Leaving My Father's House Book

Sometimes you come across one of those books that seem to find you at the exact time you need them. Kismet at its finest. I will admit I am not that familiar with Jungian psychology yet, still new on my journey, but Woodman's tone is accessible even for those who aren't Jungians. The passages from the 3 contributors are interesting and will make you ponder long after the last page. Challenges you to think about your own life and how you can begin to apply the lessons daily.
Recommended to anyone who is interested in pursuing a more authentic dialogue with themselves. Every word on every page is meaningful and I am so glad I got to spend time with these 4 very wise women. Woodman is a treasure and I am looking forward to reading more of her works.
I am including a few quotes that really resonated with me; perhaps others can connect to as well.

Individuation begins with the painful recognition that we are all orphans. And the liberating recognition that the whole world is our orphanage. (p. 354)

Most women who have suffered sexual incest cannot deal with the masculine inside or outside until they have worked with the feminine in their own body. (p. 355)

Destruction or creation goes on within and without. Surely our task is to claim that energy as our own and claim our own responsibility to own our greatest potential...That potential becomes actual when we work on masculinity and femininity within ourselves until we feel empowered, embodied spirit uniting with conscious matter in our soul. Then we are moving toward a genuine maturity in which the two energies interact to produce a third, which from the soul's point of view is the real. (p. 365)

Mothers and grandmothers for generations have despised their female bodies, their sexuality, "the curse" of menstruation. They were born in a female body; nothing can change that. No matter how hard they try, they feel they have failed from the start. Their contempt for their own matter is in their cells and that contempt is in the cells of their daughters. "I don't deserve to live" is blurted out as the bottom line of self-rejection. The unspeakable black hole that many women have to face in their dreams is that place of rejection. The child, as feminine being, was not reflected because centuries of patriarchal thinking have scorned matter. The whole is still jet black. It is not even despair. It is nothingness, oblivion without feeling, death without consciousness. It is shame so deep that it cannot be recognized until the ego container is strong enough to face the obliteration. It is matter so wounded, so betrayed that it is dissociated from consciousness. (p. 362-3)

I had an early belief as a child, which was the only one that made sense to me, that first you had to be a girl, and get through that, and then, you burst into real life. You became a boy! And I remember one Halloween, I ran down the street, following my brothers, dressed in my brother's outgrown suit and cap, with a black mask covering my little girl face. And through the eyes of the mask I saw another little girl coming down the sidewalk from her house, and with an eager open smile she started running after us. Us boys! She thought she could join US!
And I yelled at her: "Go away you! You girl!" And ohhhhh the high! To see her shrink back toward her house, dominated by me. Me! As I had, all through my long-short life, been dominated by them. The boys. I knew then the ecstasy of their power. (p. 336-7)