On a trail of dreams
The story of my Eurasian wolf awakening
I was… 12 or 13 when the dreams first started; dreams of wolves and werewolves.
I had them nearly every night. I didn’t think much of it – I was much too occupied with the waking world, with adventures in the Canadian forests alongside my beloved dog, and the daydreamed escapism that led me on journeys through magical worlds of my own. That was how I coped with what was, objectively, some of the hardest years of my life.
And yet, still, there was the dreams.
It’s hard to give a rational reason why they might have started, or why my brain would latch onto wolves in this way. I had never cared for, or cared about wolves. I don’t know why; they just weren’t interesting to me. Dogs always had my heart, but wolves? No, wolves played no role in my life… until those damn dreams started.
I remember one in particular very clearly.
There was a pack of werewolves. Not the vicious, savage kind you hear of in old folktales – these were just people, just kids, and they treated their ability to shapeshift like a game. Even in the form of a wolf, they were still human at their core, and that… both irked, and confused me.
In the dream, I was not a werewolf. But I felt like I should have been. I felt so vexed that these people, who were so painfully human – who didn’t know what it was to be wolf – got to experience the feeling of being physically wolf-like… while I was stuck as a human. In the dream, my body felt wrong to me, not a physical sensation but a mental one; it was not how I should be.
I tried to get them to turn me into a werewolf too, but either they wouldn’t, or maybe they couldn’t; the memory isn’t clear. I became increasingly distressed as the dream went on, frustrated at the unfairness of the situation and with my own body, which felt so deeply wrong.
But then I woke, and though I remembered the dream, I shrugged and moved on.
The dreams continued. Sometimes I would be a werewolf. Sometimes everyone else would be a werewolf, and I was left feeling helpless and bitter without the ability to shapeshift.
Around the same time is when things started to get… a bit weird for me. I didn’t pick up on it until much later, reflecting on the past (as I often do).
I remember clearly, out in the wilderness with my dog, being almost overcome by the need to howl. It was such a strong feeling. It came out of nowhere, and though I am familiar with it now, back when I first felt it… it was like nothing I had felt before.
But I didn’t howl. The moment passed. And I didn’t think much more about it.
I remember the way I would watch the snowshoe hares darting through the forest. At the time, I felt it was just interest, and that my desire to sneak closer was just me wanting to get a good vantage to take some nice pictures. But I recognise now the predatory aspect to those feelings, the desire to stalk and chase.
Really, for the year-and-a-half I spent in Canada, I became a half-wild thing. At school I was distant, quiet and uninterested in socialising with my peers. At home I had my dog, and he was my best friend and brother. The bond I had with him was, I now recognise, a kind of pack-bond. He was my pack. He was the only one who was really on my side, and we were so in-tune with each other – a real team.
My situation at home went from bad to worse. Things were… really tough for a while. I leaned hard into escapism, but wolves rarely featured in it. My interests lay with orcas, bears and lynx, not with boring old wolves.
But still the dreams persisted.
Me and my family moved back to the UK. We were homeless, with pretty much nothing to our names – we started a new life in Scotland, with no connections and nowhere in particular to go.
I lost my dog in the move. That… really broke something in me, something that still hasn’t healed over 10 years later.
Still, with all the upheaval and uncertainty, whatever wolf-like experiences I had (if any) were quickly forgotten. It was only several months later that these feelings would re-emerge… though it turns out, they would do so in rather dramatic fashion.
The strange dreams came back, but… different. In these, there were no humans or werewolves. Just me, and a pack of normal, mundane wolves – always the same, always consistent. And one wolf that stood apart, with a distinct presence; when I looked at him, there was a kind of impact to it, like what I was seeing was ‘more’ than just a wolf – ‘more’ than anything I had ever seen before.
It was… so bizarre. Almost every night I would have these dreams. The exact details slip through my fingers, but I know that they were frequent, vivid, and absolutely bewildering.
