Here is what I've realized lately: my wild self isn't actually that wild! It's just scary for everyone else because me being wild is me not doing what they want anymore. I was sold a bill of goods when I was young that my wild self would harm others somehow - be out of control or too much. What I am starting to see is that my wild self is actually the healer I've always wanted to be 💖
Thank you for this article, Ellen! I've enjoyed being a subscriber of your newsletter very much. Your words and ideas are part of a powerful reprogramming process for me--and I need to hear these things over and over again!
What we call “wild” often isn’t rebellion — it’s regulation returning.
Midlife doesn’t make women untamed out of nowhere. It removes the tolerance for self-betrayal. The apologies, the hedging, the softening — those were adaptive strategies. And at some point, the body simply won’t carry them anymore.
What I appreciate here is the reframe: wildness as discernment. Instinct as intelligence. Not reckless, but rooted. Not louder, but truer.
That restlessness isn’t a call to blow everything up.
It’s a signal that something essential is asking to be restored.
So much resonate about what you’ve just shared! ✨ It’s interesting how the wolf keeps reappearing for me right now… It started with me seeing myself lying next to a dead (!) wolf in a vision during a (therapeutic) psychedelic experience… And I’ve also envisioned covering myself and my children with wolf fur in bed at night… I think it’s something calling me back home to truth and ancient wisdom. Home to my Nordic heritage and roots… To myself. And yes — to my wild woman. 🐺
I’ve been surrounded by death in the past months. Relationships ending. My grandpa passing. Ego deaths… Everything is asking me to let go — of an old version of self. I guess it’s time! 🕯️
Oh, and I just ordered the book. Finally. Thank you! 🙏🏻✨
I returned to the wild! It has calmed my nervous system, I am spending time with people who want to spend time with. Funny how I have removed myself and how mad it has made the people it affected the most.
Estes is wonderful! Another author that covers similar ground is Sharon Blackie is https://substack.com/@sharonblackie. I just finished her excellent book, Wise Women.
This resonates so deeply. Learning to not make myself small anymore, to find my voice, to be the true wild that I was always meant to be is so beautifully exciting and scary and all the things. Thank you, again, for your words.
My new novel, Pause…and Effect, has menopause/midlife/reawakening into our new selves as a key theme. If you like to read fiction, Visit my Substack. The novel is posted there for free. Would love your comments.
I read that book over 25 years ago and have a copy of it. It definitely resonated with me then…but since Covid pandemic I lost that wolf me. Your article is very timely as it reminds me of Estes message. It’s very difficult being caged.
A big, loud YES to all of this! I love that comparison of wolves to our intrinsic wild ways, which got shaped, shamed and shushed. I used to talk from a place of I'm-sorry-for-being-a-burden. Thankfully, that pattern has shifted. And yet ... making requests and asking for what I need can still be challenging. My mentor, Ann Weiser Cornell, has this brilliant saying - Every no is a yes to something else.
Midlife as the moment our nervous systems refuse to keep performing? Our “wildness” not as recklessness, but as truth-telling, boundary-knowing, space-taking wisdom?
Little Franky, watching you lecture the world about women, dating, and marriage is like watching a man with no pilot’s license explain why aviation is a scam. Confident. Loud. Zero flight hours.
You keep saying men have “walked away” from women because of feminism. Let’s establish this early and clearly, because it matters.
You didn’t walk away.
You were never inside.
No relationship ended. No marriage collapsed. No great love was poisoned by ideology. There was no door slam, no dramatic exit, no loss to grieve. Just decades of standing outside the building, insisting the party is awful anyway.
You speak about what “men want” with the authority of someone whose romantic experience exists entirely in theory. Your research appears to be vibes, grievance, and comments you reread to feel validated. This isn’t insight. It’s cosplay.
Then there’s your favorite word. “Respect.” In Little Franky language, respect means agreement, silence, and women making themselves smaller so you never have to grow. You don’t want partnership. You want a hierarchy where your insecurity doesn’t get challenged and your comfort is mistaken for leadership.
Here’s the part you don’t want to hear but cannot escape. Desire cannot be argued into existence. Attraction does not respond to manifestos. No amount of cultural analysis creates chemistry. People who are wanted do not need theories explaining why they should be.
And then comes the prophecy. “Feminists will grow old alone.” You say this like it’s a curse, but you deliver it like a diary entry. You’re not predicting the future. You’re narrating your present and hoping no one notices. You didn’t walk away. You were never invited. And now you call that principle.
Little Franky, the most revealing thing about your worldview is how much effort you put into explaining why intimacy is broken instead of asking why it never arrived. People who are loved don’t write like this. People who are chosen don’t need theories. This isn’t conviction. It’s insulation. And you’ve wrapped yourself in it so tightly you’ve mistaken isolation for insight.
Feminism didn’t reject you. It exposed you. It removed the pressure for women to tolerate entitlement dressed up as masculinity. The men who adapted didn’t disappear. They’re dating, marrying, building lives, and not posting cultural obituaries for a system that stopped rewarding them by default.
