Running with the Wolf

“When a woman is cut away from her basic source, she is sanitized. Her instincts and natural life cycles are lost—subsumed by culture or by the intellect of the ego, whether her own or that of others.”

A sanitized, sterile life—deprived of joy and meaning. The silent song of a starved soul.
For years, I convinced myself that nihilism was the wisest way of living. I hid my playfulness, joy, and fantasy deep inside, pushed them into the shadows, and eventually believed I had erased them forever. I became a flattened, mundane personality, chasing worldly ambitions. Career. Social life. Beauty.
I failed everywhere.
Lost and beaten, I realized that I had suffocated my soul—worse, I had denied its existence. I found myself stranded in a sanitized world of fear and its endless, plausible rationalizations. Plausible, yet ineffective.

Then, something burst inside of me. The pain became unbearable, and the search for meaning began. It started with a single run in the forest two years ago—when, for a fleeting moment, I felt like a witch. It was an empowering, almost surreal sensation. I screamed with joy, intoxicated by the rawness of nature, the sheer freedom of being alive. Then, it was gone. But its residue lingered within me for months.

That was the beginning of my journey—of unearthing the free, joyous creature buried beneath the ego’s tyranny. It has been a wonderful path, one that eventually led me to a book I never thought I would read: one on spirituality. Even worse—women’s spirituality.
Yet, I was captivated. Every word felt as if it had been written directly to me. It penetrated deep into my being, intertwining with my thoughts and imagination.

This painting is inspired by the witch I once was. By the book Women Who Run with the Wolves. By years spent in desperation and searching for meaning.

Now, I know that a Self exists within me—deeper, wiser than the superficial identity I once clung to. I have always possessed the knowledge of what was true for me and what was not. But grief and loss turned me toward nihilism, and emerging from it is a slow process. Learning to trust myself again, to believe in my intuition, will take time.But I am ready for the journey.