It made me ponder the pain of starving our souls to death - and what it takes to recover

When I was 22 and a pretty frustrated and confused young woman, a woman my mother’s age handed me “Women who Run with the Wolves” and said: read it.

And I thought no way I will read this incredibly awkward hippy book, and how strange it is that she gave it to me.

No thanks!

Today, more than 15 years later, I'm again standing here with this book in my hand. Last week, I was visiting a friend, and she handed me the book and said: I've ordered this for myself, but if you like; you can read it first.

And I answered: Yes please!

Life has many cycles.

The fairytale of Bluebeard – Or: Meeting our inner predator

For those of you who don’t know it, “Women Who Run with the Volves”, written by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, is an ode to retracing the Wild Woman within. Pinkola Estés uses stories and myths to tell the story of feminine healing, and to call upon our ancient remembrance of the wild woman archetype within our collective feminine psyche. 

Right now, I'm exploring the chapter about the fairytale character Bluebeard, who convinces a beautiful but naïve young woman to marry him (hey, she dismisses the fact that his beard is poisonous blue), and then shuts her in in his castle.

Or, maybe she shuts herself in there, the fairytale doesn’t say.

Anyway, one day Bluebeard goes away. He gives the girl a ring of keys, and tells her she can use them all – except for one.

And you know how this goes: The girls sisters come visit, and together they discover the door to the forbidden key - and open it. And behind that door is a room full of skeleton of all Bluebeards dead wives.

Now, here comes the interesting part: upon opening that door, the key starts to blead – massively. Desperately, the girl tries to stop the bleeding, but she cannot. And now Bluebeard returns home, and asks for the key, and when he sees the bleed, he decides to kill her too.

Luckily for the girl, her sisters have run home to warn their brothers, and now they all come to the girl’s rescue, just in time, and kill Bluebeard.

Trapped soul, bleeding wound

Pinkola Estés explores Bluebeard as the predator existing in all of our psyches: eager and ready to kill off our creativity; our soul. She describes the room full of skeletons as the bones of the dead feminine within us, what we are reduced to when we give in to our internal predator and turn our back on our life force, our intuition and our passions.

Deadness.

The bleeding key, writes Pinkola Estés, is the wound: once we have opened the door and seen what’s behind it: death, we will FEEL and suffer the pain of having turned our back on ourselves.

The wound is opened, and can no longer be covered up. We cannot continue lying to ourselves, saying: I am happy. I live the life I love.

Cause our souls are bleeding – and we know it.

Seven years ago, I was myself one of those skeletons. I had sacrificed my secret yearnings for what I thought were safety: a steady job, a nice boyfriend, a home.

I had chosen what I thought were safety – but really, I was playing a dangerous game. Cause I was killing my own life force. Turning my back on all my passions, I eventually felt I had nothing to live for. My soul was locked up in a secret room in my inner dungeons; slowly starving to death.

Luckily for me, I eventually chose to listen to that voice deep within me who reminded me that I was keener on living than on starving myself to death: and I committed myself to honour my soul. It took me three years of fulltime work to bring the life back to my bones and stop my key from bleeding. Then, it took me another two years to build my life back up practically in a way that honoured my deeper self. 

Because of my own tumultuous journey to find and follow my life path, my heart naturally warms for women who crosses my path, who - just as I did - seem to have made all the wrong choices for themselves, and desperately searches: How to make this undone? How to turn around? How to stop the bleeding key?

Will she make it? Will she dare to do what she needs to do, to find herself back? Can I help?

Visiting our skeletons – and loving them back to life

The key doesn’t stop bleeding by us slamming the door shut and never looking inside the skeleton room again. It doesn’t stop by us running the other way. It doesn’t stop by us trying to hide the key.

The key stops bleeding as we see Bluebeard for whom he is: a predator, and recognizes him as part of ourselves. And we say: you are not the master here: I AM. And we put the key in the door, and we go visit those skeletons. And we sing them songs, until the flesh grows back on their bodies. And then we feel their pain, and grieve their grief – and then we reach out our hand and love them back up on their feet.

That's how we claim our life force back.

It's nothing easy about this process. But when we´ve turned our backs against our souls and know we need to readjust, then going where we fear the most is usually our portal back to… LIFE.