One of the most amazing things about this long initiation is that the woman undergoing this process continues to do all the regular living of topside life: loving lovers; chasing children; chasing art; chasing words; carrying food, paints, skeins; fighting for this and the other; burying the dead; doing all the workaday tasks as well as this deep, faraway journey.
A woman, at this time, is often torn in two directions, for there comes over her an urge to wade into the forest as though it is a river and to swim in the green, to climb to the top of a crag and sit face into the wind. It is a time when the inner clock strikes an hour that forces a woman to have sudden need of a sky to call her own, a tree to throw her arms about, a rock to press her cheek against. Yet she must live her topside life as well.
It is to her extreme credit that even though she many times wishes to, she does not drive her car into the sunset. At least not permanently. For it is this outer life that exerts the right amount of pressure to take on the underworld tasking. It is better to stay in the world during this time rather than leave it, for the tension is better and tension makes a precious and deeply turned life that can be made no other way.
CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTES
Women Who Run With the Wolves (Ballantine Books)
Next step: And so dear friends…