Clarissa Estes: biography, personal life, books, contribution to literature. Excerpts from Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book "Free the Strong Woman" Biography Facts

). I must say that Estes' book "Running with the Wolves" made an impression on me, comparable only to the explosion of a deep-sea bomb. That is, you read, you seem to realize - yes, fairy tales, yes, all this is so familiar ... But when it suddenly dawns that all these fairy tales are about you, that they are all not about someone from the outside, but about you, dear ... This is where the explosion happens.
Unfortunately, in addition to "Running with the Wolves" and two more books, in Russia, it seems, nothing was published. I decided to fill this gap to the best of my ability and translate several interviews that I found useful, especially for women. Forgive me men - all these interviews are lengthy and movingly imaginative, written in a very feminine way. I agree that, from a male point of view, all their essence could be stated in theses on one sheet. But Estes is still a storyteller, and a fairy tale is like a hug: warm, unhurried, soothing.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Excerpts from the book "Free the Strong Woman: The Immaculate Love of the Mother of God for the Wild Soul".

Dear ones, you wrote earlier that you yourself seem to be mystics. Some of you have had several visions of the Good Mother, others have only one, a brief vision, but so strong that the impression from it is enough for the rest of your life. Or you got the opportunity to somehow contemplate the Mother of God, our Lady, in one of Her infinite number of forms.
And now you write to me that you have heard that we are all a group of fighters for social justice, walking the earth in detached contemplation, but not "in the world."
You want to know how it is possible to describe the amazing experience you had. In old-fashioned terms, it is a phenomenon and a revelation. But I would advise you to call it all easier. These are manifestations of the great and beloved Sister Mother, who comes because she has known you for a long time and loves you. She enters the door without knocking and brings sweets and treats with her for you.
I heard that you seriously think that you have no opportunity to hide in rocky caves, where you could forget about everything and merge in love with Her. Daughters and sons, understand: wherever your bed is, there will be your cave. Your own pantry, table, motorcycle, alley - all these are shelters. It is true that, according to some teachings, mystics live in remote places, inaccessible to mere mortals. But many, many believers around the world live the same way as you - hiding from everything. Thus, very unusual souls live within the most ordinary circumstances.
Of course, it's nice to indulge yourself with thoughts of escaping the universe. Perhaps somewhere in a distant unknown region, full of great beauty and tranquility, where the outside world does not invade ... however, the Mother of God grows her most beautiful roses on earth, where she is most needed. Where horns blow, ambulance sirens wail, children weep for joy or pain; where people moan, dance and make love; in complete chaos, everywhere, among mankind, which sings, sounds, works... All this forms the basis of a harmonious cacophony - the music of the Universe.
Someone says that you can know the mystical mothers only in complete silence. Or that the Creator, the one God in many faces, manifests itself only on those paths of life that are beautiful and picturesque. All this is true. But there is one "but".
For example, the great mystic Jakob Boehme saw only a gleam of sunshine on the edge of a tin bowl, but this led him into such a religious ecstasy that he turned his whole life upside down. The Mother of Castile retired to a convent to guard her visions and ecstatic poetry. Other cases of enlightenment developed in many so-called "privileged conditions." But the best spiritual seeds, my dear sons and daughters, m "hijos y m" hijas, have grown up where they were sown. Seriously. No matter in poor or fertilized soil.
You ask: if the visions are very different from those described in the books, then your experiences are something false?
No. No, my dear ones, they are not false. They are absolutely reliable. I assure you, the Beloved comes in complete silence. But, judging from my own experience, She appears most often when the surroundings are restless, in clouds of dust that are not particularly picturesque. It comes with the screech of black car tires on an even blacker gravel road. She stands in the middle of broken glass on the edge of the sidewalk. She walks along every street, stops at every corner, even where, as my grandmother Cuerida used to say, “Our Lady herself should have been more careful.”
So that you can become a seeing follower of the Mother of God, I am sure that She will manifest for you in all sorts of ways. It will also appear in the epicenter of a thunderstorm, in the midst of such upheavals, when it seems to us that the sky itself is crumbling to the ground; and when there is peace and silence everywhere, She is near, in your own little universe - for She appears where order, strength, endurance, new ideas, rage, hope and vitality are most needed.
Now you write that everything around you often seems to be complete chaos, and you are in great sorrow. I totally agree. Our own short-term sorrows sometimes seem unbearable to us, even when eternal joys are seen behind them. But pain breaks the vast majority of hearts. Nevertheless, She is with us, even when life develops in such a way that we have everything to remain thick-skinned, cynical and caustic. And yet we are still here, and our heart is indestructible.
This is a very good sign.
There is great strength in a broken heart. Unlike other aspects of the soul, which can completely close or hide when we feel pain, a broken heart always remains open.
While it hurts unbearably at times, an open broken heart is a blessing, no doubt about it. This not only allows us to see others, it allows us to see Her all the time.
How many times in one life does our heart break? A thousand times a thousand, because of a mere trifle, for any indiscretion ...
When I was nineteen, I first heard from Her: “Do you love Me, My sister?”.
I replied: "Yes, my only one, I love you."
"How much do you love me?"
"With all your heart, Beloved."
"Will you visit me in prison?"
"In prison?"

