Clarissa Pincola Estes - Women Who Run With The Wolves - Myths And Storie by the Wild Woman Archetype (27 page)

This way of looking at the past accomplishes several things: it gives perspective, a compassionate rendering of times past, by laying out what one experienced, what one has made of it, what is admirable. It is the admiring of it, rather than the being of it, that releases the person.

To be the child survivor beyond its time is too over-identified with an injured archetype. To realize the injury, and yet memorialize it, allows thriving to come forth. Thriving is what was meant for us on this earth. Thriving, not just surviving, is our birthright as women.

Do not cringe and make yourself small if you are called the black sheep, the maverick, the lone wolf. Those with slow seeing say a nonconformist is a blight on society. But it has been proven over the centuries, that being different means standing at the edge, means one is practically guaranteed to make an original contribution, a useful and stunning contribution to her culture.
¹⁶

When seeking guidance, don’t ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice.

If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible, forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly, rebellious, you’re on the right track. Wild Woman is close by.

If you have never been called these things, there is yet time. Practice your Wild Woman.
Ándele
!
And again.

CHAPTER 7

Joyous Body: The Wild Flesh

I have been taken with the way wolves hit their bodies together when they run and play, the old wolves in their way, the young ones in theirs, the skinny ones, the fat ones, the long-legged, the lop-tailed, the floppy-eared, the ones whose broken limbs healed crookedly. They all have their own body configurations and strengths, their own beauty. They live and play according to what and who and how they are. They do not try to be what they are not.

Up in the northlands, I watched one old wolf who had only three legs; she was the only one who could fit through a crevasse where blueberries were branching. I once saw a gray wolf crouch and leap in such a flash it left the image of a silver arc in the air for a second afterward. I remember a delicate one, a new mother, still fulsome in the belly, picking her way through the pool moss with the grace of a dancer.

Yet, despite their beauty and ability to stay strong, wolves are sometimes talked about in this way: “Ah, you are too hungry, your teeth are too sharp, your appetites too interested.’' Like wolves, women are sometimes discussed as though only a certain temperament, only a certain restrained appetite, is acceptable. And too often added to that is an attribution of moral goodness or badness according to whether a woman’s size, height, gait, and shape conform to a singular or exclusionary ideal. When women are relegated to moods, mannerisms, and contours that conform to a single ideal of beauty and behavior, they are captured in both body and soul, and are no longer free.

In the instinctive psyche, the body is considered a sensor, an informational network, a messenger with myriad communication systems—cardiovascular, respiratory, skeletal, autonomic, as well as emotive and intuitive. In the
imaginai
world, the body is a powerful vehicle, a spirit who lives with us, a prayer of life in its own right. In fairy tales, as personified by magical objects that have superhuman qualities and abilities, the body is considered to have two sets of ears, one for hearing in the mundane world, the other for hearing the soul; two sets of eyes, one set for regular vision, another for far-seeing; two kinds of strength, the strength of the muscles and the invincible strength of soul. The list of twos about the body goes on.

In systems of body work such as Feldenkrais method, Ayurveda, and others, the body is understood variously as having six senses, not five. The body uses its skin and deeper fascia and flesh to record all that goes on around it Like the Rosetta stone, for those who know how to read it, the body is a living record of life given, life taken, life hoped for, life healed. It is valued for its articulate ability to register immediate reaction, to feel profoundly, to sense ahead.

The body is a multilingual being. It speaks through its color and its temperature, the flush of recognition, the glow of love, the ash of pain, the heat of arousal, the coldness of nonconviction. It speaks through its constant tiny dance, sometimes swaying, sometimes a-jitter, sometimes trembling. It speaks through the leaping of the heart, the falling of the spirit, the pit at the center, and rising hope.

The body remembers, the bones remember, the joints remember, even the little finger remembers. Memory is lodged in pictures and feelings in the cells themselves. Like a sponge filled with water, anywhere the flesh is pressed, wrung, even touched lightly, a memory may flow out in a stream.

To confine file beauty and value of the body to anything less than this magnificence is to force the body to live without its rightful spirit, its rightful form, its right to exultation. To be thought ugly or unacceptable because one’s beauty is outside the current fashion is deeply wounding to the natural joy that belongs to the wild nature.

Women have good reason to refute psychological and physical standards that are injurious to spirit and which sever relationship with the wild soul. It is clear that the instinctive nature of women values body and spirit far more for their ability to be vital, responsive, and enduring than by any measure of appearance. This is not to dismiss who or what is considered beautiful by any segment of culture, but to draw a larger circle that embraces all forms of beauty, form, and function.

Body Talk

A friend and I once performed a tandem storytelling called “Body Talk” about discovering the ancestral blessings of our kith and kin. Opalanga is an African American
griot
and she is very tail, like a yew tree, and as slender. I am
una Mexicana
, and am built close to the ground and am of extravagant body. In addition to being mocked for being tall, as a child she was told that the split between her front teeth was the sign of being
a liar.
I was told that my body shape and size w
ere th
e signs of being inferior and of having no self-control.

