Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Untie the Strong Woman: Blessed Mother's Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul

Go to the online press kit

Call her Our Lady, La Nuestra Señora, Holy Mother—or one of her thousands of other names,” says Dr. Estés. “She wears hundreds of costumes, dozens of skin tones, is patroness of deserts, mountains, stars and oceans. Thus she comes to us in billions of images, but at her center, she is the Great Immaculate Heart.” With Untie the Strong Woman, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés invites us to reconnect with “the fierce and loving Blessed Mother who is friendly, but never tame—she who flies to our aid when the road is long and our hearts are broken, ever ready to rekindle the inner fire of our creative souls.”


In her first book in more than a decade, Dr. Estés illuminates Our Lady through blessings, images, and narrative, including:


  • Stories of connecting with the Blessed Mother, including “Meeting the Lady in Red,” and “Untie the Strong Woman”

  • Blessed Mother’s many images from around the world, including “Litany of The Mother Road: A Chant of Her Incandescent Names;” “A Man Named Mary;” and “The Marys of Mother Africa”

  • The wild side of her love, including “Massacre of the Dreamers: The Maiz Mother;” “Holy Card of Swords Through the Heart;” and “Guadalupe is a Girl Gang Leader in Heaven”


“The Blessed Mother is often ‘Friend to the friendless one’ and Mother to all—yet too many of us have been estranged from her for far too long.” Untie the Strong Woman opens a channel to this sacred and nurturing force—“breaking through walls that have held us back from her presence, and instead, inviting us to shelter under her starry green mantle.”


Order Untie the Strong Woman Online
or Ask for the Book at Your Favorite Retailer



November 2011 /​ Hardcover Book with four-color illustrations /​ BK02284 /​ 390 pages /​ 6¼” x 9¼” /​ ISBN-10: 1-60407-635-6 /​ ISBN-13: 978-1-60407-635-6 /​ UPC: 600835-228480 /​ US $26.95 /​ Women’s Studies, Spirituality /​ Rights: World English


Companion Audio Available in October: Untie the Strong Woman:
Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul


This is the author’s original adaptation of the Untie the Strong Woman manuscript, recorded live by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés.


Spoken-Word Audio /​ AW01723D /​ 4 CDs /​ 4 hours /​ US $29.95 /​ Women’s Studies, Spirituality /​ ISBN-10: 1-60407-079-X /​ ISBN-13: 978-1-60407-079-8 /​ UPC: 600835-172325 /​ Rights: World


Digital Download /​ AW01723W /​ UPC: 600835-172370 /​ US $20.97

Selected Works

NEWEST Hardcover Book, NOW IN STORES and ONLINE

Via personal blessings and stories of visitations, miracles, and common events, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés helps us reconnect with the fierce and loving force of the Blessed Mother.

Shortlink to presskit page:
http://wp.me/P64an-L6

November 2011 / Hardcover Book with 30 of the author's ex-votos, color illustrations for prayer / BK02284 / 390 pages / 6¼” x 9¼” ISBN-10: 1-60407-635-6 / ISBN-13: 978-1-60407-635-6 UPC: 600835-228480 / US $26.95 / Women’s Studies, Spirituality / Rights: World English
How to Be an Elder: Volume 5 of The Dangerous Old Woman manuscript, Myths and Stories of the Wise Woman Archetype
Now Available in mp3s SoundsTrue.com
Untie the Strong Woman Online Events
The Dangerous Old Woman: Myths and Stories of the Wise Woman Archetype
Spoken Word Audio, Non-Fiction
Where is memory of who we really are, who sent us here, and what is our work here ... and why are we often so unusual, so different, so eccentric, so belonging often to a tribe of one?
2 CD Set In bookstores and at soundstrue.com
BOOK, Non-fiction
A field guide to the creative life of the soul, unfettered, fierce, and radiant.
BOOK: Non-fiction
Dr. Estés tells the story of her Uncle Tovar a peasant farmer from the Old Country who lived in a time when the Nazis first, and then the Red Army decimated their village in the Old Country, burning to the ground the remote farmland forests the people depended on so, forcing the families on marches to work camps... and worse. The refugees who survived the wars (for it was more than one war) straggled to America only to find that here too, government forces destroyed forests. But the soul of "this man" knew a fierce and heartbroken way through...
In this small work, Dr. Estés tells about one of the surviving old women from Dr. Estés' paternal family, who was attempting to hide from the prevailing army during WWII, and sheltered with a spirit soul in a small lean-to, and together while fleeing the destructions swirling around them, they spent a part of their night heartening each other with remembered stories of death ...and return to Life.