I picked up my copy of Women Who Run With the Wolves from an op shop more than ten years ago. Only today, while searching for a quote, have I thought to separate the first page that has been stuck to the cover all this time. I peel back the page tentatively, unsure whether to do so as I can see there’s something written on the other side, a message meant for someone else’s eyes. Putting aside this feeling of intruding on a private conversation, I peel back the top right corner of the page and that gives me enough leverage to read the message: Dear Jess, something to read while you rediscover yourself and what really matters to you. Love Louisa

I wonder if Jess found any insight from the folk stories and commentary provided by Jungian psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estes. The book is now filled with highlights, coloured underlines, and notes scribbled in the margins by my 30-something self as I desperately tried to rediscover myself and make sense of what really mattered to me at the time. So many questions ran through my veins.

Reading the book in my early thirties there was something in it that spoke to the wildness and fire in me that needed stoking. It was a difficult time in my life in which I could have easily become defeated and withdrawn, but the stories in this book helped me to have hope that there was a different way of being in the world. At the time I felt like I had lost my way - unsure about where to live, what work to do, I was single and learning to accept that I may never meet a long term partner or start a family. I knew I loved to play music and to write but I didn’t know how to channel this into fruition. I had friends that I treasured and yet I didn’t feel a strong part of any one community.

The truth is, I’ve always been someone who’s found it hard to know where I fit. Someone with many interests, floating across different sections of community. Other than learning to read music in our primary school band I’m not musically trained and yet through my love for music, I’ve ended up, in recent times, at the front of a choir leading singers. I do it because I love it and it has become a much needed anchor point in my life. And yet I still have times when I question whether I have earned that privileged place at the front of the group.

As I moved into my early twenties it became clear that music needed to be a part of my life. It just was. Playing music every day, I always had one or two original songs in the pipeline. I was terrible at learning music in a structured way, including learning covers or practicing scales. It’s only been in recent times, by being part of a community choir, that I’ve enjoyed learning other people’s songs and arrangements – and learning them well enough to teach others. This has meant I’ve had to work on the technical side of my musicianship.

I wrote the song Wild Woman almost ten years ago, at the time of reading Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book. The song was an invitation to the Wild Woman archetype, invoking her wild presence into my life. And now, all this time later, I call upon her again as a woman in my fourties who now has more roots in the ground, but still a lot to learn about how to nurture a wildish way of living that honours my truth.

The stories in Women Who Run With the Wolves encourage me to take on a wild patience, to sit with the discomfort and restless impatience grappling with uncertainty. Uncertainty of the path ahead and also a questioning, that often circles back, about who my true self actually is. I’ve learnt that this waiting with patience is not idle but instead hard work, building a fire to help reclaim what is important in my life. And then trusting that by focussing my energy on what is important (and letting go of that which is not) the fire will grow and my wild instinctive voice will start to sing, even howl, to be heard.

Once you have been introduced to the Wild Woman archetype, you learn to accept that the path with her is not linear. There are moments when she feels very present, under your skin and in your breath, and other times when she seems so far out of reach that you fear you have lost her. But there is always a way to summon her back.

Wild Woman

Better be ready for a bumpy ride

Nothing to pack except all the strength you can find

Better be ready for some slip and slide

Pack all the love and kindness you can find

For the wild woman

Waiting so long

Wild woman

You are so strong

Here is the fire that is mine to make

The risk that I am willing to take

Come build the fire that has been waiting to be made

The leap that I just have to take

For the wild woman

Waiting so long

Wild woman

Keep singing your song

Wild woman

You are so strong

Wild woman

Waiting so long

Wild woman

Keep singing your song