I am not a woman who runs with wolves. I am a wolf. This discovery came to light again in the past few weeks, as I've been repeatedly initiated back into illness--through viruses, pathogens and another mold exposure. This is an excerpt from an essay I'm working on exploring chronic illness and social alienation of mythic form. I'll be sharing this essay with my patrons, along with sacred art processes and giveaways over the next few weeks. Join us at: https://www.patreon.com/laraveledavestaNine Ways of the Wolf: The Mythic Initiation of IllnessOnce upon a time there was a mostly functional woman. She worked as a university professor, was enrolled in a PhD program, parented three children in a blended family, partnered, gardened, circled with friends. One day she woke up to find she had become a wolf. Her skin covered in fur, her eyes glinted in the night, her teeth grew long and feral. There was no way for her to reconcile this shape and form with so-called ordinary life. Her mouth could no longer speak human words, her nights were filled with hunting, her husband (gentle, kind) cleaned the blood on the sheets, her children could only find comfort with her while she slept. The university could not employ a wolf. The graduate school could not educate a wolf. The world had no space for a human in wolf form. So she denned up in a kind of despair, solitary, angry, ravenous and afraid.This is the story of my time as a wolf. It is a story with a long ago beginning, it is a story without tidy end. Last December, after months of decline and years of cyclic illness, I collapsed in a mysterious pile of symptoms that rendered me unrecognizable to most, even and especially to myself: headaches, skin rashes, heart palpitations, chest pain, gallbladder pain, joint aches especially in my hips, low grade fevers alternating with low body temperature, tremors, neurological problems including memory loss, difficulty finding words or completing thoughts, spatial reasoning problems, low blood pressure, weight loss, weakness, digestive issues and new food allergies, extreme chemical sensitivity, sleep disturbances, bone deep fatigue that left me bedridden most days, depression, anxiety. I was diagnosed with adjustment disorder, major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, as my symptoms all correlated with mental health conditions and I had been under a lot of stress. Then, on the 29th of December I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Myalgic Encephalomeylitis. This, at least gave a name to my shape, but it was not the name of what I was…at least not fully. Genus but not species. For I was no ordinary wolf. I was a Direwolf, huge, menacing, extinct.By the time I was diagnosed it was too late to save the human I had been.I was supposed to teach again in January, but was too weak to get out of bed. And so I left my job. My leave of absence from school expired. I padded the halls of my home when I could rise, alone and feral.