Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Advantages: Wonderful, huge read.Great stories and myths
Disadvantages: None.

...Do you like fairy-tales and myths ? multicultural stories ? Perhaps you like fairytales with meaning ? I know I do. I found and read, sometime ago, Clarissa Pinkola Estes' wonderful book "Women who run with Wolves". I thought I would share my experience of the book and my thoughts on it with you. This is a book which bursts at the brim with fairy tales and filled with meaning by a woman writer called Clarissa Pinkola Estes. In fact her own life reads like a fairy tale. She was born to a Spanish couple who could not read or write, and later brought up by Hungarian parents. Later she becomes, at a young age a 'cantadora' which is a keeper of the old stories, a storyteller of tales unwritten, but passed on to be retold. The young girl is a wonderful scholar and she becomes a Jungian psychoanalyist. Estes sees the world with her... Read review

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Advantages: Soul searching, very meaningful
Disadvantages: Not a light read by a long shot but great all the same

...Although not my usual cp of tea I was first attracted to this book by the title. Thoughts filled my mind of a great ‘she wolf’ running free through beautiful mountainside forests. I loved the image of her feeding and protecting her young, a nurturing and intuitive being. From the foreword to the last pages, I felt like she was speaking directly to me. Guiding me through all the hidden depths of my soul and my beliefs. The book contains stories from many cultures that Clarissa has spent most of her life collecting. She is renowned as a poet, a teacher and is known as a ‘cantadora’, a keeper of the old stories. The five hundred pages, although daunting captured my attention from the start. The hidden meanings within the stories themselves are revealed in a way that I have never experienced. When I began to read I was concerned... Read review

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Advantages: inspiring and thought provoking
Disadvantages: I have no idea how it would read for blokes

...Are you the sort of woman who isn't happily imbedded in the mainstream? Do you think differently sometimes? Do you feel trapped by the expectations of those around you? Are you hankering after something you can't name? Then maybe this book is for you. 'Women who run with the wolves' really isn't like anything else, and explaining it represents an interesting challenge. It's part psychology - Estes is a psychologist with a lot of Jung in her background. It's part myth and story telling, but then, by family tradition she is a story teller. It is personal journey, healing, life coaching and inspiration all rolled into one. Estes feels that most women in our cultures are estranged from the wilder aspects of themselves - taught to be nice, tame and biddable, to submit and to suffer in silence, even though being these things can be soul... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful