Women Who Run with the Wolves

Women’s rage is rarely spoken about because nice girls aren’t supposed to have bad feelings. “The Crescent Moon Bear” deals with rage and its constructive release. In Japan, a man returns home after many years away at war. His young wife is thrilled to have him back and prepares elaborate meals as a gesture of welcome. Instead of sleeping indoors, the man insists on living outside. He kicks over all the dishes of food and tells his wife not to bother him. The wife consults a wise old healer and asks for a potion to restore harmony to her marriage. The healer tells the wife to climb a nearby mountain and bring back a single white hair from the chest of a savage bear.

After many trials, the woman finds the bear’s cave at the top of the mountain. He comes out of his den roaring. She leaves a dish of food for the beast and scurries for cover. Each day she repeats this process, creeping ever closer to the bear himself. Finally, she works up the courage to ask the bear for one of his hairs in exchange for all the food she has given him. The bear grudgingly agrees and allows the wife to pluck a single white hair from his chest. Back in the village, the wife gives the hair to the healer, who immediately throws it into the fire. All the wife needs to do is exhibit the same patience and care with her husband, and all will be well in her marriage.

Estés interprets the entire story as a set of instructions for how a woman should deal with her own internal rage. Rather than suppressing it, she should view rage as a learning experience. “All emotion, even rage, carries knowledge, insight, what some call enlightenment. Our rage can, for a time, become teacher [...] a thing not to be rid of so fast” (352).

Understanding rage requires patience. The process is also iterative; not all of one’s rage can be exorcized in a single stroke. Dissolving a lifetime of rage takes practice:

It is very reassuring to know that when one is in a burgeoning rage one knows precisely and with the skill of a craftswoman what to do about it: wait it out, release illusions, take it for a climb on the mountain, speak with it, respect it as a teacher (359).

Under certain circumstances, rage is justified. A false niceness sometimes implies tolerance for truly awful conditions. When this happens, the author says, “For women, this means there is a time to reveal your incisors, your powerful ability to defend territory, to say ‘This far and no farther, the buck stops here’” (363).

In either case, it is necessary to dissipate rage and not let it rule one’s life. After dealing with the emotion, the time comes to move beyond it. The author discusses four stages to letting go of rage permanently: “1. to forego—to leave it alone, 2. to forebear—to abstain from punishing, 3. to forget—to aver from memory, to refuse to dwell, 4. to forgive—to abandon the debt” (370).

Women are generally trained to appear poised under all circumstances. This trait encourages the keeping of deep, dark secrets, and the keeping of such secrets cuts a woman off from her own authentic nature and creates a dead zone around certain portions of her life. “The secrets a woman keeps are almost always heroic dramas that have been perverted into tragedies that go nowhere” (376).

In “The Woman With Hair of Gold,” a weaver with beautiful golden hair lives all by herself out in the woods. She is courted by the brutish son of a coal burner, who tries to force her into marriage. To buy him off, the woman gives him a large quantity of her golden hair. When he tries to sell it in the marketplace, no one will buy the hair. Angered, the brute returns that night, murders the woman, and buries her body by the river. Because she lives in seclusion, nobody notices that the woman has gone missing. Eventually, golden reeds spring up from the woman’s grave. Shepherds cut the reeds to make flutes from them. When the first musical notes are played, the flutes sing of the woman’s murder and the man responsible for her death. He is instantly brought to justice.

It’s never too late to reveal a dark secret. Even after death, the murdered woman finds a way to speak her truth. So, too, women who have carried a burden of shame for a lifetime can release their sense of guilt and smash through the dead zone in their hearts:

Here is what to do about shame-filled secrets […] See what you see. Say it to someone. It is never too late. If you feel you cannot say it aloud, write it down for them. Choose a person whom you instinctively believe to be trustworthy. The can of worms you are worried about opening is far better off being out there than festering inside yourself (384).

Estés acknowledges that old injuries will leave scars. Women should wear those scars proudly. They are the evidence of life lived and battles won. She also points out that scar tissue, once formed, is much stronger than skin.