I’ve been struggling, like you, to feel the emotions around the tragedy in Connecticut… I couldn’t sleep last night and I decided to go through an old file from 2003 with my journals and life coaching studies.
In my file was this beautiful piece by Clarisa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D, who wrote, “Women Who Run With the Wolves”.
The following is a letter she wrote to a young activist during troubled times.
It’s worth reading the letter in full. It helped me to open my heart up and cry when all I wanted to do was shut down and go numb. The words in this letter helped me feel more fully and a peace washed over me.
I feel like I was meant to find this and read it and then to pass it along to whomever might read it today; it’s quite profound.
-Renee
By Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. {2003}
Do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. The are concerned about the state of affairs in our world right now… Ours is a time of almost daily astonishment and often righteous rage over the latest degradations of what matters most to civilized, visionary people.
You are right in your assessments. The lustre and hubris some have aspired to while endorsing acts so heinous against children, elders, everyday people, the poor, the unguarded, the helpless, is breathtaking. Yet, I urge you, ask you, gentle you, to please not spend your spirit dry by bewailing these difficult times.
Especially do not lose hope. Most particularly because, the fact is – we were made for these times.
Yes. For years, we have been learning, practicing, been in training for and just waiting to meet on this exact plane of engagement… I grew up on the Great Lakes and recognize a seaworthy vessel when I see one. Regarding awakened souls, there have never been more able crafts in the waters than there are right now across the world. And they are fully provisioned and able to signal one another as never before in the history of humankind…
Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you. Even though you veneers may shiver from every wave in the story roil, I assure you that the long timbers composing your prow and rudder come from a greater forest. The long-grained lumber is known to withstand storms, to hold together, to hold it’s own, and to advance, regardless.
We have been in training for a dark time such as this, since the day we assented to come to Earth. For many decades, worldwide, souls just like us have been felled and left for dead in so many ways over and over brought down by naiveté, by lack of love, by being ambushed and assaulted by various cultural and personal shocks in the extreme. We have a history of being gutted, and yet remember this especially – we have also, of necessity perfected the knack of resurrection. Over and over again we have been the living proof that that which has been exiled, lost, or foundered can be restored to life again.
In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or untended in the world. Do not focus on that. There is a tendency too to fall into being weakened by persevering on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be. Do not focus there. That is spending the wind without raising the sails. We are needed, that is all we can know.
And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear.
Didn’t you say you were a believer?
Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the voice greater?
Understand the paradox: If you study the physics of a waterspout, you will see that the outer vortex whirls far more quickly than the inner one. To calm the storm means to quiet the outer layer, to cause it to swirl much less, to more evenly match the velocity of the inner core – till whatever has been lifted into such a vicious funnel falls back to Earth, lays down, is peaceable again. One of the most important steps you can take to help calm the storm is to not allow yourself to be taken in flurry of overwrought emotion or desperation thereby accidentally contributing to the swell and the swirl.
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.
Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor, suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take “everyone on Earth” to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group of who will no give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul.
Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern or soul in shadowy times like these — to be fierce and to show mercy toward others, both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.
Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it.
If you would help to calm the tumult, this is one of the strongest things you can do.
There will always be times when you feel discouraged. I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it; I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate. The reason is this: In my uttermost bones I know something, as do you. It is that there can be no despair when you remember why you came to Earth, who you serve and who sent you here. The good words we say and the good deeds we do are not ours: They are the words and deeds of the One who brought us here. In that spirit, I hope you will write this on your wall:
When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for…
This comes with much love and prayer that you remember who you came from, and why you came to this beautiful, needful Earth.
–Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Author, Women Who Run With the Wolves
