“Each woman has potential access to Rio Abajo Rio, this river beneath the river. She arrives there through deep meditation, dance, writing, painting, prayermaking, singing, drumming, active imagination, or any activity which requires an intense altered consciousness. A woman arrives in this world-between-worlds through yearning and by seeking something she can see just out of the corner of her eye. She arrives there by deeply creative acts, through intentional solitude, and by practice of any of the arts.”

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

This blog is about what I am curious about, what fascinates and pulls me, no matter how much I wonder if any of it matters to anybody else. I KNOW it matters to ME. These fascinations feel intuitively aligned, but I could not explain it “rationally” until I re-read Estes’ treatise on the Wild Woman archetype. Estes, a powerful cantadora and Jungian psychologist, masterfully illustrates the importance of nourishing the creative life in her book, Women Who Run With The Wolves. She writes that creativity manifests like “a shapechanger” from “ironing to cooking up a revolution,” and is the access for women to our true Selves, the flow of inspiration and sustenance that moves us through life powerfully and passionately—and allows us to flow in support of others. This life-giving river of creativity beneath us can become polluted and murky, if we are not careful to be good stewards and keep the toxicity at bay.

My river beneath the river—what fascinates me and piques my curiosity and nourishes me—pools roughly in four areas:

Wild True Self: Inquiries into what is true and authentic about my human experience—and what is not.
Divine Connection: inquiries into the realm of Spirit and Universal Energy
Making and WordWeaving: food, sewing, art, journaling, memoir, books & articles
EcoEquity: my phrase for applying justice and equity to ecology, economics, and social impacts.

While I love to write, I depend on others’ brilliance to guide me in these areas, and will always strive to give proper credit to my many, many teachers and guides. That includes you, readers. As you explore your river beneath the river, please share!

Read my blog.