Women Who Run with the Wolves Review

By Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Simply put, this is the best book I’ve read in my early thirties—perhaps in my entire life.

I’d seen the cover of Women Who Run With the Wolves for years. It would appear on Pinterest boards, in book recommendations, and in conversations with women whose style, homes, and way of living I deeply admired. Every time I saw it, I thought, One day I’ll read that. One day soon, I’d tell myself.

It took several years before I finally clicked “Buy Now.” Looking back, I don’t think I was late—I simply wasn’t ready yet.

When I eventually ordered it, there was an urgency I couldn’t quite explain. It felt like an inner knowing that it was finally time to venture deeper into self-discovery, healing, and understanding the parts of myself I had spent years trying to make sense of. Every book arrives at the right season of our lives, and this one found me exactly when I needed it.

I’m incredibly grateful that it did.

Although first published in 1992, Women Who Run With the Wolves remains remarkably timeless. More than thirty years later, its stories still speak directly to something many women quietly carry within them. Through myths, fairy tales, folklore, and Jungian psychology, Clarissa Pinkola Estés beautifully weaves together ancient stories that illuminate the feminine psyche and the Wild Woman archetype.

She manages to give language to feelings that often seem impossible to explain—the longing, the intuition, the grief, the creativity, the resilience, and the quiet hunger to understand ourselves more deeply. It is a book that doesn’t simply offer answers; it invites you to begin asking better questions.

What Is the Book About?

This isn’t a traditional self-help book filled with step-by-step advice or productivity tips. Instead, Estés guides readers through a collection of myths and stories, carefully unpacking the symbolism hidden within each one. Every chapter explores a different aspect of the feminine experience: intuition, love, heartbreak, creativity, boundaries, transformation, motherhood, aging, grief, and healing.

This book is written for the woman who is ready to step beyond surface-level self-improvement and into the depths of her own psyche.

There comes a point in many women’s lives when logic alone no longer answers the questions they carry. Life presents challenges that leave us wondering why we continue repeating certain patterns, why some losses change us forever, or why we feel disconnected from ourselves despite doing everything “right.”

Women Who Run With the Wolves gently suggests that perhaps those answers aren’t found by thinking harder—but by listening more deeply.

It asks us to open the creaking door to the parts of ourselves we’ve long ignored, even if we’re afraid of what we might find waiting in the dark.

My Favorite Story: Skeleton Woman

Of all the stories in the book, Skeleton Woman was the one that stayed with me long after I turned the final page.

When I first read it, I remember sitting with an overwhelming sense of peace. It wasn’t because the story was comforting—in many ways, it was confronting—but because it gave words to something I had been feeling for a long time yet couldn’t fully explain.

Without revealing too much of the story, Skeleton Woman explores what it truly means to love another person. Not the romanticized version of love, but the kind that asks us to face the parts of ourselves we’d rather keep hidden. It suggests that authentic love requires each person to meet their own fears, grief, wounds, and truths before they can fully meet another.

Reading it helped me understand that sometimes two people can deeply care for one another and still struggle—not because love is absent, but because healing cannot be done on someone else’s behalf.

That realization brought me an unexpected sense of peace.

It shifted my perspective away from asking, “Why is this happening?” toward “What is this trying to teach us?”

Looking back now, I realize I didn’t fully understand why that chapter affected me so deeply at the time. Months later, life unfolded in a way that gave it an entirely new meaning. It became one of those rare pieces of writing that seemed to prepare me for a chapter of my own life before I even knew I was entering it.

That’s the magic of this book. It doesn’t simply explain stories—it quietly helps you understand your own.

Writing Style

It took me more than six months to finish this book.

It traveled with me through mountain mornings, quiet spa days, coffee shops, and weekends away. Sometimes it remained tucked inside my bag without ever being opened, yet simply knowing it was there brought me comfort. Other days I’d read two pages. Occasionally I’d lose myself in thirty.

Only after reaching the final chapter—and reading the author’s notes—did I realize this was exactly how the book was meant to be experienced.

This isn’t a book to rush through.

It asks you to pause. To reflect. To sit with difficult ideas before moving on.

The lessons are layered, and so is the writing. Some stories may not resonate the first time you read them, only to reveal entirely new meaning months or even years later.

Something else surprised me while reading this book. Time and time again, I’d open it to discover that the very story I was about to read seemed to mirror something unfolding in my own life. Whether coincidence, intuition, or simply the power of meaningful literature, the timing often felt almost magical.

Reflections that stayed with me:

Buried Bones: We All Have an Underworld

One of the greatest lessons this book taught me is that we all carry buried bones within our psyche—parts of ourselves we’ve hidden, forgotten, or buried because they were too painful to face.

Healing isn’t about pretending those bones don’t exist. It’s about having the courage to excavate them.

What I loved most is that Clarissa Pinkola Estés doesn’t present healing as a destination. There is no moment where we become completely healed and never struggle again. Instead, she reminds us that initiation into our own underworld happens repeatedly throughout life. Every season asks something new of us, and each time we descend into ourselves, we return carrying a little more wisdom.

Obsession & Addiction

One of the more surprising lessons in this book is that addiction isn’t always about substances.

Sometimes we become addicted to people, relationships, validation, perfection, achievement, or even the hope that if we just try harder, something will finally change.

The book challenged me to consider where attachment ends and obsession begins. It asks difficult questions about why we cling so tightly to things that no longer nourish us, and what fears might exist beneath that attachment.

Freedom often begins when we stop trying to control outcomes and start trusting ourselves instead.

Rage Isn’t the Enemy

Before reading this book, I often thought of anger as something to suppress.

Estés completely reframes it.

She distinguishes rage from violence, reminding us that anger itself isn’t wrong. In fact, it can be one of our most honest emotions. Anger often arrives to tell us that a boundary has been crossed, that something isn’t right, or that we’ve abandoned ourselves in some way.

The lesson isn’t to eliminate anger.

The lesson is to express it in healthy ways so it doesn’t harden into bitterness.

When acknowledged instead of ignored, anger eventually becomes clarity.

Intuition & Instinct

Perhaps the most repeated lesson throughout the book is the importance of trusting our intuition.

Women often learn to question themselves before questioning others. We explain away red flags. We override uncomfortable feelings. We convince ourselves we’re overreacting.

This book argues the opposite.

Our instincts exist for a reason.

Learning to trust them again isn’t about becoming fearful or suspicious. It’s about reconnecting with the quiet inner voice that often knows the truth long before our mind is ready to accept it.

Healthy boundaries naturally grow from that place.

Creativity Is Part of the Wild Woman

Before reading this book, I often viewed creativity as something optional—a hobby or something to make time for once everything else was finished.

This book completely changed that perspective.

Creativity isn’t just painting, writing, or making music. It’s adding romance to all of life. 

It’s how we decorate our homes, prepare meals, solve problems, tell stories, build businesses, nurture relationships, and express who we are.

Creating isn’t a luxury.

It’s part of being fully alive.

The Wild Woman doesn’t create because she’s trying to impress anyone. She creates because it is part of her nature.

Death & Rebirth

This is honestly the thread that ties the entire book together.

Throughout the book, I noticed a pattern. Again and again, the stories reminded me that growth requires some version of death. Not always a physical death, but the ending of an identity, a belief, a relationship, or a way of living that no longer serves us.

We often resist these endings because they’re painful. Yet Estés gently reminds us that every ending creates space for something new to emerge.

You cannot become who you’re meant to be while clinging to who you’ve already outgrown.

Final Thoughts

Some books teach you new information.

Others quietly introduce you to yourself.

Women Who Run With the Wolves belongs in the second category.

It isn’t an easy read, nor is it meant to be. At nearly five hundred pages, filled with symbolism and psychological depth, it asks for patience and reflection rather than speed. But if you’re willing to meet it where it is, I believe it offers something truly rare.

This isn’t a book I’ll read only once.

It’s a companion I’ll return to throughout different seasons of my life, because I have a feeling that each version of myself will discover a different book waiting within its pages.

Rating: ★★★★★ (5/5)