Crying Wolf
When wolves are always at the door
On Not Crying Wolf ⭐ Looking Back ⭐ Illustrate Your Week Prompts
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On Not Crying Wolf
This is a deliberately circular piece. There were exceptions. There are layers of reality and more than one story. All reflections are only as true as the glass, and this is the wolf from my side.
June 2026, after: In my personal lexicon, there are multiple entries for wolf. Two are old, and one is new.
Two years ago, the idea of crying wolf sprang into view, something that only made sense in hindsight. The phrase haunted me in the days and weeks and now years after. It became such a specter because I didn’t.
I didn’t cry wolf.
I knew the story was odd, the wolf hard to understand and harder to believe.
It wasn’t my story, even though it also was. This remains a central thread, the wolf altering reality on multiple layers, its presence tracked on sheets of onion skin paper, maps and sketches, awareness, denial, fear, and circling all compressed into one.
June 2025, workshop: The specter of the wolf is twisted in my head, wrapped and entwined, sometimes illogically, a lupine story of fear in the dark woods braided with the cautionary tale of the little boy who cried wolf.
Timeless: Crying wolf, in fairy-tale terms, is an intentional false alarm, something fabricated to gain attention, rally support, or fill emptiness. In the story, crying wolf is a deception, a manipulation.
June 2026, after: The wolf was always real, pacing at the door.
In some stories, the wolf appears only once.
In this story, it appeared again
and again
and again.
The pattern broke the storybook flow, the wolf stepping back and then returning with increasing frequency.
June 2026, after: Outside of a storybook, crying wolf might be an inability to differentiate between one crisis or catastrophe or death’s-door moment and another, an inability to see the future as the paramedics left and the waiting began.
Crying wolf when told each time might be the last time might simply be the lack of a crystal ball, not the absence of a wolf, not exaggeration.
Crying wolf may mean that the wolf is there, not cunning or dressed in grandmother’s clothes, but lean, amber eyes piercing though the dark, maw wide.
January 2026, after:
In the early light, something followed me out of the night that wasn’t mine. I sensed the presence, though when I first looked back, I saw nothing in the dark. As I continued walking down the hall, I heard the soft movement, almost silent, just enough to rustle the air. Turning again, it was closer, silvery gray-white in the dark, eyes of sea and sky looking at me as it stood a few feet away, paused in my own pausing.
Wolf. This story is new.
June 2026, after: I was afraid of people thinking I was crying wolf, calling too often, with a repeated tale of a wolf at the door followed days or weeks later by an all clear. I stayed mostly silent.
May 2024, one week before, social media: It has been a long almost three weeks and counting. This will be fine. At this point, this will be fine. Some stories have a persistent wolf, one that returns again and again. It wears you down. I have been thinking a lot about things unsaid.
Creating this post is a contradiction. I am needing to break the glass—and at least hear and see the words.
April 2025, after: I am still thinking about a piece about the wolf. But I seem to be more muddled than clear. It really is a cry wolf story, but it thinks it is a Little Red Riding Hood story. Those two things are and are not connected.
June 2025, workshop: There is a wolf in each story, and the wolf is the threat. In the one, the wolf is disguised and a trickster, a danger to the girl, who is naive and too trusting. The girl is eaten. In the other, the wolf is not yet there, but the boy, lonely, bored, or afraid, calls out so many times that when the wolf arrives, no one believes him. The boy is eaten.
The boy’s deception is not the part of the story that took on monstrous shape for me. What grew teeth was the underlying message, the understanding that one should be very, very sure that the wolf is crossing the threshold before crying for help.
Crying wolf may work one time, not dozens.
June 2026, after: Some wolf stories are strange and unfamiliar and non-linear. They may sound melodramatic or made up. They arrive wearing timelines with patterns, frequencies, and shifting contours that are hard to understand, hard to believe.
The wolf took up residence by the bed, in the closet, in the hallway, in the bathroom.
The wolf became text and subtext.
June 2025, workshop: I have no memory of my childhood, of books and stories, words and ideas that formed the pool from which I would later begin to weave. I remember no fairy tales as a child, but, of course, along the way, fairy tales reach us.
June 2026, after: As the wolf story increased, the only bedtime tale, the story beneath the texts, the calls, the relay of numbers, the subtext grew.
Don’t stray too far.
Don’t go off the path.
Don’t make plans.
Don’t get complacent.
The few times I yelped, assuming support in blood-bound spaces, I got replies like, “Hope things go well!”
The glass thickened, becoming more and more opaque, and we hunkered by the lantern alone. The fairy tale logic was clear. Once was frightening, personal tragedy unfolding. Dozens of times was something else.
The wolf? Again? Hope all goes well!
Sending our best!
Most people are not familiar with the waltz of a wolf that comes often to the door and then takes a few steps back.
Most people assume hyperbole or, worse, an imagined wolf.
That the wolf gave no warning before leaping each time made things more difficult. In this story, the wolf didn’t need a trail of bread crumbs. It could emerge from the woods, appear from behind a nearby tree, in an instant.
