Suzanne Methot Legacy – Winter Blooms

In 1989, Clarissa Pinkola Estes gave us Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. In 2021, Rachel Yoder gave us Nightbitch, a novel about one woman’s personal transformation into wholeness through her instinctual nature. I’m compelled to write this blog post because of a brief description of Marielle Heller’s film version of Rachel Yoder’s novel. The reviewer said only that the film Nightbitch is about how motherhood turns a woman into a dog.

As true as it is on the surface, to leave potential viewers and readers with this reductionist assessment is failing to understand both the novel’s and the film’s value. It is too easy to look away from Amy Adams as she morphs into this strange creature because the enchantment glamour creating our attraction to artificial beauty robs us of our experience of wildness. This glamour – more active in our culture since the spread of TV and all the screens to follow – also creates the illusion that we have no need for wildness, that it is gross and unnecessary.

Continue reading Nightbitch, the Wildness Archetype, and Rewriting the Doom Stories

In my seventies now, I remember the joy of celebrating the Roe v Wade decision that US girls and women had the legal right to choose what happened to their bodies. It was no small thing then, to Canadian girls and women, because we all share the traumatizing fact of our past as chattel, that is, the possessions of white men and boys in charge. Corporations had already determined to treat girls and women as bubble heads who wanted nothing more than to look good and be more popular than others. It was very much a case of the water temperature being turned up over time – suddenly, we found ourselves boiling in the murky idea that our body image and looks, our hair and our rumps, were more important than our minds and our spirits, our hearts and our self-determination. That 1973 court decision lessened the impact of profit motivated businesses selling insecurity and self-hatred to girls and women. At least the courts found us intelligent, responsible, and wise enough to decide a fundamental life choice for ourselves.

Now, even corporations are reacting to the court’s decision to reverse R v W; that’s how bad this current court’s decision is. The white supremist view that the ever-creative power of the Universe is white, male, and murderous toward those who haven’t swallowed this vile white supremacy lie has revealed itself in the highest court in the land. And we’re not having it.

Continue reading NO MORE! The Religiously Motivated Decisions of Patriarchy & the Infantilization of Girls & Women