Meanwhile, in waking life, things got a bit… weird. I started to regularly feel to strong urge to run away from my human life, to find a forest and live there and run on all fours and howl. I had to restrain myself from growling when angry, something I had never had to do before. It was such an… intense and immediate experience, like something that changed inside of me.
I was out on a walk on my own. Just… walking through the small town I live in, next to the river. I remember it very clearly, that moment. I was walking along and suddenly the realisation just… hit me like a ton of bricks, and it was such a strange moment, but I felt such certainty, like everything in my life snapped into place with such clarity that there was no doubt whatsoever.
I wasn’t human.
That was it. That was the answer. I didn’t know how or why or what it meant, and I knew the body I was in was human, but I knew in that moment that something inside me – the essence of me – was not human.
Ironically, at first I thought I was a domestic dog! They were, after all, the species I felt most close to. Dogs were what I felt comfortable around. Dogs were the animals I understood the most. But after a few days’ reflection, I knew that it didn’t feel right. Dogs were too… tame.
But it didn’t really click for me yet.
I didn’t understand it. I was 14 by that time and very scared that I was going “crazy”.
I had another weird dream, but this one was… very different. There was no pack of wolves. There was just the one wolf, the one that stood apart, and we stood facing each other in the middle of a storm. Like standing in the centre of a tornado. I looked into his eyes and felt so, so small. There was such a weight to his presence… it’s hard to explain. It was like staring into the sun, but spiritually – he didn’t glow, there was no light, but this is still the best comparison I can make. And despite the intensity of his gaze, I couldn’t bring myself to look away.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion. The dream was very short, I know this, but the moments it lasted seemed to stretch out.
Then… well, he told me I was a wolf. But not with words. Just with… pure feelings, so vivid. And the dream ended. That was the last time I would have those vivid, realistic dreams. I’ve had wolf dreams since, but they’ve never felt quite as real as the ones I had during that phase of my awakening.
Things just got weirder in waking life, too.
Night would fall and I would pace restlessly, wanting nothing more than to run through the night, feeling trapped by the stone walls around me. When I lay in bed, it was like sometimes I could feel my body changing. A few times, I genuinely thought I had shapeshifted… it felt so real. I could feel my snout and paws and perked up ears. Four legs and a tail. Just a wolf.
But then I’d open my eyes, and to my mixed relief and disappointment… no, I was still ‘me’, still human. But l increasingly felt like that was, in fact, not ‘me’ at all.
I remember one night, I was lying in bed half-asleep, and I had a… I guess it must have been a dream? I got up from my bed and went and looked in the floor-to-ceiling mirror on my wall – but it wasn’t my human body I saw in the reflection. I saw a wolf. And I knew it was me. That’s how I know what I look like as a wolf; the image I saw there always felt ‘right’ to me, and it’s stuck in my memory all these years later.
That really sealed things for me. I knew I wasn’t human. I knew I was a wolf, and I even knew what I should look like. There was no doubt in my mind that this was what I was. It felt like everything in my life made sense… both the recent experiences, and also the lifelong feelings of being out-of-place, of not belonging, of feeling like an outcast in human society.
It was kind of a coincidence that I found the therian, and by extension the otherkin, communities. I was researching ‘real life werewolves’, because that was the best approximation I had of what I was experiencing. I can’t remember exactly how I found the word, but as soon as I read about it, I knew that was me.
It was so strange! To know other people felt the same way! After everything, I wasn’t “crazy” and I wasn’t alone! It was such a relief, and I immersed myself in the community immediately. Even the intense grilling from a bunch of sceptics wondering about the validity of my little teenage wolf self couldn’t put me off. They never once made me doubt myself. I knew what I was.
And that was that. My awakening. The beginning of my journey, and perhaps one of the strangest parts of it.
I still don’t really know who the wolf was in my dream. He still checks in on me on occasion. I’ve swung between thinking him to be a spirit, a god, or an aspect of my own wild imagination (though it’s hard to really believe the latter). No matter what he is, I owe him one. He provided clarity when I really needed it. And he helped me realise what I really am.
Well, one part of what I am. Turns out things would later become… a lot more complicated.