“When a woman is frozen of feeling, when she can no longer feel herself, when her blood, her passion, no longer reach the extremities of her psyche, when she is desperate; then a fantasy life is far more pleasurable than anything else she can set her sights upon. Her little match lights, because they have no wood to burn, instead burn up the psyche as though it were a big dry log. The psyche begins to play tricks on itself; it lives now in the fantasy fire of all yearning fulfilled. This kind of fantasizing is like a lie: If you tell it often enough, you begin to believe it.”
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"This is my life, not a fairy tale.....I have to go to the woods, and I have to meet the wolf, or else my life will never begin."
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The "Handless Maiden" is a real-life story about us as real women. It is not about one part of our lives, but about the phases of an entire lifetime. It teaches, in essence, that for women the work is to wander in the forest over and over again. Our psyches and souls are specifically suited to this so that we can traverse the psychic under-land, stopping here and here, listening to the voice of the old Wild Mother, being fed by the fruits of spirit, and being reunited with everything and everyone beloved by us.
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Refuse to fall down. If you cannot refuse to fall down, refuse to stay down. If you cannot refuse to stay down, lift your heart toward heaven, and like a hungry beggar, ask that it be filled, and it will be filled. You may be pushed down. You may be kept from rising. But no one can keep you from lifting your heart toward heaven
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One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flairs, builds signal fires, cause proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others; both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.
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Among wolves, no matter how sick, no matter how cornered, no matter how alone, afraid or weakened, the wolf will continue. She will lope, even with a broken leg. She will strenuously outwait, outwit, outrun and outlast whatever is bedeviling her. She will put her all in taking breath after breath. The hallmark of the wild nature is that it goes on.
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“To win the wildish woman’s heart, a mate would understand her natural duality through and through. Anyone close to a wildish woman is in fact in the presence of two women; an outer being and an interior criatura, one who lives in the topside world, one who lives in the world not so easily seeable. The outer being lives by the light of day and is easily observed. She is often pragmatic, acculturated, and very human. The criatura, however, often travels to the surface from far away, often appearing and then as quickly disappearing, yet always leaving behind a feeling: something surprising, original, and knowing”
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“Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success.”
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THE GARDENER
The gardener is the cultivator of the soul, a regenerative keeper of seed, soil, and root. .....The gardeners function is regeneration. The psyche of a woman must constantly sow, train, and harvest new energy in order to replace what is old and worn out. There is a natural entropy, or wearing down or using up, of psychic parts. This is good, this is how the psyche is asuppose to work, but one must have energies-in-training ready to backfill. This is the role of the gardener in the psychic work. He keeps track of the need for change and replenishing. Intra-psychically, there is constant living, constant death-dealing, constant replacement of ideas, images, energies.
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Some say the hymen is the veil. Others, that illusion is the veil. And none are wrong. But there is more. Ironically, though the veil has been used to hide one's beauty from the concupiscence of others, it is also femme fatale equipment. To wear a veil of a certain kind, at a certain time, with a certain lover, and with certain looks, is to exude an intense and smoky erotimine that causes true abated breath. In feminine psychology, the veil is a symbol of women's ability to take on whatever presence or essence they wish. There is a striking numinosity to the veiled one. She inspires such awe that all those she encounters stop in their tracks, so struck with reverence for her apparition that they must leave her alone.
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When women open the doors of their own lives and survey the carnage there in those out-of-the-way places, they most often find they have been allowing summary assassinations of their most crucial dreams, goals, and hopes. They find lifeless thoughts and feelings and desires; ones which were once graceful and promising but now are drained of blood. Whether these hopes or dreams be about desire for relationship, desire for an accomplishment, a success, or a work of art, when such a gruesome discovery is made in one's psyche, we can be sure the natural predator, also often symbolized in dreams as the animal groom, has been at work methodically destroying a woman's most cherished desires, concerns and aspirations.
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"A woman may try to hide from the devastations of her life, but the bleeding, the loss of life's energy, will continues until she recognizes the predator for what it is and contains it."
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But what if you, being a swan, had to pretend you were a mouse? What if you had to pretend to be gray and furry and tiny? What you had no long snaky tail to carry in the air on tail-carrying day? What if wherever you went you tried to walk like a mouse, but you waddled instead? What if you tried to talk like a mouse, but instead out came a honk every time? Wouldn't you be the most miserable creature in the world?
The answer is an unequivocal yes. So why, if this is all so and too true, do women keep trying to bend and fold themselves into shapes that are not theirs? I must say, from years of clinical observation of this problem, that most of the time it is not because of deep-seated masochism or a malignant dedication to self-destruction or anything of that nature. More often it is because the woman simply doesn't know any better. She is un-mothered.”