You didn’t lose women to feminism, Little Franky. You didn’t walk away. You were never chosen. LOL And when choice entered the equation, you lost relevance.
This isn’t social commentary. It’s a tantrum with footnotes. A worldview built entirely around explaining why your lack of intimacy is everyone else’s fault.
And here’s the coldest part.
The world didn’t argue with you.
It didn’t cancel you.
It didn’t even debate you.
It just kept moving. Relationships kept forming. Love kept happening. And Little Franky is still outside, shouting rules at a door that no longer needs his permission to stay closed.
Little Franky, there it is. The prostate cancer line. Again. Track one on your Greatest Hits album. Plays every time someone challenges you. Same lyric. Same beat. Same confused confidence.
You didn’t respond. You defaulted.
Whenever you run out of ideas, you smash the prostate-cancer panic button and hope shock will substitute for thinking. Then, at some point, you'll wave around a link from Brave.com or Fatherly.com like you just subpoenaed the NIH. Brave is a browser. Fatherly is a parenting blog written for men who already have families.
Somewhere right now, Fatherly.com is shocked to learn it’s responsible for national health policy.
You don’t analyze.
You Google until something agrees with you.
Then you call it data.
And let’s be honest about what gives this away every single time. If you actually cared about prostate cancer, you’d talk about screening rates, early detection, access, stigma, or why men avoid doctors. You never do. You only bring it up when you’re angry at women. Every conversation. Same pivot. That’s not advocacy. That’s resentment wearing a lab coat.
Also, the irony is thick. You accuse feminism of hating men, yet your contribution to the discourse is joking about men getting cancer. You don’t defend men. You use them. You don’t care. You deflect.
Now let’s address the part you keep pretending is irrelevant, even though it explains everything. Little Franky, you’ve never been married.
Not once.
Not briefly.
Not disastrously.
Never.
And this isn’t a cheap shot. It’s the Rosetta Stone. People who’ve shared a life with someone don’t talk like this. They don’t reduce women to enemies and blog posts. They don’t need charts to explain why intimacy failed. They have stories. They have scars. They have humility. You have Brave.com open in another tab and a lot of opinions about relationships you’ve never risked being in.
You don’t sound like someone who was hurt by love.
You sound like someone who avoided it.
Marriage requires vulnerability, curiosity, and the ability to hear “this hurt me” without turning it into a culture war. You didn’t walk away from women. You opted out of accountability and then declared the whole system broken.
That’s why you cling to numbers. Numbers don’t leave. Links don’t disagree. Charts can’t look at you and decide they don’t want to build a future with you. People can.
And they did.
Your obsession with funding stats isn’t principled. It’s displacement. It’s what happens when someone wants moral authority without emotional risk. You want to sound serious without ever being intimate. You want certainty without exposure. So you hide behind data that can’t say no.
Here’s the line that ends it.
Desire is not a policy failure.
Attraction is not a budget allocation.
No one is obligated to want you.
And now the funniest part. Everyone knows exactly what you’ll say next. You’ll bring up prostate cancer again. Same sites. Same tone. Same tired pivot. You’re not controversial. You’re predictable. You’re a pull-string doll with one phrase, and the batteries are dying.
This isn’t censorship.
It isn’t oppression.
It isn’t feminism coming for you.
The world didn’t reject you.
It didn’t argue with you.
It didn’t even notice.
It moved on.
Relationships kept forming. Love kept happening. Families kept being built. And Little Franky is still outside, refreshing Fatherly.com, explaining why none of it counts.
This is my favorite episode, Little Franky. You hit every line. No surprises. Tight execution.
Let’s take your reply in order, because it’s basically a script.
First, you insist you “take prostate cancer seriously.” Absolutely. That’s why it appears only when you’re arguing about women. Very serious concern. Remarkably selective timing. Screening rates? Early detection? Men avoiding doctors? Survivorship? Never makes the cut. Feminism, though. Always on deck. Seriousness, apparently, has a trigger word.
Second, you announce yourself as a champion of men’s injustices. Love that for you. Here’s the thing about advocacy. It persists even when it’s inconvenient. You don’t advocate. You invoke. You don’t support. You deploy. You don’t stay with the issue. You drop it the moment it stops being useful in a fight about women.
Third, and this is the centerpiece, you ask whether I “think I’ll get laid by catering to feminists.”
Incredible. Thank you for this.
This sentence is gold. You’ve just explained your entire worldview in nine words. You genuinely believe the only reason a man would disagree with you is sexual strategy. That empathy is foreplay. That respect is transactional. That principles require a payoff. This isn’t an insult. It’s a diagnostic revelation.
And now we get to the part you keep trying to shout past, even though it explains everything.
Again, it's no surprise that you’ve never been married.
Again, not an insult. Just data. The kind you don’t like because it doesn’t come from Brave.com.
People who’ve shared a life with someone don’t think this way. They don’t see relationships as ideological battlegrounds or sex as a reward system. They’ve had to practice compromise, accountability, and the deeply humbling experience of being wrong in front of someone they love.
