The great healer archetype

I am part of an all feminine book club, where we read ONE book, chapter by chapter. And we have a two hour zoom meeting a month, talking about ONE chapter. Often I sit listening to one woman in North western America, some women in Europe and one woman in New Zeeland. Amazing. And there we are, reading Clarissa Pinkola Estés  book ”Women who runs with the wolves”.  She presents old fairy tales (like the Ugly duckling) and then analyze the stories from a jungian perspective. It’s a book filled with archetypes, and to me it’s about us women, remembering our wild, sides, our wolves inside, and thus becoming more of ourselves. Ans our soul has an important place in this.

I read this book 25 years ago, by myself. Already then it was important reading. And now it’s even more important, even more interesting - and reading and talking about the book with other women is bouth rewarding and brings in a sense of belonging.

And I under-line so much in this book. There is so much knowledge in there. So many #tankespjärn. And sometimes it is like I really NEED to make a citation.

Like now - in a chapter where I read the story ”Sealskin, soulskin” - a story about how we leave ourselves… and how important it is that we find our way home - to our soul-home.

And this is the passage I want to share with you: 

”There is one more way to understand women’s delaying the retorn, one that is far more mysterious and that is a woman’s over-identification with the healer archetype. /…/

The great healer archetype carries wisdom, goodness, knowing, caregiving, and all the other things associated with a healer. Sp, it is good to be generous and kind and helpful like the great healer archetype. But only to a point. Beyond that, it exerts a hindering influence on our lives. Women’s ”heal everything, fix everything” compulsion is a major entrapment constructed by the requirements placed upon us by our own cultures, mainly pressures to prove that we are not just standing around taking up space and enjoying ourselves, but that we have redeemable value - in some parts of the world it is fair to say, to prove that we have value and therefore should be allowed to live. These pressures are introduced into our psyches when we are very young and unable to judge or resist them. They become law to us … unless or until we challenge them.”

Women who runs with the wolves, Chapter 9: Homing, returning to one self

I actually just found a Youtube clip, where you can listen to the story the chapter is about: