Women Who Run with the Wolves

This chapter examines the ways that the creative process can be polluted and subverted. The first story to illustrate this principle is called “La Llorona,” which means “The Weeping Woman.” It begins with a rich hidalgo who has an affair with a beautiful but poor woman who bears him two sons. Instead of marrying her, he becomes betrothed to a wealthy woman in Spain. When he prepares to return there, he plans to abandon his mistress and take her two sons with him. In despair, the woman runs to a nearby river and throws her sons in the water to drown before dying herself of a broken heart. When she arrives in heaven, St. Peter tells the woman that she can enter after she finds the souls of her dead children. To this day, she searches the river, weeping for her lost boys.

A modern variation on this tale changes the focus to environmental abuse. In this version, the hidalgo runs a factory that pumps polluted waste into the river. While his mistress is pregnant with twin sons, she drinks from the river, and the boys are born deformed. The hidalgo rejects both the woman and her sons. In despair, she throws the babies into the river and dies of grief herself. When she gets to heaven, St. Peter says she must find her sons’ souls, but the water is so dirty that she can’t see to the bottom. She is doomed to wander the shore calling for them and to dredge the muck in a fruitless search.

The polluted river is a metaphor for the toxic ideas that separate women from their creativity. Many things can muddy the waters: family responsibility, lack of confidence in one’s talent, fear of criticism from others. The hidalgo represents negative male energy, whether as an actual domineering man in a woman’s life or as the animus in her own psyche who fails to act constructively on her behalf. Ultimately, a woman who wants to reconnect with her creative nature needs to clean up the pollution.

“The Little Match Girl” exemplifies the ways in which fantasy can keep real dreams from coming true. A poor little orphan girl has found a way to survive by selling matches on a street corner in town. One cold winter night, nobody will buy her matches. Because she is so cold, she lights a match to keep herself warm. In its glow, she is transported to a room with a cozy stove in it. When the match goes out, she returns to the bitterly cold real world. She strikes another match and envisions a dining room with plentiful food. Before she can enjoy the feast, her match goes out again. After striking another, she finds herself in a room with a beautiful Christmas tree, where her grandmother covers her in an apron to keep her warm. When this vision disappears, the girl continues to strike matches until she is transported into the sky in her grandmother’s arms. In the real world, she’s found frozen to death the next morning.

The author explains that the girl has gone into a fantasy realm because she has passively accepted her terrible lot in this world. The matches represent creativity, but no one will buy them, a devaluation of the girl’s artistic potential. The author advises that a woman who finds herself totally without support from the people around her should get out of the situation immediately. “If this has happened to you, unresign yourself and come out kicking ass. When Wild Woman is cornered, she does not surrender, she comes ahead, claws out and fighting” (321).

The final story in the chapter illustrates how to reawaken the dormant fire of creativity when it is nearly depleted. In “The Three Gold Hairs,” an old man struggles through the woods at night. Weak and too weary to go on, he stumbles into the cottage of an old woman. She is strong enough to bring him indoors and rock him on her lap. Over the course of the night, under her care, he begins to age backward: He becomes a beautiful young man, then reverts to a healthy child. Just as dawn breaks, the old woman quickly plucks three golden hairs from the child’s head and drops them on the tile floor. The child climbs off her lap and goes to the door. He turns to give her a brilliant smile before flying into the sky and becoming the morning sun.

Estés advises that someone who is creatively blocked should take a timeout and do nothing, allowing creativity the time and space to regenerate. She says, “If you’ve lost focus, just sit down and be still. Take the idea and rock it to and fro. Keep some of it and throw some away, and it will renew itself. You need do no more” (333).