I was afraid to go to prison at nineteen. But when I first visited Michigan City Prison, it was like I was on a pilgrimage to the future, to many prisons: those that were built by the government, and those many, many prisons of the soul created by the people themselves; in some I came voluntarily, in some I brought a sharp twist of fate. I also went into my own mental prison.
When I was still a teenager, I promised Her that whenever I heard Her call, I would follow wherever I was called. As you can see, I completely trust her. I'm always ready. Whether it is an immigrant prison or a pilgrimage to institutions for boys aged 18-20, institutions for girls and boys aged 12 to 18, men's penal colonies, women's federal prisons, city and village prisons, state prisons or service in city hospitals , whose patients are in chains due to forced surgery.
It was so, it continues.
Do you love me?
Yes I love you.
Then will you visit Me in a home for single mothers?
Of course, yes - and another sword pierces my heart.
Do you love me?
Yes I love you.
Then will you help open a shelter for battered women? Will you lick the wounds of the wounded?
Yes; another sword.
Do you love me?
Yes, I love You dearly.
Then will you walk with Me through Skid Row with an alcohol swab to wipe the hands and feet that are teeming with bacteria, to heal the wounds of men and women that are hard to tell apart? Will you do this for me?
Yes. Big sword.
Do you love me?
With all your being.
Will you stand out in the cold on a Chicago night, in the coldest winter, dressed in wanderer's rags, with an old man who will tell you the amazing story of his life while blowing the most foul breath imaginable?
Yes, of course I will.
Do you love me? Do you love me?
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.
That's it, my dears. It's time to end this letter. You asked me how to develop, how to deepen your devotion to Her. I can literally feel in my bones that you almost know the way and just need one little reminder. Know that She comes in the most untidy, careless form, more often in a very large and very bold form than in a modest one.

You recognize her by a sign,
For she is a woman
Who looks just like you
And everything you love.

Do you remember?

Coda: Our Lady of Guadalupe - Girl Gang Leader in Heaven

My Our Lady of Guadalupe is the leader of the girls' gang in Heaven!
She is not like a pale blue, pampered woman.
She is full of calm - yes, like the great Ocean She is calm.
She is submissive - yes, like the dawn
Conquering the horizon line.
She's sweet, yes
Like a whole forest of sweet maple trees.
She has a great heart, overflowing with grace,
And, like any girl gang leader,
She has impressive hips.
Her knees are big enough
To seat all of us to the last and warm.
her embrace
Can hide us
Everyone…
And all with such Immaculate Love!

Aymen!
(as my grandmother used to say, a little woman).

In Clarissa Pinkola Estes "Untie the Strong Woman"

"She's always on the move.
If there is excitement somewhere, there it is.
If there is confusion anywhere, there it is.
Is there jubilation anywhere - there she is.
If where impatience - there and she.
Where fatigue is, there it is.
Fear, anxiety, sadness,
Beauty, inspiration -
She's everywhere."
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, a Jungian psychoanalyst who has worked extensively with traumatized women, and a mixed-breed storyteller with a significant amount of Mexican Latinos and European immigrant blood, a woman who clings tightly to her roots, and at the same time a representative of the generations of "tumbleweeds" is known mainly from a wonderful book " Runner with the Wolves, which had many faces of the Wild Woman that Estes likes to talk about, and this book was suitable for many different occasions.

Her new book "Free a strong woman", which was published in Russian translation by the Eksmo publishing house in 2014, is devoted to a topic that seems wider and more abundant than ever - the Great Mother, as a savior, liberator, defender of the oppressed. At the same time, it is much more focused, of a narrower spectrum of action in a sense, like a specific medicine. The fact is that the book is devoted to the image of the Great Mother to a large extent in her expression.
through Mary (and more specifically, through Maria de Guadalupe) in Latin American Catholicism, which in Estes is strongly
since childhood. Estes connects her image with the pre-Christian beliefs of the Mexican Indians, the goddess of grain and fertility, and returns to the image of Maria La Guadalupe - the mother, protector and deliverer of even the most confused and lost of her children. At the same time, she writes about maternal strength and perseverance, perseverance, survival, the ability to return with help again and again.

