women who run with the wolves
This week’s quote comes from Women Who Run with the Wolves:
“One of the most amazing things about this long initiation (into the Wild Woman - the one who can make it up and over TOWER HILLS!!) is that the woman undergoing this process continues to do all the regular living of topside life: loving lovers; birthing babies; chasing children; chasing art; chasing words; carrying food; paints, skeins; fighting for this and the other; burying the dead; doing all the workaday tasks as well as this deep faraway journey.
A woman, at this time, is often torn in two directions, for there comes over her an urge to wade into the forest as though it is a river and to swim in the green, to climb to the top of a crag and sit … face into the wind.
It is a time when an inner clock strikes an hour that forces a woman to have a sudden need of a sky to call her own, a tree to throw her arms about, a rock to press her cheek against. Yet she must live her topside life as well.
It is to her extreme credit that even though she many times wishes to, she does not drive her car into the sunset.”
My running moms are serious runners seeking to enhance their already meaningful existence(s) … not one-dimensional fitness freaks who ignore the IMPORTANT things in life in order to be thinner or faster. Some of us do happen to be fast, but not at the expense of children or husband or REAL self. Its a delicate balance … sooooooooooooooo much harder than when I was simply, single-mindedly, training for the Olympics.
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Thank you for these words. Women Who Run With the Wolves is one of my favourite tomes, yet I must say I never took the time to see women who are runners in this light. I *had* vaguely thought of them as fitness freaks, yet I never will again. What a superb precis of the life held in delicate balance.. Not at the expense of family and REAL self. Goddess Womyn..
Comment by Natalie of the Crossroads — 5/8/2005 @ 10:50 pm
As a man who has read Woman who run with the Wolves I have a much better understanding of a woman’s needs and respect her need to be alone, to think (not always an easy thing to do)and to create. The only relationship that will work with a woman of nature is one that has no gate. As a runner myself I have noticed women who need to run and feel the wind. Awesome! Clarissa has opened not only the eyes of women.
Comment by Stan — 3/14/2007 @ 11:25 am