Date: 10-07-2025
Tags: liminality
Source: Women Who Run with the Wolves - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“To the ancients, bears symbolized resurrection. The creature goes to sleep for a long time, its heartbeat decreases to almost nothing. The male often impregnates the female right before hibernation, but miraculously, the egg and sperm do not unite right away. They float separately in her uterine broth until much later. Near the end of hibernation, the egg and sperm unite and cell division begins, so that the cubs will be born in the spring when the mother is awakening, just in time to care for and teach her new offspring. Not only by reason of awakening from hibernation as though from death, but much more so because she-bear awakens with new young, this creature is a profound metaphor for our lives, for return and increase coming from something that seemed deadened.” - pg. 387
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I came across this quote in my reading last night (while Milan rested her sweet little head on my shoulder), & the idea hit me right in the tummy & gave me butterflies. All of this time of shedding illusions, dying to false personas, loss & grief & pain & heartbreak… To know that there is new life on the other side of this is what keeps me going. The only viable way to conceptualize this season has been to see it as a metamorphosis of the soul, and I will emerge from this nigredo with treasures that would have been impossible to attain in any other way.