In this concurrent telling about body, we spoke of the slings and arrows we received throughout our lives because, according to the great “they,” our bodies were too much of this and not enough of that. In our telling, we sang a mourning song for the bodies we were not allowed to enjoy. We rocked, we danced, we looked at each other. We were each thinking the other is so mysterious- looking in such a beautiful way, how could anyone have thought otherwise?

How amazed I was to hear that as an adult she had journeyed to the Gambia in West Africa and found some of her ancestral people, who, lo! had among their tribe, many people who were very tall like the yew trees and as slender* and who had splits between their front teeth. This split, they explained to her, was called
Sakaya Yallah
, meaning “opening of God” ... and it was understood as a sign of wisdom.

How surprised she was when I told her, that as an adult, I had journeyed to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico and found some of my ancestral people, who lo! were a tribe with giant women who were strong, flirtatious, and commanding in their size. They had patted me
¹
and plucked at me, boldly remarking that I was not quite fat enough. Did I eat enough? Had I been ill? I must try harder, they explained, for women are
La Tierra
, made round like the earth herself, for the earth holds so much.
²

So in the performance, as in our lives, our personal stories, which began as experiences both oppressive and depressive, end with joy and a strong se
nse of sel
f. Opalanga understands that her height is her beauty, her smile one of wisdom, and that the voice of God is always close to her lips. I understand my body as not separate from the land, that my feet are made to hold my ground, my body a vessel made to cany much. We learned, from powerful people outside our own United States culture, to revalue the body, to refute ideas and language that would revile the mysterious body, or that would ignore the female body as an instrument of knowing.
³

To take much pleasure in a world filled with many kinds of beauty is a joy in life to which all women are entitled. To support only one kind of beauty is to be somehow unobservant of nature. There cannot be only one kind of songbird, only one kind of pine tree, only one kind of wolf. There cannot be one kind of baby, one kind of man, or one kind of woman. There cannot be one kind of breast, one kind of waist, one kind of skin.

My experiences with women of size in Mexico caused me to question the entire set of analytic premises about women’s various sizes and shapes and especially weights. One old psychological premise in particular seemed grotesquely erroneous: the idea that all women of size are hungry for something; that “inside them is a thin person screaming to get out.” When I suggested this “screaming thin woman” metaphor to one of the majestic Tehuana tribeswomen, she peered at me somewhat alarmed. Did I mean “possession by an evil spirit?
⁴
Who would have put such an evil thing inside a woman?” she asked. It was beyond her comprehension that a woman would be considered by “healers” or anyone else to have a screaming woman within because she was naturally big.

While compulsive and destructive eating disorders that distort body size and body image are real and tragic, they are not the

norm for most women. Women who arc big or small, wide or narrow, short or tall, are most likely to be so simply because they inherited the body configuration of their kin; if not their immediate k
in, then those a generation or two back. To malign or judge a woman’s inherited physicality is to make generation after generation of anxious and neurotic women. To make destructive and exclusionary judgments about a woman's inherited form, robs her of several critical and precious psychological and spiritual treasures. It robs her of pride in the body type that was given to her by her own ancestral lines. If she is taught to revile thus body inheritance, she is immediately slashed away from her female body identity with the rest of the family.

If she is taught to hate her own body, how can she love her mother’s body that has the same configuration as hers?
⁵
—her grandmother’s body, the bodies of her daughters as well? How can she love the bodies of other women (and men) close to her who have inherited the body shapes and configurations of their ancestors? To attack a woman thusly destroys her rightful pride of affiliation with her own people and robs her of the natural lilt she feels in her body no matter what height, size, shape she is. In essence, the attack on women’s bodies is a far-reaching attack on the ones who have gone before her as well as the ones who will come after her.
⁶

Instead, harsh judgments about body acceptability create a nation of hunched-over tall girls, short women on stilts, women of size dressed as though in mourning, very slender women trying to puff themselves out like adders, and various other women in hiding. Destroying a woman’s instinctive affiliation with her natural body cheats her of confidence. It causes her to perseverate about whether she is a good person or not, and bases her self- worth on how she looks instead of who she is. It pressures her to use up her energy worrying about how much food she consumes or the readings on the scale and tape measure. It keeps her preoccupied, colors everything she does, plans, and anticipates. It is unthinkable in the instinctive world that a woman should live preoccupied by appearance this way.

It makes utter sense to stay healthy and strong, to be as nourishing to the body as possible.
⁷
Yet I would have to agree, there is

in many women a “hungry” one inside. But rather than hungry to be a certain size, shape, or height, rather than hungry to fit the stereotype; women are hungry for basic regard from the culture surrounding them. The “hungry” one inside is longing to be treated respectfully, to be accepted,
⁸
and in the very least, to be met without stereotyping. If there really is a woman “screaming to get out” she is screaming for cessation of the disrespectful projections of others onto her body, her face, her age.

The pathologizing of variation in women’s bodies is a deep bias endorsed by many psychological theorists, most certainly by Freud. For instance, in his book on his father, Sigmund, Martin Freud relates how the entire family actively disliked and ridiculed stout people.
⁹
The reasons for Freud’s views are beyond the scope of this work; however, it is difficult to understand how such an attitude would assist a balanced viewpoint toward women’s bodies.

Yet, suffice it to say that various practitioners of psychology continue to hand down this bias against the natural body, encouraging women to turn their attentions to a constant monitoring of body, thereby robbing them of deeper and finer relationships with their given form. Angst about the body robs a woman in some large share of her creative life and her attention to other things.

This encouragement to begin trying to carve her body is remarkably similar to the carving, burning, peeling off layers, stripping down to the bones the flesh of the earth itself. Where there is a wound on the psyches and bodies of women, there is a corresponding wound at the same site in the culture itself, and finally on Nature herself. In a true holistic psychology all worlds are understood as interdependent, not as separate entities. It is not amazing that in our culture there is an issue about carving up a woman’s natural body, that there is a corresponding issue about carving up the landscape, and yet another about carving up the culture into fashionable parts as well. Although a woman may not be able to stop the dissection of culture and lands overnight, she can stop doing so to her own body.

The wild nature would never advocate the torture of the body, culture, or land. The wild nature would never agree to flog the

form in order to prove worth, prove “control,” prove character, be more visually pleasing, more financially valuable.

A woman cannot make the culture more aware by saying “Change.” But she can change her own attitude toward herself, thereby causing devaluing projections to glance off. She does this by taking back her body. By not forsaking the joy of her natural body, by not purchasing the popular illusion that happiness is only bestowed on those of a certain configuration or age, by not waiting or holding back to do anything, and by taking back her real life, and living it full bore, all stops out. This dynamic self-acceptance and self-esteem are what begins to change attitudes in the culture.

The Body in Fairy Tales

There are many mythos and fairy tales that describe the frailties and the wildness of the body. There is Greek Hephaestus, the lame worker of precious metals; the Mexican
Hartar
, the doublebodied one; Venus-born
-of-the-sea; the littlest tailor, who was ugly but could create new life; the women of Giant Mountain, who are courted for their strength; Thumbelina, who is able to travel about magically; and many more.

In fairy tales certain magic objects have transportive and sensory abilities that are apt metaphors for body, such as magic leaf, magic carpet, cloud. Sometimes cloaks, shoes, shields, hats, and helmets give the power of invisibility, superior strength, far-vision, and so forth. These are archetypal kith and kin. Each enables the physical body to enjoy deepened insight, hearing, flight, or protection of some sort for both psyche and soul.

Before the invention of carriages, coaches, chariots, before the domestication of animals for hauling and riding, it appears the motif that represented the sacred body was the magical object. Articles of clothing, amulets, talismans, and other objects, when related to in a certain way, transported the person across the river or the world

The magic carpet is an excellent symbol of the sensory and psychic value of the natural body. Fairy tales in which the flying carpet motif appears mimic the not-very-conscious attitude toward body in our own culture. The magic carpet is at first

thought to be quite ordinary and without much value. But for those who seat themselves in its dense pile and say “Arise,” the carpet instantly trembles, rises a bit, hovers, and then, zoom! away it flies, transporting the rider to a different place, center, viewpoint, knowing.
¹⁰
The body, through its states of arousal, awareness, and sensory experiences—such as listening to music, for instance, or hearing a loved one’s voice or smelling a certain fragrance—has the ability to transport us elsewhere.

In fairy tales, as in mythos, the carpet signifies a form of locomotion, but of a certain kind—the kind that enables us to see into the world and into the underlife as well. In the Middle Eastern stories, it is the vehicle for spirit flight of the shamans. The body is no dumb thing from which we struggle to flee ourselves. In proper perspective, it is a rocket ship, a series of atomic cloverleafs, a tangle of neurological umbilici to other worlds and experiences.

In addition to the magic carpet, there are other symbols for the body. One story in particular illustrates three. This tale was given to me by Fahtah Kelly. It is called simply, “The Tale of the Magic Carpet.”
¹¹
In it, a sultan sends three brothers to search for “the finest object on earth.” Whichever brother is deemed to have found the ultimate treasure will win an entire kingdom. One brother searches and brings back an ivory wand through which one can see into whatever One wishes. One brother brings back an apple whose smell can cure any affliction. The third brother brings back a magic carpet that can transport a person anywhere simply by his thinking of the place.

“So, which is the greater?” asks the sultan. ‘The ability to see far? The ability to heal and recover? Or the ability for spirit flight?’

By turn, each brother glorifies the object he has found. Yet the sultan finally waves his hand and proclaims, “None of these is greater than the other, for without one, the others would be of no use.” And the kingdom is given in equal shares to each brother.

Embedded in this tale are potent images that allow us to imagine what a true aliveness of body really is. This tale (and others like it) describe the fabulous powers of intuition, insight, sensory healing, and the rapture hidden in the body.
¹²
We tend to think of body as this “other” that does its thing somewhat without