Stories That Shape Us: Reflections on Women Who Run with the Wolves
Women Who Run with the Wolves
Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
By Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD (Read 2025)
I've always been fascinated by stories.
Anyone who knows me well knows that reading is one of the great joys of my life. I read broadly, but I'm especially drawn to stories that explore why people become who they become. I love novels that make me think differently about relationships, identity, grief, courage, and the quiet ways we change over time. I want to read stories that make me feel. Long before I became a therapist, I was interested in the stories people tell about themselves and the stories cultures tell about who we're supposed to be.
That's one of the reasons Women Who Run with the Wolves stayed with me.
It's not a psychology book in the traditional sense. It doesn't offer step-by-step advice or a framework to follow. Instead, Clarissa Pinkola Estés uses myths, folklore, and fairy tales to explore recurring themes about women, instinct, creativity, loss, resilience, and identity. Rather than explaining what each story means, she invites readers to wonder what each story means to them.
Stories Shape More Than We Realize
One of the things I've been thinking about over the past several years is how much our lives are influenced by stories.
Not only the stories we tell ourselves, but the stories we've inherited. Stories about what makes someone successful. Stories about what relationships are supposed to look like. Stories about gender. About family. About work. About aging. About love. Many of those stories become so familiar that we stop noticing them altogether. We begin treating them as facts rather than narratives that were created by people living in particular places and times.
Reading mythology has a way of slowing that process down.
It reminds us that human beings have always tried to make meaning through stories, and that the stories we choose to keep saying often reveal what a culture values, fears, or longs for.
What I Appreciated About This Book
One of the things I appreciated most is that Estés doesn't ask readers to agree with every interpretation she offers.
Instead, she creates space for reflection.
As I read, I found myself wondering less whether a particular interpretation was objectively "correct" and more about what each story brought up in me. Why did certain themes feel familiar? Why did particular characters linger in my mind? Why have some myths survived for hundreds or even thousands of years while others have quietly disappeared?
Those questions felt more interesting than finding definitive answers.
One of the central ideas in I used in Therapy is that we understand ourselves through stories. Some of those stories come from our own lived experience. Others come from our families, communities, cultures, religions, or the broader society we grew up in. Sometimes those stories help us. Sometimes they quietly limit us. I've found that therapy often involves becoming curious about both.
What stories have you inherited?
Which ones still fit?
Which ones never really belonged to you in the first place?
Although Women Who Run with the Wolves isn't a Narrative Therapy book, I found myself making those connections throughout. Mythology becomes another way of exploring identity, belonging, courage, grief, creativity, and the many different roles people are asked to inhabit throughout their lives.
A Personal Reflection
One thing I've noticed about myself is that I rarely read simply to gather information.
I read because stories change the way I see people.
They help me imagine experiences that aren't my own. They remind me that every person carries an inner world far more complicated than what we see from the outside. I think reading widely has made me a better therapist because it has made me a more curious person.
That's probably why this book resonated with me.
Not because I agreed with every interpretation or every conclusion, but because it reminded me that stories matter.
The stories we return to.
The stories we reject.
The stories we inherit.
And perhaps most importantly, the stories we choose to rewrite.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés reminds us that this work is both ancient and ongoing: to be what we know in our bones how to be, to tend the stories of our own lives, and to allow them to shape us. As she writes, “I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories from your life—water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom… That is the work. The only work.”
Digging Deeper
If this post resonated with you, you might also enjoy exploring:
Identity Work – Exploring the values, experiences, and narratives that influence who we become.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) – Becoming curious about the many different parts of ourselves and the roles they've learned to play.
Contact Me – If you'd like to explore the stories that have shaped your own life, I'd be happy to connect.