Estés Guadalupe Foundation in Colorado, founder. Jung Center for Education and Research, executive director Colorado Authors for Gay and Lesbian Equal Rights, co-founder and co-director C.P. Education: Loretto Heights College, BA, 1976 The Union Institute, Cincinnati, OH, PhD 1981 The Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts, Zurich, Switzerland, post-doctoral diploma, 1984.Ĭareer: Psychologist, 1971– 'Writing as Liberation of the Spirit' developer and teacher, 1971– Women in Transition Safe House, Denver, co-coordinator, 1973-75 writer, 1992–. Estés told her listeners that the television has turned 'into a hole in the wall in our houses that pours sewage into our homes.' The promise that it once held as a storyteller has emerged instead to contribute to a picture of society that is akin to a river 'overflowing with filth and garbage set afire.' Instead of television, Estés found that her family's stories and her own love of books, which grew from a gift of books when she was 14, have led to a lifelong love of books, poetry, and writers.īorn on January 27, 1943, in Indiana three children. How strongly Estés felt about both the oral tradition of storytelling and the intrusion of the television as a replacement for this tradition was made clear in a 1997 speech before the Catholic Press Association's national convention. Her family bought their first television when she was 12 or 13 years old, but this object did not replace the family's storytelling tradition. She was told stories and was expected to remember and retell the stories that she heard.

In her household, the oral traditions of the European storyteller were an important part of everyday life. She was adopted when she was four years old by Maruska Hornyak and Joszef Pinkola, immigrant Hungarians, who were uneducated, and who, like her biological parents, could not read or write.Īs a child, Estés was surrounded by people from many different traditions, most of whom were first generation Americans, immigrants who were not educated but who were the repositories of much knowledge, which they passed on through the stories that they had learned. From her parents, Estés learned to speak Spanish, but for reasons that Estés has never explained, she was given up for adoption when she was a small child. At the time of her birth, her parents were Mexican laborers, who worked near the Michigan-Indiana border. She was born to Cepción Ixtiz and Emilio Maria Reyés, who were mestizos-Mexicans of Spanish and Indian descent. Yet much is still known about Estés' early years.

Clarissa pinkola estes books