For My Wildish Un-Declawed Sisters

Sniff, Track, Hunt

Whenever I feel dry and frozen I read "Women Who Run With the Wolves" by  Clarissa Pinkola Estes. It was given to me in 1993, a year after I moved from Taiwan to Minneapolis, with two suitcases and an ill-fitted red coat on my back, no hat, no gloves, in the dead of winter. The person* who gave me the book was a transplant from Spokane, my American bosses family friend, my first woman friend in the new country.

Last night I felt drawn to the Ugly Duckling story and read until midnight while the snow whistled like a ghost in the wind. The light flickered uncertainly but the power never went out. Of all the stories in "Women Who Run with the Wolves" I keep returning to the Ugly Ducking, like recurring dreams. This morning I woke up and the crank in my neck disappeared and the snow was melting in the sun.

          " While it is useful to make bridges even to those groups one does not belong to, 

          and it is important to try to be kind, it is also imperative to not strive too hard, 

          to not believe too deeply that if one acts just right, if one manages to tie down 

        all the itches and twitches of the wildish criatura, that one can actually pass 

       for a nice, restrained, subdued, and demure lady-woman. 

        It is that kind of acting, that kind of ego-wish to belong at all costs, 

          that knocks out the Wild Woman connection in the psyche."

*Julie Neraas is a Presbyterian pastor, spiritual director, and professor in the Graduate Liberal Studies program at Hamline University. Her first book "Apprenticed to Hope" was published in 2009.