Salutations, bibliophiles.
Today, I’m very excited to bring you
.Angie writes
, where she writes about science, nature, spirituality and their overlap. If you didn’t know, the Selkie is an old folktale of many northern seafaring cultures. The story tells of women who shapeshift between seal and human, which, as Angie tells us, is a reminder to not lose sight of who you are.This is the theme of Angie’s essay for us today: the book that helped Angie realise the two sides of herself. Enjoy!
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I first read Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run with the Wolves when I was in the depths of graduate school. I was drowning in slow motion under the weight of teaching, classes, and research, and the creeping, sinister feeling that something wasn’t right. I had been training to be a biologist for years, and I was pushing my cognitive abilities much harder than I ever had. I was also experiencing an awakening that many of us go through in our early twenties. My identity and the stories I had told myself about my childhood and who I was were unravelling. The staunch, rationalistic scientific road I had walked was filling with potholes. I was having recurring dreams with archetypes and symbolism I didn’t understand. My worldview was far too narrow to explain or integrate my experiences, and it created a near constant tension.
This tension began to bleed into every aspect of my life. I was no longer happy in my relationship but couldn’t put my finger on any reason why. My partner at the time was kind, patient, and successful by society’s standards. He loved me greatly and we had a comfortable life together. I had no real reason to leave, but I didn’t want to stay either. Something else was calling to me, tugging at the space in my chest behind my heart, like there was a hook there attached to a line that led… somewhere else.
Enter Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. In it, Estés shares old myths and tales of the wild woman archetype; the connected, wise, and grounded woman of the old ways. The type of woman our modern fascination with witches is really about.
The stories Estés shares are her own versions, intertwined from different cultures around the world. They are old stories that have been passed down through many generations. They reach back to a time when the pace of daily life was much different. Survival and comfort took more work, and this work rose and fell with the seasons. Humans lived in natural cycles, something our modern schedules and stressors have eliminated for most of us.
I read Women Who Run with the Wolves during my summer field research in a remote forest of interior British Columbia, and then into the winter when I returned to civilization. The slower winter months meant more time for both data processing and reading, and the juxtaposition of this deeply spiritual book with highly technical and sometimes sterile data analysis meant the book became a balm to my daily life, especially after returning from such a wild existence in the forest.
The book also became a dark invitation. My scientific work mattered less and less to me. The stories called to me in a way I couldn’t explain with my rational science brain. I couldn’t stop staring into the shadowy water beneath my safe little boat, wondering what would happen if I slipped over the side and dove. I found myself dog-earing page after page and underlining entire paragraphs. I needed to remember it all, integrate it all. Reading her stories was like finding water after a long, thirsty trek through the desert. I wanted to wade in, to immerse myself in it, to soak it up and drink it down.
Estes’ writing conveys a deep feeling of connection to all of humanity, to the history of humanity, and not just the whitewashed textbook versions. No main events, no dates, no specific heroes, but pure human experience. Who we all used to be, in some past life that still sits in our subconscious, speaking to our souls. She brings across the truth of the feminine, the ancient and timeless rhythm of life lived as a woman. The folktales she presents give the expansive feeling that we are not just reading or writing stories, we are living them. We live the same stories as those before us, and they pass through our lives like great open ocean swells – long arcs of energy that move across a connected body, rising and falling as that energy influences the water it passes through. As Rumi said, “We are not a drop in the ocean, but the ocean in a drop.”
Estes’ timeless retelling of these tales made me feel, for one of the first times, that I am indeed connected to all humans. I had experienced spiritual connection often throughout my life in nature, feeling deeply tied to the ocean, the mountains, the trees and the ravens that perched in them. But I had always struggled to translate this feeling to other people. I often felt like I didn’t fit in with those around me. I felt that the life I lived in my own head was strange and separate, too secular and divergent from others. Women Who Run with the Wolves deconstructed those walls within the first few stories, and the rushing flood of the ocean of humanity poured in.
The story of the selkie, as told by Estés, unearthed my intuitive knowing in an almost frightening way. I was raised by the sea in Alaska, a part of the world that knew and told the story of the selkie through generations. I read the story of the selkie in Women Who Run with the Wolves when I was hundreds of miles from my home, landlocked away from the ocean. That tug at the back of my heart burst forward in a nostalgic ache. I felt the truth of that story in my bones. I knew with a knowing I had never accepted before. It was not the knowing of rationality and logic, but the knowing of love and life. The knowing of cycles and nature, of the ocean swells and the force of sea storms. The polite beckoning into the dark waters had become a demanding scream, and I could no longer ignore it. I was shoved off the path into the woods, pushed off the comfortable boat and into the depths of my psyche. There would be no turning back.
You see, I had been trained as a scientist to see the world through rationality and reason. Science is a way of knowing, and its goal in its purest form is truth. It’s a fantastic tool, an excellent system for asking questions and reaching conclusions. You test your hypotheses, get results, and with reach repetition you gain knowledge to define a phenomenon. But this system, this way of thinking, wasn’t the whole picture. In the classic scientific way, if you can’t see it and measure it, it doesn’t really exist. But this does not always include the nuance of being human. Dr. Pippa Malmgren said in a recent podcast, “Throughout humanity, we have had two systems for imposing order upon chaos. One is numbers, and the other is stories.”
I had tried to live my life just a scientist, not as a person or a woman. It was like walking through the world with blinders on. There were things happening in the periphery of my view, in the depths of my soul, in my dreams, that I just couldn’t see clearly.
I began to trust my intuition then, for the first time. I had to. I was diving into depths I had never explored before, and I needed knew tools to survive it. I accepted my emotions with care, and paid attention to my internal temperature. Gradually, that tension I had felt building began to fade. Or rather, it moved from my mind into physical reality. I ended my relationship and moved into a new house. I began to build a new life on my own. The waters around me were tossed in storm, but inside I began to feel calm and grounded. Until then, I had never felt stronger or more conscious in my intention.
Now I don’t just look for the practical path when I make decisions, I look for the one that feels right. I practice balancing my rational mind and my knowing heart. When I choose to trust my heart over my mind, it is almost always good. I have found that it is much more beautiful here, in the deep. It is still dark and scary, sometimes, but there is treasure here, too.
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Excellent essay. The quote about two ways impose order was well done.
What a beautiful homecoming! I could relate in many ways to your story and loved how it has unfolded. I’ve read other Estes books and I have dipped in and out of this one. Thank you for sharing!