What is a Wild Woman? Is it someone with flowing hair who laughs out loud and chases after men? Well, yes, if her intuition tells her so but if you are intuitive and old, it is not likely to tell you that. That is the message you get in your twenties when you need sex and children to trap you, so later you have to learn and that’s when you go to a Wild Woman workshop, when you feel invisible, chained or trapped, when you feel fragmented and dried up, when you feel so-so, not happy, when things are in place but there’s something off. Then you feel you should go to the same workshop where you get ideas about building a sacred life between you…and you.
I went and partially – because I had to give my writing class in the afternoon of both days – took it. I was oh so conquered. I will take these Jung workshops for as long as I can because, even when they are incomplete, they refresh my spirit. My spirit these days is in dire need of all the refreshment possible, every last drop.
Ten years ago, I took my first Jungian seminar at the Ateneo de Manila University and there discovered Jean Shinoda Bolen, not personally, just discovered her as a Jungian analyst who had written Gods in Every Man and Goddesses in Every Woman. In these books she writes about archetypes, actually energies that are contained in our personalities. For example, I am a dominant Artemis, or the Roman goddess Diana, who loves to live in the forest alone. She once had a boyfriend, but when her twin brother challenged her to shoot him with her bow and arrow as he swam in the ocean, she did and hit him. So he died. But she mourned him and turned him into the galaxy Orion and she even sent him her dog to keep him company in the sky. See? Don’t attempt to become my boyfriend because I just might do that to you.
Anyway, now Jean Shinoda Bolen is older. Maybe she has written a third book. Anyway, the next Jungian seminar is again going to be held at the Ricco-Renzo Gallery, LRI Mall, Reposo Street, across Alliance Française. This time it is titled Mature Goddesses: Energies that Surface in the Third Phase of Life. Dr. Dido Gustillo-Villasor will be the main facilitator. Am I going to miss it? Never, even if it happens on Oct. 15, 9 to 5 or all day and I have a class that opens in the same place in the afternoon. I can only attend half the session again.
"At some point after 50, one enters an uncharted territory of the psyche where, according to Jungian analyst Jean Shinoda Bolen, ‘what you do is an expression of whom you deeply are.’ Personal wholeness and integration is the centerpiece of the third phase of life. Energies dormant or put on hold by the demands of previous life phases are awakened and bring a wind of change in one’s attitudes, beliefs, values. Discovering these latent energies, learning to own, celebrate and use them to further grow in "Wisdom and Grace," will be the focus of this one day seminar-workshop. Lectures, questionnaires, group discussions and creative activities aid participants in recognizing and exploring the psyche and leave at the end of the program with an expanded appreciation of the Self as a trusted companion in the process of personal growth."
Even if my next writing classes start on the same day, same place but at 2 p.m. If you are in your later years, 48 and above, and you are feeling demoralized about getting old, which by the way brings its own level of fun, and you want to go to the Jung seminar, please call Marina at 892-4610 or 0917-8156143 or Lito at 898-3826 or 0916-302-3763. And if you want to enroll in the Joy of Writing class, please call 817-8670 or 0917-8155570.
Most likely I will get there early again and order the huge breakfast again.
This time I promise to enjoy the eating of it.