02/21/2025
La Loba, the old one, The One Who Knows, is within us. She thrives in the deepest soul-psyche of women, the ancient and vital Wild Woman. The La Loba story describes her home as that place in time where the spirit of women and the spirit of wolf meet - the place where her mind and her instincts mingle, where a woman’s deep life funds her mundane life. It is the point where the I and the Thou kiss, the place where women run with the wolves.’
~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
If you’ve never read “Women Who Run With the Wolves”, Dr. Estes tells of an old woman who lives in a hidden place that everyone knows but few have ever seen. She seems to wait for lost or wandering people and seekers to come to her place. And she is called by many names: La Huesera, Bone Woman; La Trapera, The Gatherer; and La Loba, Wolf Woman. She creeps and crawls and sifts through the montañas, mountains, and arroyos, dry river beds, looking for wolf bones, and when she has assembled an entire skeleton, when the last bone is in place and the beautiful white sculpture of the creature is laid out before her, she sits by the fire and thinks about what song she will sing.
And when she is sure, she stands over the criatura, raises her arms over it, and sings out. That is when the rib bones and leg bones of the wolf begin to flesh out and the creature becomes furred. La Loba sings some more, and more of the creature comes into being; its tail curls upward, shaggy and strong.
In this depiction, she is standing with a newly sung soul, having reclaimed what is lost and reformed the bones back into the living criatura. It is a representation of her work in us - how when we are lost to ourselves and feel our own wild is all but gone from this world, we can lean into La Loba and let her sing us back into being again.
And as she sings, we begin to breathe again.
“La Loba”
Mixed Media
2023
Prints available:
8X10 Matted and Signed Gallery Print: https://etsy.me/45Musnl
4X6 Matted Altar Art Print: https://etsy.me/45JLfHL
