Humans have a knack for cultivating knowledge related to the body and soul, hoping to understand their identities better. This search leads to reading self-knowledge or development books and studies. However, there are times when this self-cultivation ends abruptly, as it’s difficult to find insightful writings that are also soulful and poetic. Marion Woodman’s writings beg to differ. Marion Woodman was an analytical psychologist who authored analytical and feminine psychology books. Her books captured the concepts of the body, soul, and psyche from the psychological perspective while incorporating a poet’s lyricism. Her ability to discuss topics with a poetic flair made her one of the most widely read authors of analytical and feminine psychology. Since Marion Woodman was a mythopoetic writer, her quotes on writing are of much value until today.
Canadian mythopoetic author Marion Woodman was born in London, Ontario, on August 15, 1928. Woodman completed a degree in English literature at the University of Western Ontario and soon became a high school English teacher in Canada for over twenty years. However, she decided to take leave from her job at the age of 40—the moment when she struggled with kidney failure, most likely related to anorexia. Woodman traveled to India and then to England with her husband, Ross Greig Woodman, and that’s where her interest in the theories of Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, started. Eventually, she studied psychology at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland, training to become an analyst.
Apart from her popularity from being a Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman was also an author, poet, international lecturer, and women’s movement figure during her time. She was one of the most well-known writers on analytical and feminine psychology, with over a half-million books in print and lectures internationally. Her works resonated with millions of people who long to explore the elements of primal feminine consciousness, using Carl Jung’s dream theories extensively in her writings. Marion is a prolific writer in the field of analytical and feminine psychology. Many authors look for Marion Woodman’s quotes on writing and more to better understand topics related to body, soul, and psyche—topics they can incorporate in their work.
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Marion Woodman Quotes on Writing
Marion Woodman’s writings focused on concepts from analytical and feminine psychology. These works include Addiction to Perfection, The Pregnant Virgin, and Bone: Dying Into Life—books that gained Woodman an international audience, predominantly women. Her writings helped many women understand and resolve problems like depression and eating disorders while giving them a poetic and vivid sense of femininity. That dramatic flair and poetic sensibility manifested in her works. Thus, even if she’s more of a Jungian analyst, writers can also find Marion Woodman’s writings and quotes valuable to their craft.
Here are a few of Marion woodman’s quotes, specifically on writing.
Storytelling is at the heart of life… In finding our own story, we assemble all the parts of ourselves. Whatever kind of mess we have made of it, we can somehow see the totality of who we are and recognize how our blunderings are related. We can own what we did and value who we are, not because of the outcome but because of the soul story that propelled us.
– Marion Woodman
The more you work with your dreams and your unconscious, and honor it, the more you understand it and it understands you. When you develop a relationship with your psyche this way, you begin to carry that energy into life and your relationships.
– Marion Woodman
Marion Woodman Quotes About Mothers
Mothers often fulfill the primary responsibility of raising children. In psychology, the mother figure is the source of nutrition—including taking care of and satisfying their children’s needs. Since Woodman’s works revolve around psychology, specifically analytical and feminine, she often mentions the word mother, especially in her book, Addiction to Perfection. It’s part of the archetypes she talks about—a concept inspired by Carl Jung’s archetypes.
If you’re interested in Marion Woodman’s ideas about mothers, here are some of her quotes from her writings.
Their [those with eating disorders] task is to rescue themselves from a drive that is destroying them. Food embodies the false values that their own bodies refuse to assimilate, by which I mean that their bodies become edemic, bloated, allergic, or resort to vomiting the poison out. The unconscious body, and certainly the conscious body, will not tolerate the negative mother.
– Marion Woodman
If you are living for an ideal and driving yourself as hard as you can to be perfect – at your job or as a mother or as a perfect wife – you lose the natural, slow rythmn of life. There’s a rushing, trying to attain the ideal; the slower pace of the beat of the earth, the state where you simply are, is forgotten.
– Marion Woodman
Metaphorically, the body becomes a machine to be driven or a garbage dump to be avoided. At the same time, the magnificent Mother in whose womb we live is mindlessly poisoned and raped. Surely, our insane denial has to be perceived and acted upon.
– Marion Woodman
We all experience ‘soul moments’ in life-when we see a magnificent sunrise, hear the call of the loon, see the wrinkles in our mother’s hands, or smell the sweetness of a baby. During these moments, our body, as well as our brain, resonates as we experience the glory of being a human being.
