An epic book from Clarissa Estes, PhD.

This is a professional leyter announcing her book.  Dr. Estes is one of the deepest, most profound readers I have ever read....her books merit reading, then rereading, sections...every piece a jewel to remember forever.  Her Women Who Run with the Wolves  spoke to me like no other...and defined healthy spiritual feminity in ways not matched, at least in my experience.


Dear Brave Souls:


Hello there, it’s me, Dr. E.,


What you’ve heard over the years about my having disappeared and gone underground to work and write is true. When people ask where the heck I’ve been and why I so seldom come out when called by the “clattering world,” I often want to respond by saying that one can’t fulfill one’s calling by being called away. Rather one fulfills one’s calling by filling up . . . by studying, thinking, listening, looking at, living in the layers of life beyond the collective ones. Then . . . one can pour outwardly again.


I also joke around sometimes saying that though I’ve been underground all these decades working . . . there might be “sightings.” I hope that last bit of levity made you smile, for another “sighting” is about to occur . . .


I am writing to warmly invite you to come be at the fireside with me and The Dangerous Old Woman, beginning the evening of April 6, 2010.


This is the “first of several” six-week online firesides where I’ll successively release to you for the first time ever—the complete and unabridged contents of the manuscript I’ve been working on for three decades: The Dangerous Old Woman: Myths and Stories of the Wise-Woman Archetype.


I’ll be telling you beautiful, meaningful, and often funny stories about the specific challenges, hard-won wisdom, and heartful insights to be found in the ancient and beautiful blood-red archetype of the old woman herself . . .


Through my research and studies over all these years—and also like you yourself—by living deep into all life’s curves and sudden right-angle turns, I see like the twisting trajectories of the old, wise, and wild woman in tales . . . that our lives as creative beings also follow a set of meaningful zig-zags . . . and that there comes a time in life when we veer toward a far more meaningful pathway than before, and we follow that as yet unknown path far more attentively as we gather more years . . .


It is said, “Getting older ain’t for sissies,” and that is true, but not for the often absurd reasons the over-culture usually tries to impose on us. Instead of merely “getting old,” we are “free to transgress the old rules,” which may have once served, but do not now . . . or never did.


Instead of supposedly “breaking stride” (take your calcium, darn it), we “break into” new territory that we thought or were told was off-limits to us . . . and yet now, we realize more and more that this “forbidden territory” of living in love and in soul is “the golden fuse” to living wise and free.


We are told our bodies will become “fuller” as we gather years. Well, maybe yes, maybe no, (mine more than leans to the fuller side, lol) but for certain we are destined to come into “fullest knowing,” into “fullest sense of being a soul”—not as a mere body, brain, and heart who just happens to have a soul straggling along behind—but rather—as a soul who came to earth with a dear and honorable body, a fine mind, and a glowing heart—all these being our most radiant traveling companions.


Amongst the ancient images of the wise old woman, I believe we find one of the greatest premises: We are not meant to lead life by the limited sights of the ego or the culture we happened to be born into, but rather we are meant to lead with the Soul . . . and to help ego learn to serve the Soul in every single one of our wild and wise endeavors and creations.


While it’s true we are living in times that are challenging outwardly and personally, and that the gaining of wisdom is not only a set of lessons, but a set of vows and inspired plans . . . we are also standing together in the ancient soul with La que sabe, “the one who knows” the ways through with dignity and with much flourishing both.


In gathering years, seeing becomes being . . . rather than our just “being what we were handed” by way of paltry “seeing” from the collective point of view.


Thus, as I’ve told you many times before, and I tell you now, and will continue to tell you dearly: Do not lose heart . . . for we belong to a tribe that has never before been seen on planet earth . . . Never has such a huge tribe of souls existed all at the same time who are so alert, so gifted, so filled with street sense.


Never before has there been such a huge group of women worldwide who carry the capacity to bridge, to reach across to one another, and out into the world. Never before has there existed such an enormous tribe of women willing and able to fulfill the callings of their souls on earth with verve, with style, with critical insights, and with love.


We are Tribe of the Sacred Heart. For many of us, our clan is Scar Clan. Just know the fireside is already blazing. I know you can see the great flames of heart’s intention from wherever you are now. Come join us. The Dangerous Old Woman is fully present, and we, your tribe, are waiting for you.


This comes with love and with peace,


Dr. E


Psychoanalyst, activist, author: currently deputy managing editor themoderatevoice.com, and columnist at the national catholic reporter online: El Rio Debajo Del Rio: The River Beneath the River.