Table of Contents
Praise for Bone
A majestic, unusual memoir.... Its grandeur lies in its simplicity of prose that is rich with meaning and metaphor, hope and healing. Lapis
[An] inspirational and edifying volume.... With great courage and equal conviction, Woodman decided to learn all she could about herself, aging, healing, and transformation. Spirituality & Health
Woodman has recovered from her cancer; those who have been similarly afflicted will appreciate her courage and determination to reclaim her body and spirit.
Publishers Weekly
[Bone] is a story of individual transformation, a shamanic descent into terror and hell, and a reemergence into dancing and life affirmation.... I believe that Marion Woodman now lives on a new level. Radiant... Her intensely personal book, looking death straight in the eye, may also be her best. The Bloomsbury Review
PENGUIN COMPASS
BONE
Marion Woodman, Ph.D. (Hon.), is a leader in feminine development and a Jungian analyst. She is the author of many acclaimed books, including Addiction to Perfection and Leaving My Fathers House, which bridge the fields of analytical psychology and feminine psychology.
Also by the author:
The Owl Was a Bakers Daughter: Obesity, Anorexia Nervosa, and the Repressed Feminine
Addiction to Perfection: The Still Unravished Bride
The Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation
The Ravaged Bridegroom: Masculinity in Women
Conscious Femininity: Interviews with Marion Woodman
Leaving My Fathers House: A Journey to Conscious Femininity
Dancing in the Flames (with Elinor Dickson): The Dark Goddess in the Transformation of Consciousness
Coming Home to Myself (with Jill Mellick): Reflections for Nurturing a Womans Body and Soul
The Maiden King (with Robert Bly): The Reunion of Masculinity and Femininity
MARION WOODMAN
November 2, 1993
Ross and I returned from England yesterday. Stayed overnight at my studio in Toronto. Awoke in darkness, drove home to London through November mists, watched the dawn rise on bronze and burgundy trees.
I was not unaware that I was to meet a new doctor this afternoon. When I checked out two tiny appearances of blood with Dr. Cohen before we left Canada three weeks ago, she immediately made an appointment for me with a gynecologist for this afternoon. I couldnt do anything about the problem right then, so it didnt spoil our trip to Old London.
Went to Dr. Fellows at 2:00 P.M. Read Time magazine until 2:25. Walked into his office. He took a sample from my uterus, showed me little wormlike shapes bobbing in the vial.
Cancer, he said.
I have terrible pain in my back, I said. Isnt it possible that pain could be causing the bleeding?
I dont think so, he said.
But Im in good contact with my body and I feel well, I said.
He left the room and returned. You may have misjudged this time, he said. Well send this to the lab to be sure....
2:40 P.M.
Returned to the waiting room. Someone was reading Time magazine. I envied her innocence. Cancer, I said to myself.
As I left the hospital, I could not connect with the thought that I had cancer. I still believed that the grinding pain of bone on bone in my back had somehow caused the bleeding. Still, I have to admit that in my imagery work I cannot make the light go through my connection to my leg on my right side. A sullen, dark weakness in the lower part of my abdomen blocks the energy.
What to do with such a blow? Drove home, told Ross. At a conscious level neither of us could take in what was happening. Will wait until next week for the verdict before beginning to worry.
November 4, 1993
Returned to Toronto, aware of not quite belonging here any longer, but still very at home in my blue, pink, mauve, and burgundy studio. Finished mail. Not worrying. In fact, the opposite is happening. That 16-year-old in me is rising up and throwing her arms to heaven and shouting, Free at last. No one can any longer expect anything of me. Ill never have to do anything again.
My common sense tells me thats a paradoxical response to a cancer diagnosis, if indeed it is cancer. Think about that tomorrow, Scarlett Honey.
November 5-7, 1993, New York
Merry weekend working at the Manhattan Centerall pink and orange and bathed in amber light. Robert Bly with his poetry and bazouki, David Whetsone with his sitar, Marcus Wise with his tabla drums, and Coleman with his poetry. What creative fun we had! Ranees Indian dancing was profound, every finger and toe articulating the poetry as we read.
One of the poems I chose to read was The New Rule.
Its the old rule that drunks have to argue and get into fights. The lover is just as bad: He falls into a hole. But down in that hole he finds something shining, worth more than any amount of money or power. Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street. I took it as a sign to start singing, falling up into the bowl of sky. The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere. Nothing else to do.
Heres the new rule: Break the wineglass, and fall toward the glass blowers breath.
(Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks)
Colemans focus was a laser beam on me. He sensed my bowl was broken. Afterward he came to me, looked straight into my eyes, held me in his arms, and never spoke.
Robert and I analyzed The Maiden Tsar [fairy tale] with the group. Aware of the dark feminine energy of the Baba Yaga as never before. As Death Goddess she has fearsome eyes.
November 7, 1993
Talked to Ross on the phone when I returned to Toronto at midnight.
The news is not good, he said.
Cancer? I asked.
Yes, he said. I didnt want to tell you while you were in New York. The surgery will be on the eighteenth.
He had the same tone in his voice when he told me that Fraser [brother] had cancer. All the bells of Earth tolled backwards when he told me about Fraser. I dont feel that for myself. I dont feel that fatality. Thought for a long time lying in bed. Thought of how my intuitions were all operating last spring telling me to let the office go in June 93 and how I had my notification cards printed last August saying that I was closing my practice in June 94. As I designed them, I was haunted by dear Hamlet, theres a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. I signed them the readiness is all!
When I went into my office last week, the violets were purple hallelujahs in the morning sunand pink and whitebut the room seemed abandoned. I think I did leave it, in spite of myself, last June.
![Richard Woodman [Richard Woodman] - The Disastrous Voyage of the Santa Margarita](/uploads/posts/book/140251/thumbs/richard-woodman-richard-woodman-the-disastrous.jpg)
