“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
Fairytales have long been known to shape our thinking and cultivate our dreams. Do we question how these stories are being told and what the underlying lessons are?
A critical view at Red Riding Hood, is a story that teaches little girls how to be safe and aware of the predator. How? By being obedient and not going into the wild woods because it is inhabited by the “Big Bad Wolf”.
On closer inspection, the question must be asked – Why was Red Riding Hood even let out by her mother, when she knew there was a predator, and why did she disobey her mother? Was this story constructed in such a manner to keep us safe, or was it created to brainwash us into believing that disobedience and choosing your own path will then get you into trouble? Is it not told in a manner that then is used tame the “Wild Woman” in us from childhood using a fear-based narrative? Crafted ever so cunningly, that we will never grow into women who dare venture into our wild nature, so that nothing may ever happen in our lives.
Obedient, Controlled, Captured and Tamed.
According to Clarissa Pinkola Estes, within each woman there is a powerful force of good instincts, creativity, passion, and timeless knowledge. Society has made us forget it in an attempt to “tame” us.
I love telling stories. So naturally I tell stories to my daughter as part of our bedtime ritual. When we are winding down for the day, this is our special bonding time. I started telling her stories when she was still in my womb, believing firmly that she could hear me and identify with the stories that she heard. After she was born, I continued to tell her these stories, at first narrating them from books and thereafter from memory. As we both evolved and grew, so too did the stories.
“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.”
At first, I narrated mostly fairytales to my little girl, as is customary between mothers and daughters. I am unsure if fairytales are narrated to sons by their parents, or if fathers narrate fairytales to their daughters, but as far as I know mothers are usually narrators of fairytales to their little girls as a rite of passage from childhood into their growing years. Therefore, it is necessary to be acutely aware of what we are teaching our little girls. Are we the orchestrators of our own girl’s demise to tame their wild and harm their souls? A dark thought? Perhaps not far from the truth.
The stories ENDING with “Happily, Ever After” at the point of the wedding or “true love’s first kiss”, unsettled me. I did not want to give my daughter these versions of the stories. So, I started creating different versions of the fairytales and my own stories to help her navigate what she was going to experience in her life as a girl and then as a woman.
Our stories encouraged my little girl to be thoughtful around what she was ingesting mentally at bedtime and also piqued her curiosity and critical thinking when someone else narrated the stories to her. She questioned things, she started dreaming bigger, she had aspirations through storytelling. Even to the point of publishing her first book at age 8!
My daughter stood in the Exclusive Books bookstore and said to me proudly: Mom, one day these bookshelves will be full of books that I have authored!” To that I replied: “Insha Allah, Ameen” (God Willing, Amen)
When “Women Who Run with the Wolves” was recommended to me, I had no idea what the book was about. The friend who recommended the book to me was also not aware of my storytelling ritual with my daughter. This book, I believed, was one of the many, here to guide me along my spiritual path and motherhood. It is deep, and sometimes dark, but if you persist, it will give you deep awareness of the female psyche that can and will liberate you.
A woman brave enough to assert her primal nature will face ridicule and rejection from those who don’t understand her mindset. Women Who Run With the Wolves is classified as both folklore/mythology and gender studies. It draws heavily on folk tales and mythology from around the world to explore the themes of the wild woman archetype, the forces that stand in the way of female self-awareness, and the necessary growth cycles of life, death, and rebirth
“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”
The resonating message for me from the book, is that as parents, we must not underestimate the power of the stories that we tell our children.
Words are magic, words have power and the words and stories that we feed our children are deeply ingested into the pysche. These stories shape how our children are raised, how they think, and how they will shape future generations to come. The stories become the way we believe the world to be and shape the way we live in this world.
As women, we must not underestimate the power of our wild natures. We must resist being tamed. We must never forget that we have free will and we must choose the path that fulfills our soul, the road less travelled.
Tell the story of a fairytale wedding to our little girls and they grow up with the aspiration of their greatest goal and achievement to be their wedding day.
Not their marriage, just the wedding day, because that is where the fairytale ends.
“Don’t waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on.”
Reading always propels me into the author’s world and I become the protagonist in the book.
Personally, I could identify with most of the protagonists from each story, from the naive sister who married the predator Bluebeard, who promises her the world for the price of her soul and punished for her curiosity. Then, Vasalisa (the story on which I assume Cinderella is based) who was tested by her stepmother and stepsisters but was moulded by the old hag and evil witch Baba Yaga, where she was sent to be killed, but ultimately through her courage was released with the gift of fire and wisdom.
The girl who is lured with the comfortable life in the “Red Shoes” abandoning the freedom of her soul to live with the wealthy old lady who gave her everything but her freedom. With the “Ugly Duckling” knowing that even who you think to be your family are not your soul tribe. Learning that not fitting in to who you believe to be your family, is not the end of it all, but finding the people to whom we really belong with can be soul altering for the better. The “Handless Maiden” enduring harsh lessons through every age and stage of her life.
The psychoanalytic nature of the book deep dives into the essence of the fairytales and storytelling, to make you understand how girls can grow up into women, shaped and moulded according to what society deems to be acceptable. How we lose our wild, free natures along the way, which ultimately leads to our eventual soul deaths. Perhaps why we feel so empty and unfulfilled in our lives, and in some cases our marriages, is this loss of our abilities to create, to fulfill our soul’s purpose for the promise of an easier, more comfortable life.
The book is not an easy read by any means. At least it was not for me. It is not meant to be read in a single setting, because it was not written in a single sitting so to speak. Do not judge yourself for wanting to take a break when reading the book, but read the book, as a woman, as a mother, as a daughter, as a parent. Often more than not, deep introspection is required after reading some pages, some chapters and then the whole book. Read it once, read it annually, read it however many times you need to, but read it.
“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
#Heal, #Grow and #Flow after your #Divorce #UntangledLove #BookClub #WomenWhoRunWithWolve