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Tears are a river that take you somewhere. Weeping creates a river around the boat that carries your soul life. Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off the dry ground, carrying it down river to someplace new, someplace better. There are oceans of tears women have never cried, for they have been trained to carry mother’s and father’s secrets to the grave. A woman’s crying has been considered quite dangerous, for it loosens the locks and bolts on the secrets she bears. But in truth, for the sake of a woman’s wild soul, it is better to cry. For women, tears are the beginning of initiation into the Scar Clan, that timeless tribe of women of all colors, all nations, all languages, who down through the ages have lived through a great something, and yet who stood proud
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If you don't go out in the woods, nothing will ever happen and your life will never begin.
"Don't go out in the woods, don't go out," they said.
"Why not? Why should I not go out in the woods tonight?" she asked.
"A big wolf lives there who eats humans such as you. Don't go out in the woods, don't go out. We mean it."
Naturally she went out. She went out in the woods anyway, and of course she met the wolf, just as they had warned her.
"See, we told you," they crowed.
"This is my life, not a fairy tale, you dolts," she said. "I have to go to the woods, and I have to meet the wolf, or else my life will never begin."
But the wolf she encountered was in a trap, in a trap this wolf's leg was in.
"Help me, oh help me! Aieeeee, aieeee, aieeee!" cried the wolf. "Help me, oh help me!" he cried, "and I shall reward you justly." For this is the way of wolves in tales of this kind.
"How do I know you won't harm me?" she asked--it was her job to ask questions. "How do I know you will not kill me and leave me lying in my bones?"
"Wrong question," said this wolf. "You'll just have to take my word for it." And the wolf began to cry and wail once again and more.
"Oh, aieee! Aieeee! Aieeee!
There's only one question
worthy asking fair maiden,
wooooooooor
aieeeee th'
soooooooool?"
"Oh you wolf, I will take a chance. Alright, here!" And she sprang the trap and the wolf drew out its paw and this she bound with herbs and grasses.
"Ah, thank you kind maiden, thank you," sighed the wolf. And because she had read too many of the wrong kind of tales, she cried, "Go ahead and kill me now, and let us get this over with."
But no, this did not come to pass. Instead this wolf put his paw upon her arm.
"I'm a wolf from another time and place," said he. And plucking a lash from his eye, he gave it to her and said, "Use this, and be wise. From now on you will know who is good and not so good; just look through my eyes and you will see clearly.
For letting me live,
I bid you live
in a manner as never before.
Remember, there's only one question
worthy asking fair maiden,
wooooooooor
aieeeee th'
soooooooool?"
And so she went back to her village,
happy to still have her life.
And this time as they said,
"Just stay here and be my bride,"
or "Do as I tell you,"
or "Say as I want you to say,
and remain as unwritten upon
as the day you came,"
she held up the wolf's eyelash
and peered through
and saw their motives
as she had not seen them before.
And the next time
the butcher weighed the meat,
she looked through her wolf's eyelash
and saw that he weighed his thumb too.
And she looked at her suitor
who said "I am so good for you,"
and she saw that her suitor
was so good for exactly nothing.
And in this way and more,
she was saved,
from not all,
but from many
misfortunes.
But more so, in this new seeing, not only did she see the sly and cruel, she began to grow immense in heart, for she looked at each person and weighed them anew through this gift from the wolf she had rescued.
And she saw those who were truly kind
and went near to them,
and found her mate
and stayed all the days of her life,
she discerned the brave
and came close to them,
she apprehended the faithful
and joined with them,
she saw bewilderment under anger
and hastened to soothe it,
she saw love in the eyes of the shy
and reached out to them,
she saw suffering in the stiff-lipped
and courted their laughter,
she saw need in the man with no words
and spoke for him,
she saw faith deep in the woman,
who said she had none,
and rekindled hers from her own.
She saw all things
with her lash of wolf
all things true,
and all things false,
all things turning against life
and all things turning toward life,
all things seen only
through the eyes of that
which weighs the heart with heart,
and not with mind alone.
This is how she learned that it is true what they say, that the wolf is the wisest of all. If you listen closely, the wolf in its howling is always asking the most important question--not where is the next food, not where is the next fight, not where is the next dance?---
but the most important question
in order to see into and behind,
to weigh the value of all that lives,
wooooooooor
aieeeee th'
soooooooool?"
wooooooooor
aieeeee th'
soooooooool?"
Where is the soul?
Where is the soul?
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.
Go out in the woods,
go out.
Go out in the woods,
go out,
Go out in the woods,
go out.
[ Clarissa Pinkola Estés]