January 2026, after:
The wolf is standing at my side in the corridor, standing at my side in the field of clover, standing at my side in the woods. I am crossing no thresholds, only walking, and the wolf is with me. I can put my hand down, the one not carrying the lantern or holding the puddle of light while I look for the lantern housing, and feel the softness of the fur, the warmth.
June 2025, workshop:
Is there a saying about a wolf nipping at your heels? I say it out loud. My tongue gets tied, and I say yipping. The coyotes who live on the hillside behind the house yip.1
Wolves howl.2
But do they nip? It may be a slip, an encroachment of metaphor, and yet this whole terrain is metaphor.
June 2025, workshop thread: I sometimes see what is not there, notice the shadow of a bird that has passed overhead even if I wasn’t looking. Maybe I don’t see as much as feel. Maybe I hear. But I think I see.
June 2026, after: Why did I not cry wolf?
The question haunts me. We didn’t call out.
The handy answer is painful. There was no one to hear the call, no one to exhaust with our own exhaustion, the relentless pace and uncertainty of the dance.
I was reminded that the story was not mine, a shortsighted perspective. I was inextricably caught in the web of the story. I knew the sound of the wolf in the dark, knew how the sound changed as it moved closer. I learned to read the signs. I tracked footprints and broken branches, mapped the terrain with invisible ink.
Admitting there is a wolf is not easy.
Having others panic over the wolf is not helpful.
We responded to the wolf in different ways. Its presence left marks, scratches on the walls.
Learning to contain my fear, I shored up the foundation, piled rocks around the exterior, siloed myself, built walls I couldn’t see beyond, climbed to the tops of turrets, and looked over the edge.
Calling for help was pointless.
Who would have heard?
Decades of the forest growing up around us, the terrain for the wolf springing to life, trees dark and dense, muffled all sound.
What could anyone have done?
That is my pragmatic self, the one that understands the contours of the forest and what it means to have no one to call.
A tiny voice is the counter. It is a voice that believes in things it has never known. It holds space for witness.
They could have listened, the voice says.
They could simply have known that there were wolves, that there was the smell of wolves, that blood was in the air, that there was howling.
They could have understood the exhaustion, the fear, and the erosion.
Surfaces. A heart response. A thumbs up.
Sorry you are going through this.
There was no way to reach me.
They could have laid pillows at the base of the wall, in case you needed to jump. They could have used a system of pulleys, tied sheets, or something else improbable except in a fairy tale, to send coffee, scones, a maple donut.
You are mixing your fairy tales, I say.
And then, when the wolf wandered away, momentarily distracted by a shift in the wind, I would have been sitting in my turreted room enjoying the scones.
Was there really a wolf?
June 2024, after, week of: I have been obsessing over the idea of crying wolf and how that fear, the fear that people would grow weary or disbelieving of the wolf appearing over and over and over, isolated me.
June 2025, workshop:
The wolf was a constant.
For years, doctors warned that the wolf was there.
The wolf was not in the distance or in the future.
The wolf was in the room.
Then, after days or weeks, the wolf would step away.
Heads would be scratched. Discharge papers would be drawn.
Sometimes, the return was in weeks or months, sometimes hours or days.
Some wolf stories cannot be mapped.
June 2025, workshop thread:
I see in the way that my eyes can be closed, and I see the bird in the tree that is there when I open my eyes and look out the window. I see, at times, as if images have been burned into my eyes, although sometimes the images are dark and hazy, and though they glow with the fire of the imprinting, the contours are harder to name.
June 2026, after: What happens when the wolf is nipping at your heels, and you cry out, send a paper airplane with the coordinates of the wolf, and you wait. You drink the coffee. You eat the scone. And then the wolf slinks away, retreats, not gone, but momentarily out of sight, a pause in the siege.
When it returns, fat on local mice or skinny and looking for meat, and you feel the heat of its breath, hear the howls in the moaning that wakes you from sleep, in the roaring of sirens, you hesitate to cry out again.
Didn’t you just call two months, weeks, days ago?
How can there be so many wolves?
The smell of coffee lingers. Crumbs from the scones have not yet been swept away.
Calling again? Again?
Thirty years earlier: Somewhere in my lost thesis, a poem appears, a reclamation of Little Red Riding Hood, of being found in the woods. This is a red herring, a non-sequitur, a different me, a different wolf.
June 2025, workshop thread:
I had never seen the wolf head-on. I had only seen it in the shadows of the inner eye. I could look into the trees ahead and know that the wolf was there, skulking in the bushes where there should be no wolves. I said nothing. It is hard to convey the fear of a wolf that others can’t see, even harder when the wolf retreats, finds a squirrel or a rabbit, and the shadows fall like sand.
June 2026, after: Was it one wolf? Or were there wolves? The difference is subtle. It was one wolf, over and over and over, but in the end, maybe a pack arrived.
Maybe that was the difference.
Maybe it took a pack of wolves.