"And - yes, she is indeed in a sense meek, but not in the way that those who would like to reduce her essence to anemia would like. Yes, she is meek - but with indomitable meekness, refusing to fit into any framework and become petty.
And - yes, she is really calm, but not weak-willed, so as not to rise again and again. On the contrary - yes, it is calm, like a mighty ocean calm, moving in giant depressions and tops of huge waves, like a heartbeat ...
And - yes, she is indeed pure, but not like those who never frown, never doubt, never turn the wrong way (for a while). But she's clean - oh yeah! - like a precious stone that has been cut by a hundred sparkling facets of torment, adventure and trials - and at the same time, there is not a glare of dead glass in any of the facets.

Liberation in this context is about what is strong in a woman and what cannot be shackled. The translation of the name to the word is not quite accurate "Untie" - it's more likely to untie, free from fetters. This is what the book is about - that there are no such chains, no such ropes that could not be removed with her help. Help will come if you ask for it. That she could not protect from all mistakes, from all pain, but with her help there would be fewer of them, and they could be dealt with.
In this book, Estes talks a lot about her life, what she did, how she got help in her work, there are many photos of votives (ex-voto) that she did. In particular, there is a wonderful story about how she decided to put a typical figure for Latin American Catholics on her site, Maria La Guadalupe dug inside a bathtub placed "on the priest", and when she asked for help to dig this bathtub, a man came to her drinking heavily, and at the same time not losing his inner fire (there is this story in English). The creation and erection of the statue took much more time, and the result was a grotto with a source in which the statue of Maria La Conquista (Mother of the Conquered, Mary the All-Conquering) was sculpted by the same person (the photo of the grotto briefly flashes here in this video). She tells how Mary was perceived by the women of her clan. She talks about the cult of the Black Madonnas, and how her grandmother again and again sought out among the burnt logs similar to the figure of Mary and decorated the garden with them. She writes about Africa and the cult of Mother Road. She talks about her work at a juvenile delinquency center and about the Pesame and La Posada rituals among Hispanic Catholics. To a large extent, this book is about finding the inner fire, about refusing to be enslaved by anything. And on the one hand, she writes about very personal things, about the history of the conquest of the Indians, the destruction of the storytellers, about how rebirth is possible from the last surviving grain on the cob. And at the same time, the book is universal enough to find its response in us.

New book by Clarissa Pinkola Estes - author of the longseller "Running with the Wolves". The new book is a continuation of this bestseller. The author's books and works on the soul have been published in more than 30 languages. Recently, her books have been published in Persian, Turkish, Chinese and Serbian. She Who Runs With Wolves is on the New York Times bestseller list for 145 weeks, selling over 1,000,000 copies worldwide. Millions of women around the world - numerous admirers of creativity, KP Estes eagerly awaited her next book - and she fulfilled this promise with depth and understanding, courage and humor. This book is about the Divine Mother, about the power that she bestows on all women. As a true Jungian, the author, in her characteristic beautiful manner of a storyteller - the keeper of stories - combines antiquity with modernity. This healing book for all women on the planet reveals the perspective of our mind, the compassion of our heart and the strength of our spirit.

Clarissa Estes is an American poet and psychoanalyst. Oral ethnic tradition had a great influence on her upbringing. Her ancestors are simple people, farmers, artisans, from lands with an old way of life. “Free the Strong Woman” is a book about the Mother of God in all her forms. The author encourages readers to return to this collective image, to feel its life-giving power, to overcome conditional obstacles on the way to it - and to hide from adversity under the green veil of southern Mary. But do not try to put out the passionate creative fire that it kindles in the hearts of people.

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Clarissa Estes is an American poet and psychoanalyst. Oral ethnic tradition had a great influence on her upbringing. Her ancestors are simple people, farmers, artisans, from lands with an old way of life. " Release Strong Woman"- a book about the Mother of God in all her guises. The author encourages readers to return to this collective image, feel its life-giving power, overcome conditional obstacles on the way to it - and hide from adversity under the green veil of southern Mary. But do not try to put out the passionate creative fire, which she kindles in the hearts of people.