Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype [Paperback]

NEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER • Book club pick for Emma Watson’s Our Shared Shelf • “A deeply spiritual book [that] honors what is tough, smart and untamed in women.”—The Washington Post Book World

Within every woman there lives a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing. She is the Wild Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women. But she is an endangered species. For though the gifts of wildish nature belong to us at birth, society’s attempt to “civilize” us into rigid roles has muffled the deep, life-giving messages of our own souls.

InWomen Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairy tales, folk tales, and stories, many from her own traditions, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature. Through the stories and commentaries in this remarkable book, we retrieve, examine, love, and understand the Wild Woman, and hold her against our deep psyches as one who is both magic and medicine.

Dr. Estés has created a new lexicon for describing the female psyche. Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.

Praise forWomen Who Run with the Wolves

“Women Who Run with the Wolvesisn’t just another book. It is a gift of profound insight, wisdom, and love. An oracle from one who knows.”—Alice Walker

“I am grateful toWomen Who Run with the Wolvesand to Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés. The work shows the reader how glorious it is to be daring, to be caring, and to be women. Everyone who can read should read this book.”—Maya Angelou

“An inspiring book, the ‘vitamins for the soul’ [for] women who are cut off from their intuitive nl³"