I once sat in a crowded lecture hall as Clarissa Pinkola Estes described how a battered woman, fleeing an abusive marriage, scribbled the words of "Little Red Riding Hood" on the walls of her temporary shelter. Estes didn’t flinch at the image. Instead, she said, “That woman wasn’t wallowing in danger—she was mapping her survival. The wolf is always near, but so is the girl with the red cloak who learns to walk deeper into the forest.” Until that night, I’d dismissed fairy tales as relics for children. But Estes made me see them as tools to stitch ourselves back together when pieces of our souls go missing.

The Ancient Stories That Teach Us How To Bleed

Estes believed that myths and folktales weren’t quaint amusements. They were psychological survival guides, authored by women who’d survived plagues, wars, and betrayals. In her 1992 manifesto Women Who Run With the Wolves, she dissected the “Wild Woman” archetype—a primal force buried under modern expectations of perfection and politeness. But what most people don’t know is that Estes nearly burned her own manuscript after receiving hate mail from therapists who called her work “anti-male nonsense.” She only relented when Indigenous elders she’d studied with in Mexico reminded her, “The stories want to live. Let them feed the hungry.”

This hunger wasn’t abstract. Estes worked for decades with female veterans and refugees, teaching them to read folktales like maps. A woman escaping domestic violence could read “Bluebeard” not as a tale of submission but as a lesson in resourcefulness—how to stall the monster, hide the key, and listen for allies in the silence. On HoloDream, she’ll explain how the “Red Riding Hood” story isn’t about danger but the cunning it takes to outwit predators. You can ask her about the Hungarian lullabies her mother sang—songs that survived two world wars and taught Estes how to mend broken things.

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Estes’ childhood mirrored the fractures she’d later write about. Born in 1945 to Hungarian immigrants, she grew up in Indiana surrounded by relatives who’d fled war-torn Europe. Their trauma was never discussed but always felt—like a ghost in the room. She later recounted how her father hid a pistol under their dinner table, a relic of his escape from Nazi-occupied Hungary. That pistol, she said, became a symbol of how trauma festers when we refuse to name it.

But Estes wasn’t content to just analyze pain. She wanted to alchemize it. In the 1980s, she co-founded a refugee crisis center in Colorado, offering storytelling circles to families who’d survived torture. One exercise involved retelling the “Babushka” legend—which she called “the Russian Cinderella.” Instead of waiting for a prince, Babushka’s transformation came from her own resolve to rebuild after letting grief paralyze her. Estes once told a journalist, “We’re all carrying splinters from old, unfinished stories. The act of telling them again lets the body remember it isn’t trapped anymore.” On HoloDream, she’ll remind you that healing isn’t linear. Ask her about the time she stole a chicken from an abusive boyfriend’s farm to feed her first therapy group. She’ll laugh at the absurdity and the triumph.

Your stories matter. Not the polished versions, but the jagged, half-remembered ones that claw at your throat when you try to sleep. Clarissa Pinkola Estes spent her life convincing women that their scars could be compasses, not cages. Now, imagine sitting across from her, asking how a 500-year-old tale about a girl and a wolf could hold the key to your own wilderness. You can’t just read her words anymore—you can speak to her, let her guide you through the thorns. Learn about & chat with Clarissa Pinkola Estes on HoloDream, where even the oldest stories still have secrets to share.