“They Called Him the Maniac”
By Clarissa Pinkola Estés
The old woman with Alzheimer’s
is protected by her rowdy,
bellowing husband.
He uses his big body
to bar staff and family
from her bed.
“I’ll feed her.
I’ll give her the pill.
She’s fine. Just fine.
She’ll be coming home soon. You’ll see.”
His brother was elected to “talk some sense” to him.
“She doesn’t know you anymore, Jack.
Come away. She doesn’t know you anymore.”
Like Cerberus, the mad dog at the gates of hell,
the husband grabbed his brother’s lapels and roared,
“Yes, but I still know her!
I still know her!”
This poem, from La Pasionaria/ Bright Angel unpublished manuscript: Collected Poetry of Clarissa Pinkola Estés, was posted on her Facebook page, here, on March 17, 2013.
Dr. Estés is an American poet, post-trauma specialist and Jungian psychoanalyst who uses her poems throughout her psychoanalytic books, spoken-word audios, and stage performances as expressive therapy for others. She has practiced clinically for 41 years, and is the author of many books on the life of the soul.
Estés’ work is published in 32 languages. Her book entitles Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of The Wild Woman Archetype, was on the New York Times Best Seller list for 145 weeks.
Within every woman there lives a powerful force, filled with good instincts, passionate creativity, and ageless knowing.
She is the Wild Woman, who represents the instinctual nature of women. But she is an endangered species.
In Women Who Run With The Wolves, Dr. Estés unfolds rich intercultural myths, fairy tales, and stories, many from her own family, in order to help women reconnect with the fierce, healthy, visionary attributes of this instinctual nature….
Fertile and life-giving, it is a psychology of women in the truest sense, a knowing of the soul.
This volume reminds us that we are nature, for all our sophistication; that we are still wild; and that the recovery of that vitality will itself set us right in the world.
[Thomas Moore, Author of Care of the Soul]
Visit Dr. Estés’ website here. Read her books!
Namaste,
Susannah
Susannah Hay 