April 2025, after, notes re: fall 2023: ...with most of seven months spent in hospitals, in and out of the ER and the ICU, I felt like I was crying wolf over and over.
I knew the wolf was there. Denying the wolf was not an option. I studied the patterns on the floor. I was perpetually confused about where I had parked and the system of colors and numbers and letters in the garage as I fit visits in after work.
The wolf was there, again and again, fresh blood, and then there was no wolf. We woke up at home, and the days seemed to move on.
In truth, the wolf had moved in.
June 2025, workshop:
I know about the girl who went blithely into the woods with her basket. I am not that girl. I want the cape, a black cloak, but I am not that girl. I know about the girl who asked questions of the wolf.
May 2024, one week before: I thought so much last week about The Boy Who Cried Wolf story. It makes me unable to ask for help or cry or vent or be public with my overwhelm. Sometimes sheer will wins, and the wolf steps back to watch from behind a tree.
May 2025, after: The one-year mark is eighteen days from today. I had thought that I was going to write the cry wolf piece. I can’t seem to let it go.
May 2026, after: So many times we thought it was the last time, and then things would bounce back, against all odds. To have called out would have been a false alarm, so I never called. I didn’t want to exhaust anyone with the cycle of waiting for what could lunge at any moment and with blazing speed, result in days of pacing, and then retreat.
January 2026, after:
There have been wolves circling over many months, wolves that inspired fear. This morning, in the early light, a wolf followed me out of the night, a wolf whose presence feels like comfort, not threat.
May 2024, one week before: I’ve lost count of the times the wolf has appeared. Some wolves lurk, dancing in and out of view for years.
June 2026, lost in the morning of an unmarked day: Today, I looked down the hall, and I saw the white wolf waiting, not the one I feared. It is always in that spot if I look, or in sight when I wander the path in the woods, next to me when I want, always a thought away.
Timeless: There is a legend that if a wolf sees you before you see it, it can steal your voice.
June 2026, after: I don’t know how to reconcile wolves that inspire fear and those that bring strength. I don’t know how to make a wolf by my side something that is less a mark of detachment from the world and more a mark of resilience.
The wolf doesn’t ask. It leans into me, just enough that I feel its steadiness. It looks ahead at the dark path before looking up at me, endless time pooling in its aqua-green eyes. I am quiet as I meet and hold that gaze, quiet as I let my guilt drift free.
Even as I tracked the wolf, it was hard to accept. I listened for the sounds, watched for warning signs, and responded to every wolf sighting, but distancing myself from the wolf hardened me.
I failed the wolf story even as I know the story failed me.
Notes3
Weekly Pages and Pulls
Glimpses of pages and pulls because I enjoy the art of the cards.
Illustrated Journal Prompts
Looking Back (Year Over Year)
2023: No more whammies
Made It?
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Coyotes actually yip, bark, and howl, along with other documented sounds.
Though known for their howls, wolves actually do yip. They also whimper, whine, bark, and growl.
Dates correspond to notes and fragments and patterns of thought, but all have been reworked, edited, trimmed, and rearranged for this essay. This is largely still a draft, but the many days and weeks living inside these recurring notes was important.
Repetition has been deliberately retained even as much has been retained.
In the end, I wonder if I found the real story, one even harder to accept. This is a possibility.
The colors were an attempt to visualize separate timelines using available layout tools.
The wolf is a different character for each person.
There were exceptions.
This is the wolf from my side of the story, though I do believe the wolf isolated us all.
I am grateful that my mom answered the phone when I called after countless emergency calls.
Occasionally an article is shared on Substack that takes my breath away for its depth and honesty and simplicity. Today is one of those days and this is one of those posts.
I'm trying to unpack everything here, but for now, I will rest with this, "Most people are not familiar with the waltz of a wolf that comes often to the door and then takes a few steps back. Most people assume hyperbole or, worse, an imagined wolf."
I love that you make prose feel like poetry.
This post gave me food for thought in so many ways.
1. As a long term caregiver, the metaphor is perfect. I felt it two ways, the wolf that comes for my son, for our ability to function in the world as a family, to stay stable, stay housed, stay out of the system. And the wolf of my chronic cycling anxiety and depression. That waits for my strength to fail, for me see that being eaten by a wolf is really the better choice. Of course these two wolves are connected in so many ways.
2. As an anthropologist, clearly red riding hood was a fairy tale to teach little girls that there were bad men in the woods, waiting to rape and kill them (unfortunately accurate), and the boy who cried wolf better learn to take care of himself and stop being such a big whiny baby. Does that boy, who retreats into himself when his village calls him attention seeking, fearful, needy, one day trade self-loathing for big eyes, big ears, big teeth.
3. My grandparents always told a story of little me, sitting in their porch in East Texas, getting worried when the local wolves (they might have been coyotes) howled at passing trains. “Don’t worry,” my grandmother said, “they won’t hurt you.” “Well,” said me (clearly wise beyond my years), “they sure hurt little pigs!”
P.S. I like wolves and it seems unfair that they are so frequently villainized.