To Carry a Wild Wolf

I love this photo.

It is lovely and wild and sensual and suggestive.  I especially love the look of determination and almost defiance on her face, the deep scratch marks on her stomach and thighs, and the feeling they and every other thing about this pose are perfectly normal. Sometimes I wish I could stand so bravely and show off to the world how very amazing, and natural, and right my relationship is with a wild Wolf.

My Wolf, my Shepherd, is an incredible man.  His life is changing, though.  He has worked very hard to build a family, a pack, and to make it strong, loved, and safe for all who belong. In the past few weeks, His primary female partner has made choices that led to the end of their relationship.  He is standing strong in the rightness of His convictions about love and commitment, and treating others with human decency and compassion.  He has fought to reconcile, and He has stood his ground about what He needs and deserves. I have never been more proud to belong -- to Him, and to His pack, to my pack.

On this path into His woods, I have lost others.  I have grieved two lost relationships and nursed another back to health. He has held my hand, and heard my heartbroken cries.  He has been my strength when I had none.  Now, the world has shifted, and He is wounded, He is grieving.

I love the way, in this photo, she carries the wolf. She is very much a girl - filled with youth and wonder and perhaps even a lingering bit of innocence. Yet she has in her the strength and will to shoulder and support him. Her back is not bowed, her face is not drawn with the effort.  Though her body is marked with the wounds of the struggle, she holds him steady and gently.  I look again at the face of this wild animal, into his predator eyes, and at the drape of his legs, his tail, even his tongue.  He trusts her enough to rest and allow her to bear him up.

I listened last night while my wild Wolf cried.

It was an odd mixture I felt, of strength and helplessness.  My heart aches for His pain. Whether He reveals it to me or not I feel it -- I know it is there.  I know He did not like crying on the phone with me.  He apologized for it, repeatedly.  He wants to be so strong, and not mark me with His brokenness.  I understand that.  But I tried to explain that I see strength in His willingness to be honest, to hurt in front of me, to let me bear it with Him for a while.  It was an amazing gift of trust He gave me.

His pain stings and marks me. I hate seeing and feeling Him hurt.  It's not the fact that I can feel it, but the fact that He is hurting, that I resist. I wish He were happy and whole.  But even the happiest life is filled with pain.  I'm not unused to it, but I wish it didn't hurt Him so. I can't take it away from Him, but what an amazing thing to bear Him up, if only for a few moments, and let Him rest in me. Even these marks I will cherish, I will treasure, for the depth of trust and love they represent.

They are my Wolf, and for me they paint an incredible image of who He is.

Into the Dark and Darker Woods

This post is a response to Sir Lostpup Grey Shepherd

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

-Robert Frost


Into your darkest corner, you are safe in my love, you are protected.
I am the openess you seek, I am your doorway.
Come sit in the circular temple of my heart, & let yourself be calm.
-Agapi Stassinopoulos


There is pleasure in the pathless woods...

-George Byron

Darkness soothed. It softened the sharp edges of the world, toned down the too-harsh colors. With the coming of twilight, the sky seemed to recede; the universe expanded. The night was bigger than the day, and in its realm, life seemed to have more possibilities.-Dean Koontz, Midnight


“I trust only you and the dark always to look at me so honestly.”
-Meredith Duran, Wicked Becomes You

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Who am I?

I am a poet-girl with a raven spirit, who flew headlong into the sky, to find my freedom, and meet myself. I am a grateful dreamer, a child-of-the-wild-blue-yonder, with a big, roomy heart, and a hunger to know and love. I am both strong and weak, young and mature, confident and insecure, graceful and awkward, woman and child. I am a girl who at nineteen, found myself in the middle of an unplanned pregnancy, and spent the next two decades serving my family as mother, educator, wife and friend.

I loved that life, and chose it on purpose. I love my husband, children, grandchildren, and the life we've made. Yet, when my babies were grown and my life became my own again, I needed to stretch my wings and find the path that had always been mine alone. I have been trying to mind my steps and be thoughtful about where they lead me ever since.



I think I have always been a poly girl, though I did not always know it was possible to be so, nor did I have the words to describe or label what it meant. My heart craves people. I am fascinated with their stories, their lives, their emotions and their reasonings. I ache to know and be known. Being invited into someone's heart and their inner world feeds my heart in ways this word-girl can't even begin yet to describe. This journey to find others who crave what I do, has been rocky thus far. The path has been rough. I've been wounded and bruised and have had to learn to heal and be tough.

Enter the Wolf.

One day I decided it was time to go hunting. I felt alone, and alien, and my experiences with loving more than one had been so very painful. I knew I needed more, and so I went into the woods to find like minded beings who understood my need to know and be known. I found Him, and perhaps He was also hunting for me, and my life is forever changed.

He is not what you might expect. He's a Wolf and a Shepherd, fierce and gentle, dark and light, sadistic and loving, simple and complex. He works harder than any man I've ever met at loving those who are His pack. He makes mistakes, and makes amends, and He gets it right.  He fights for me. He is the man I trust with every part of who I am, and He celebrates me fully. He loves my darkness. He is my Wolf and my haven. He lives by the promise to hurt but do no harm. He includes me in his pack.

He includes me.

        I am welcome.
               I am wanted.
                          I belong.
I am at home in His woods, they are mine.



When the civilized world -- where darkness is a diversion locked away in boxes -- becomes too loud, too demanding too much to bear, I know I can come home to His woods and find that I have a place. There is a space in His heart and world only I can fill. I can escape to Him, and find my peace, my center, myself.

And so, I look to the future - into a new year - into a long life in His heart and at His side, and I know I belong to Him. He owns me, has earned my trust, and I am His ink-smudged poet-girl with the heart of a raven.  At his invitation, I will keep exploring. I will fly, I will hunt and play. I will grow and live and inspire words and wonder and the flight of others.

At the same time, I will forever be bound to His heart and life. Soon I will wear his collar, I will be tethered to Him as a bird to her Falconer, trusting Him to train me, care for me, protect me and love me. I hope to always make Him proud and happy He invited me in.

As he said, you are welcome in our forest. I know there are other girls out there like me, who long to find themselves in the dark and darker woods. I hope if you are that sort of girl, and you are reading here, you will be encouraged by my journey. There is a great big, off-the-beaten-path place for me, and for you. I hope you won't stop searching until you find it.

And mind your feathers and feet,