The power that was never taken — only quieted
Before you Begin - A gentle note
Some of what lives in these words may touch tender places. You are invited to move slowly, to stay in choice, and to engage only to the depth that feels supportive today. If anything feels like too much, you may pause, orient to your surroundings, or return another time.
This post is offered as companionship, not instruction or replacement for personalised care.
Take what serves you. Leave the rest.
May these words meet you gently.
Agency is not loud.
It is not domination.
It is not resilience performed for others.
Agency, in its truest form, is the quiet return of choice.
For many of us as mothers — especially after birth, loss, medicalisation, rupture, or long seasons of exhaustion — power is spoken about as something to rebuild, regain, or find again. As if it vanished somewhere along the way.
But from a Women Who Run With the Wolves perspective, power was never lost.
It was covered. Muted. Buried under survival.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés reminds us that the wild nature of a woman is instinctual — older than language, older than culture. It is the part of us that knows when something is wrong, when something is too much, when silence costs too much.
“The wild woman carries the bundles for healing.”
Power-within is not something we earn. It is something that returns when the environment allows it.
And this is where Held Within Capacity meets the Wild Woman. Because no instinct emerges in unsafe terrain.
Power-within vs. compliance disguised as goodness
Many mothers confuse compliance with goodness.
We learned early that to be loved we must:
– be agreeable
– be grateful
– be quiet about discomfort
– override our instincts for harmony
Motherhood often intensifies this training.
Smile through depletion. Endure without complaint. Call self-abandonment strength.
But power-within does not grow where silence is demanded.
“When women are healthy, they are wild.”
Wild does not mean chaotic. It means truthful.
A nervous system that has learned to survive will choose compliance — not because it is weak, but because it is wise within threat.
Agency returns only when the body senses: I am not being rushed; I am not being judged; I am allowed to change; I will not be punished for my truth
This is why healing is relational.
And why environments matter as much as insight.
Becoming whole does not mean becoming “better”
Wholeness is not perfection. It is integration.
In Women Who Run With the Wolves, healing happens through gathering the bones — reclaiming the discarded, exiled, or silenced parts of the self.
For mothers, these bones might be:
anger that was never allowed
ambivalence about motherhood
desire for autonomy
grief alongside love
exhaustion alongside devotion
To become whole is not to erase these. It is to make room for them without fear.
The work of the soul is not to become perfect,
but to become real.
Wholeness requires environments that welcome:
complexity, slowness, contradiction, authenticity
Not performance. Not compliance. Not silence.
Power-within grows where softness is allowed
A woman does not reclaim her agency by pushing harder. She reclaims it when:
her no is respected, her tears are not fixed, her anger is not pathologised, her pace is honoured.
Power-within is the moment you feel:
“I can stay with myself — even here.”
That is wild. That is maternal. That is human.
Closing reflection — an offering
You might ask yourself, gently:
Where in my life am I still surviving instead of choosing?
What environments ask me to shrink to belong?
Where do I feel most myself — even if only a little?
You do not need to act on the answers. Listening is already an act of agency.
The Wild Woman does not demand. She waits — until safety returns.
And when it does, she rises quietly, from within.