– Marion Woodman
Marion Woodman Quotes About Soul
Most of Marion’s books, lectures, and professional materials focused on the feminine and the complementarity of body and soul. The concept of soul, in particular, was the pillar of her works. Woodman believed that understanding the soul’s yearning will help satisfy the soul’s longing, explaining why it’s essential for people to connect with their souls. She used her skill in poetic writing to help others heal or bring their souls back to everyday living, using methods such as expressive arts and more.
If you want to see more of her idea about our souls, check out the collection of quotes below!
If we fail to nourish our souls, they wither, and without soul, life ceases to have meaning…. The creative process shrivels in the absence of continual dialogue with the soul. And creativity is what makes life worth living.
– Marion Woodman
An addiction is anything we do to avoid hearing the messages that body and soul are trying to send us.
– Marion Woodman
The connection between conscious and unconscious poses particular problems in the dancer because the body is the soul of action.
– Marion Woodman
My soul is the bridge between spirit and body and, as such, is a uniter of opposites. Without soul at center, I would either transcend into spirit or become mired in matter.
– Marion Woodman
Marion Woodman Quotes About Heart
Much of Marion Woodman’s work discussed the body and soul. Moreover, in some parts, she also talked about the value of the heart and its role in healing. Although psychological work involves soul work, the heart also plays a valuable part. Marion tackles this in some of her quotes in the collection below.
Rage and bitterness do not foster femininity. They harden the heart and make the body sick.
– Marion Woodman
If we could allow the pace of our meetings to slow down to the pace of our hearts, we might find genuine understanding.
– Marion Woodman
The light of the sacred prostitute penetrates to the heart of this darkness. . . . she is the consecrated priestess, in the temple, spiritually receptive to the feminine power flowing through her from the Goddess, and at the same time joyously aware of the beauty and passion in her human body.
– Marion Woodman
Marion Woodman Quotes About Healing
Marion Woodman dealt with life-changing health issues during her lifetime. For example, in 1993, she received a diagnosis of uterine cancer. However, before that, Woodman was a survivor of an eating disorder, a car accident, and kidney disease. With this info, one can conclude that Marion could have mastered the healing process involving accepting what has occurred to her. Her healing process played a significant role in her writing and lectures, considering how she used it as a template to help transform the lives of many.
Are you interested to hear Marion Woodman’s quotes about healing? Check out her words of wisdom below!
Healing depends on listening with the inner ear – stopping the incessant blather, and listening. Fear keeps us chattering – fear that wells up from the past, fear of blurting out what we really fear, fear of future repercussions. It is our very fear of the future that distorts the now that could lead to a different future if we dared to be whole in the present.
– Marion Woodman
The healing of ourselves as healers has to take place first. Bringing ourselves to wholeness, we become more sensitive to other people. In the change of consciousness that happens within us, we bring about change of consciousness in those around us and in the planet itself.
– Marion Woodman
Soul, to me, means “embodied essence,” when we experience ourselves and others in our full humanity – part animal, part divine. Healing comes through embodiment of the soul. The soul in matter is what I think the feminine side of God is all about… The feminine soul is what grounds us; it loves and accepts us in our totality.
– Marion Woodman
Marion Woodman Quotes About Dreams
Dreams and dreamwork have a significant role in psychology. For Woodman, her dreams played a distinctive part in her recovery and healing process. As a Jungian analyst, she’s also familiar with Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s dream theories. If you’d like to learn more about Marion Woodman’s idea about dreams, read her books or some of her quotes below.
Once we get used to listening to our dreams, our whole body responds like a musical instrument.
– Marion Woodman
It is amazing that our souls – our eternal essences, with all their hopes and dreams and visions of an eternal world – are contained within these temporal bodies. No wonder suffering is part of the human condition.
– Marion Woodman
Marion Woodman Quotes About Suffering
Woodman recognized that living involves suffering. Suffering is part of life that we all go through. However, Woodman also believed that anyone could surpass these unpleasant events, transforming themselves toward a healed and happier soul.
Here are some of her quotes to give you an idea of what suffering means for Woodman.
Without an understanding of myth or religion, without an understanding of the relationship between destruction and creation, death and rebirth, the individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem alone.
– Marion Woodman
Consciousness will not always solve the problem, but it may make the suffering meaningful.
– Marion Woodman
Marion Woodman’s collection of works involves audio and visual lectures, correspondence, manuscripts, and books that resonated with millions of people—a vast majority were women. She helped many women understand their problems from a psychological perspective, displaying the courage to explore what was relatively new during her time. No doubt, Marion Woodman’s legacy in the literary and psychology field will remain, much like her quotes on writing.
Other than these words from Toni Morrison, do you need any more inspiration or motivation? View our collection of quotations on writing from various writers here.
