of Burma.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack. Yet both have been hounded, harassed and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

When women reassert their relationship with the wildish nature, they are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, a visionary, an oracle, an inspiratrice, an intuitive, a maker, a creator, an inventor, and a listener who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer world.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

I became married at a young age and had two daughters and divorced at 26. I had to go on welfare to make ends meet. I had no way to support myself.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Some say that sudden knowledge of mystical matters is accomplished only in complete quietude, or that Creator, in one of God's many forms, appears only in orderly ways that are beauteous and picturesque, or that the mystical appears only in completely silent ways. All are true. Except for the 'only' part.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Many people have trouble with forgiveness because they have been taught it is a singular act to be completed in one sitting. That is not so. Forgiveness has many layers, many seasons.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

People used to grow up in small communities where folk wisdom was passed down. But we don't live there anymore. We can't go next door to your aunt and ask her for the answers.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

When you feel bad, find a person to talk to and cry with, to tell of your anger and other helpless feelings.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The drive toward Life is protective, thoughtful, vulnerable, and invested in immaculate love. It is this last that marks the difference between a wise heart muddy with real life experiences in the trenches and a dry heart that functions on rote concepts alone.

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés