There’s an important study that gives insight into women’s loss of self-protective instinct. In the early 1960s, scientists16 conducted animal experiments to determine something about the “flight instinct” in humans. In one experiment they wired half the bottom of a large cage, so that a dog placed in the cage would receive a shock each time it set

Women trick themselves this way. They’ve thrown away the treasure, whatever it might be, but they’re sneaking bits and pieces any way they can. Are they writing? Yes, but secretly, so they have no support, no feedback. The student, is she going for her edge? Yes, but secretly so that she can have no help and no mentor. Is the performer risking

You can call it anything you like, but sneaking a life because the real one is not given room enough to thrive is hard on women’s vitality. Captured and starved women sneak all kinds of things: they sneak unsanctioned books and music, they sneak friendships, sexual feeling, religious affiliation. They sneak furtive thinking, dreams of revolution.

The cultural power of the body is its beauty, but power in the body is rare, for most have chased it away with their torture of or embarrassment by the flesh.

Fairy tales in which the flying carpet motif appears mimic the not-very-conscious attitude toward body in our own culture. The magic carpet is at first thought to be quite ordinary and without much value. But for those who seat themselves in its dense pile and say “Arise,” the carpet instantly trembles, rises a bit, hovers, and then, zoom! away it

is not amazing that in our culture there is an issue about carving up a woman’s natural body, that there is a corresponding issue about carving up the landscape, and yet another about carving up the culture into fashionable parts as well. Although a woman may not be able to stop the dissection of culture and lands overnight, she can stop doing so

It is better to name ourselves names that challenge us to grow as free creatures. That is thriving. That is what was meant for us.

What is the basic nutrition for the soul? Well, it differs from creature to creature, but here are some combinations. Consider them psychic macrobiotics. For some women air, night, sunlight, and trees are necessities. For others, words, paper, and books are the only things that satiate. For others, color, form, shadow, and clay are the absolutes.

If we were to name only one thing that makes the Wild Woman what she is, it would be her responsiveness. The word response comes from the Latin “to pledge, to promise”—and that is her strong suit. Her perceptive and deft responses are a consistent promise and pledge to the creative forces, be it Duende, the goblin-spirit behind passion, or Beauty,