Stories are medicine.

Stories are medicine.

There is nothing – really nothing – that compares to reading a book and suddenly realize that you’ve found a long-life friend. You found stories that truly speak to you.

We were excited – earlier this year – to share our bible ‘Women Who Run With Wolves‘ by Clarissa Pinkola Estes as part of our Wild Reads.

“Stories are medicine. I have been taken with stories since I heard my first. They have such power; they do not require that we do, be, anything – we need only listen.

The remedies for repair of any lost are contained in stories. Stories engender the excitement, sadness, questions, longings, and understandings that spontaneously bring the solution … back to the surface. Stories are embedded with instructions which guide us about the complexities of life.”

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.

There has long been a mythic link between storytelling and the healing arts — so much so that in some ancient societies storytellers and healers were one and the same. Stories are valued in many indigenous cultures not only for their entertainment value but also as a means to pass on cultural teachings. In a number of Native American traditions, the word “medicine” does not refer to the pills we take to cure an illness but to anything that has spiritual power, and that helps to keep us “walking in beauty”. In many shamanic traditions – especially in Siberia and Mongolia – tales are told in a ritual manner to “invite” the healing power to come. As important as the content of the stories — is the actual process of telling them — the way a storyteller chooses the tale, the details, the tone — all these make storytelling a deep spiritual act.

“People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves,” novelist and poet Ben Okri. So remember to choose your stories carefully — even in silence you are living your stories.

Get the book Here.