The following is what resonates with me and I hope it encourages people to dive into the text or the audiobook and find what resonates with them.
Chapter 8 – Self-preservation: Identifying Leg Traps
To be wild and free, forcibly tamed, and then released into the wild again is disorienting. Head spinning, blurry vision, a parched throat and empty stomach, unable to recognize safe people and spaces. We can do a great deal of damage to ourselves in this state, the feral woman as Dr. Estés describes (p.231). Severed from her instinctual life, a woman is starved for joy and worth. The path back is unsteady and full of dangerous traps (p.236). Ravenous hunger doesn’t allow us to distinguish nourishment from poison.
Losing the ability to direct our own lives, drains our energy (p.236). Our souls have little to nothing to live on or create from when our vitality is depleted by masking and contorting. Without connection to our instinct, we lose discernment and our foundation (p.236). We can’t be free if we don’t know who we are. Blessedly, there is always a path back home to ourselves. The best battle we can fight is the one up from rock bottom (p.237). It’s a good place to be. Why? The bottom has dirt, soil, from which everything grows. We can plant seeds for our reinvigorated life. Remember the soul can survive on very little (p.194) but imagine what it can do with sustenance and nurturing.
We must learn the common traps (p.272), the mistakes that come from a loss of instinct, and repair our connection (p. 236). It’s never too late to begin again, to mend our sails, to till the garden. Our prior failures carry lessons (p.237), one of mine is that kindness and safety are requirements to be a part of my personal life. What we put into the world provides us with joy that sustains our will to live (p.240). We must learn to avoid the traps or lose our joyful will.
Trap #1: The Gilded Carriage, the Devalued Life
While we are hard at work on a task, the saboteur surfaces. “This is a difficult undertaking, why not adopt what is already done over there?” (p.241). It appears easier, a soft life perhaps. There is nothing wrong with wanting ease, the issue is what it will cost you. If everything is taken care of for you, what could you possibly need to do or seek to understand (p.242)? Be quiet and grateful. Passion is stamped out. A hearty meal is snatched away and replaced with a few choice sprigs, more suitable for a proper lady. Starvation of the spirit begins.
Trap #2: The Dry Old Woman, the Senescent Force
That prefabricated life we may try to fit into comes with a set of rules. A rigid modus operandi that must be adhered to for acceptance. Your individual needs do not matter, the only thing that matters is the opinion of the larger collective (p.243-244). This is not to protect the group from a dangerous fool. This is the group silencing someone who requires depth. To preserve our spirits, rather than join a group, we review them to find one that supports our creative soul, to find our place like The Ugly Duckling (p. 178). A collective that understands the necessity of growth and development for the individual “will never make a slave class of any group or gender” (p.244).
Trap #3: Burning the Treasure, Hambre del Alma, Soul Famine
Our souls are flames, illuminating and powering our lives. We need fire that transforms sand to blown glass, not one that reduces a community to ash. Joy may be destroyed via early life with no support, self-hatred, or the jealousy of those closest to you. Desperation for joy and meaning in life unleashes an insatiable hunger. We’ll seize upon anything that might appease the gnawing pain (p. 245-246). We over-compensate whether it be with bottles of wine, Bible thumping, heated fellowship, finger wagging, rigid regimens, or Door Dash deliveries. A lack boundaries puts us in danger (p.248).
Trap #4: Injury to Basic Instinct, the Consequence of Capture
From birth, women have their instinct (p. 249). We know how to communicate and explore our world. When our choices are limited and we are forced to behave “properly”, our instincts can’t sharpen (p. 250). Natural development ceases, we cannot become who we are meant to be without the ability to choose, question, and explore. Socialization is necessary for a functioning society, respectful of boundaries. But “proper” relates to docile and obedient. Women who appear out of control or destructive have dulled instincts, mistakenly choosing what will harm instead of heal them (p. 251-252).
Trap #5: Trying to Sneak a Secret Life, Split in Two
The spirit and our need to express sinks into our depths, occasionally breaking out. The shadow, our depths, contain multitudes. It holds back desires for vice and violence. Our fiercest self lives in the darkness as well. The creator and truth teller who loves herself wholly (p. 254). Trying to suppress that energy rattles like a lid on a pot with a rolling boil. The pressure must escape. We crave that potent energy.
Women may sneak parts of our lives. Music, friendships, writing, lovers, peeking into places, trying to subsist on snippets (p. 255). We cannot live half lives. If the secrets are building strength toward freedom, then by all means continue. But we cannot fake what we need, this is all or nothing. Our spirits require full, constant access to our minds, bodies
Trap #6: Cringing Before the Collective, Shadow Rebellion
Society says if we follow its rules we will be accepted and protected. If we conform and starve our spirits we will be allowed to remain among the group (p. 258-259). Society can also convince women to betray one another, to report any dissention or natural, wild behavior. The only way to combat societal expectations is to act on our heartfelt instinct (p.260). Speak up, act boldly, challenge the status quo. The same challenges occur over and over and we have to be ready to rebel or become a shell of ourselves for acceptance.
Trap #7: Faking It, Trying to be Good, Normalizing the Abnormal
If we bow to society then we have to accept abuse and oppression. Ignoring the many wrongs around us shrivels our instincts to speak up and create change (p. 262). We can adopt learned helplessness and start to believe that we are incapable of changing our lives and the world around us (p. 263). The remedy is repairing our instincts by identifying harm both toward ourselves and outward from the larger world. Women who remain captured become bitter, hopeless, and despair in silence (p.266).
Trap #8: Dancing Out of Control, Obsession and Addiction
Shriveled instincts from accepting society’s abuse is detrimental to women. The lack of joy in life crushes the spirit (p. 268). Our instincts create boundaries that help us avoid excess and save our lives (p. 267-268). We cannot protect ourselves when we have no limits. Society often supports our loss of instincts, the loss of our natural life. But we yearn for that life and without boundaries and good sense we snatch up and scarf down anything that resembles it. Diving into overspending, sex, drugs, alcohol, or strict programs as we try to reclaim what is rightfully ours. Feral women need time to heal and sharpen their instincts (p. 269-270).
The Road to Healing
The traps can leave women feeling nothing inside. On standby, existing with no sensation. She is mired down in the sludge of a suffocating life. Remember rock bottom? From the muck she starts over and rebuilds her life (p. 271). Healing takes time, it could take a few years to address injuries, receive the necessary care, and prepare for what comes next. We reconnect with our instincts by finding how we initially became disconnected (p. 272).
Recognize the pitfalls and trap specific to your community and culture and how they support dismantling your instincts (p. 272). Make it a practice to watch those whose instincts are strong and intact. Learn their ways, rhythms, and patterns, practice their steps and your own will return to you (p. 273). We fight for our wild nature regularly. As we live, every few years we shed parts of ourselves.
Our task is to keep doing the work, it never ends and understanding that will bring us peace and strength (p. 274). This is how we keep our joy. We will start before we’re ready, that sliver of instinct propels us forward (p. 275). We learn the traps, heal our wounds, learn from other women, and sharpen our swords to maintain balance and boundaries. Instinct never dies, it burrows in our soil and sprouts anew.
