While archetypes may emanate through us for short periods of time, in what we call numinous experience, no woman can emanate an archetype continuously. Only the archetype itself can withstand such projections such as ever-able, all giving, eternally energetic. We may try to emulate these, but they are ideals, not achievable by humans, and not meant to be. Yet the trap requires that women exhaust themselves trying to achieve these unrealistic levels. To avoid the trap, one has to learn to say 'Halt' and 'Stop the music,' and of course mean it.
Clarissa Pinkola EstesWe all wish to be brave and strong in the face of disaster. We all wish to be looked up to for our endurance and efforts to help others.
Clarissa Pinkola EstesTo be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.
Clarissa Pinkola EstesOurs is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach... 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 flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire.
Clarissa Pinkola EstesTo love means to embrace and at the same time to withstand many endings, and many many beginnings- all in the same relationship.
Clarissa Pinkola EstesWhen we accept our own wild beauty, it is put into perspective, and we are no longer poignantly aware of it anymore, but neither would we forsake it or disclaim it either. Does a wolf know how beautiful she is when she leaps? Does a feline know what beautiful shapes she makes when she sits? Is a bird awed by the sound it hears when it snaps open its wings? Learning from them, we just act in our own true way and do not draw back from or hide our natural beauty. Like the creatures, we just are, and it is right.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes