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

The only trust required is to know that when there is one ending there will be another beginning.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés

These transient “tastes of the wild” come during the mystique of inspiration—ah, there it is; oh, now it has gone. The longing for her comes when one happens across someone who has secured this Willis relationship. The longing comes when one realizes one has given scant time to the mystic cook fire or to the dream-time, too little time to one’s own creative life, one’s life work, or one’s true loves.” Women Who Run With The Wolves - Myths And Story by the Wild Woman Archetype

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The wild nature has a vast integrity to it. It means to establish one's territory, to find one's pack, to be in one's body with certainty and pride regardless of the body's gifts and limitations, to speak and act in one's own behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one's cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as possible. -Clarissa Pin kola Estes, Women Who Run With The Wolves, Singing Over The Bones, P10.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés

The word enema (breath) shares its origins with the word psyche; they are both considered words for soul. So when there is song in a tale or mythos, we know that the gods are being called upon to breathe their wisdom and power into the matter at hand. We know then that the forces are at work in the spirit world, busy crafting soul.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés

This explosive psychological 'sneaking' occurs when a woman suppresses large parts of self into the shadows of the psyche. In the view of analytical psychology, the repression of both negative and positive instincts, urges, and feelings into the unconscious causes them to inhabit a shadow realm. While the ego and superego attempt to continue to censor the shadow impulses, the very pressure that repression causes is rather like a bubble in the sidewall of a tire. Eventually, as the tire revolves and heats up, the pressure behind the bubble intensifies, causing it to explode outward, releasing all the inner content. The shadow acts similarly We find that by opening the door to the shadow realm a little, and letting out various elements a few at a time, relating to them, finding use for them, negotiating, we can reduce being surprised by shadow sneak attacks and unexpected explosions.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés

This wolf-woman Self must have freedom to move, to speak, to be angry, and to create.

— 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

To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting one's own luminosity 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. Furthermore, it means to stand and live.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés

To lose focus means to lose energy. The absolutely wrong thing to attempt when we've lost focus is to rush about struggling to pack it all back together again. Rushing is not the thing to do... Patience, peace and rocking renew ideas. Just holding the idea and the patience to rock it are what some women might call a luxury. Wild Woman says it is a necessity... Take the idea and rock it to and fro. Keep some of it and throw some away, and it will renew itself. You need to do no more.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estés