You haven’t.
So you built a closed system instead. A worldview that never updates. A philosophy where opting out of vulnerability becomes wisdom, where never being chosen becomes moral superiority, and where disagreement is always explained as hatred or manipulation.
It’s elegant, really. Nothing is ever your fault. Nothing ever needs to change. Brave.com is your emotional support browser, Fatherly.com is your peer-reviewed journal, and feminism explains every unanswered question.
Let me thank you explicitly, because you summed it all up beautifully.
If a man respects women, he must be trying to get laid.
If someone disagrees with you, they must be brainwashed.
If no one wants to build a life with you, it must be ideology.
That’s the entire theory. No footnotes needed.
You accuse others of “man-hating feminism,” yet your response to disagreement is to mock illness and question strangers’ sexual motives. That’s not seriousness. That’s projection with a spreadsheet.
And yes, I know what comes next. You’ll say “man-hating feminism” or call me a "mangina" again. You always do. That’s the last line in the script.
So let’s end this cleanly.
This isn’t censorship.
It isn’t cancellation.
It isn’t oppression.
It’s outcome.
The world didn’t reject you.
It didn’t argue with you.
It didn’t even linger.
It moved on.
People fell in love. Built families. Changed. Grew. And you stayed right here, insisting none of it counts.
Here is what I've realized lately: my wild self isn't actually that wild! It's just scary for everyone else because me being wild is me not doing what they want anymore. I was sold a bill of goods when I was young that my wild self would harm others somehow - be out of control or too much. What I am starting to see is that my wild self is actually the healer I've always wanted to be 💖
Thank you for this article, Ellen! I've enjoyed being a subscriber of your newsletter very much. Your words and ideas are part of a powerful reprogramming process for me--and I need to hear these things over and over again!
Women Who Run With the Wolves is one of my favorite books! I write book reviews, and I'm in the process moving my newsletter over to Substack. But, for anyone interested, I've already moved the article I wrote on this book over: https://katewebbwrites.substack.com/p/issue-6-women-who-run-with-the-wolves?r=2u2086
This feels deeply true.
What we call “wild” often isn’t rebellion — it’s regulation returning.
Midlife doesn’t make women untamed out of nowhere. It removes the tolerance for self-betrayal. The apologies, the hedging, the softening — those were adaptive strategies. And at some point, the body simply won’t carry them anymore.
What I appreciate here is the reframe: wildness as discernment. Instinct as intelligence. Not reckless, but rooted. Not louder, but truer.
That restlessness isn’t a call to blow everything up.
It’s a signal that something essential is asking to be restored.
And once you hear it, it’s very hard to unhear.
The book is one of the few that changed my life. Yes. It’s on my bookshelf!
I love this. I am running and writing my way out of the rage that is inside.
So much resonate about what you’ve just shared! ✨ It’s interesting how the wolf keeps reappearing for me right now… It started with me seeing myself lying next to a dead (!) wolf in a vision during a (therapeutic) psychedelic experience… And I’ve also envisioned covering myself and my children with wolf fur in bed at night… I think it’s something calling me back home to truth and ancient wisdom. Home to my Nordic heritage and roots… To myself. And yes — to my wild woman. 🐺
I’ve been surrounded by death in the past months. Relationships ending. My grandpa passing. Ego deaths… Everything is asking me to let go — of an old version of self. I guess it’s time! 🕯️
Oh, and I just ordered the book. Finally. Thank you! 🙏🏻✨
I returned to the wild! It has calmed my nervous system, I am spending time with people who want to spend time with. Funny how I have removed myself and how mad it has made the people it affected the most.
Yes 🙌🏽
Already here
♥️
Estes is wonderful! Another author that covers similar ground is Sharon Blackie is https://substack.com/@sharonblackie. I just finished her excellent book, Wise Women.
This resonates so deeply. Learning to not make myself small anymore, to find my voice, to be the true wild that I was always meant to be is so beautifully exciting and scary and all the things. Thank you, again, for your words.
Always a pleasure! Thank you for waking me up!
My new novel, Pause…and Effect, has menopause/midlife/reawakening into our new selves as a key theme. If you like to read fiction, Visit my Substack. The novel is posted there for free. Would love your comments.
I read that book over 25 years ago and have a copy of it. It definitely resonated with me then…but since Covid pandemic I lost that wolf me. Your article is very timely as it reminds me of Estes message. It’s very difficult being caged.
A big, loud YES to all of this! I love that comparison of wolves to our intrinsic wild ways, which got shaped, shamed and shushed. I used to talk from a place of I'm-sorry-for-being-a-burden. Thankfully, that pattern has shifted. And yet ... making requests and asking for what I need can still be challenging. My mentor, Ann Weiser Cornell, has this brilliant saying - Every no is a yes to something else.
Yessss. This landed straight in my body.
Midlife as the moment our nervous systems refuse to keep performing? Our “wildness” not as recklessness, but as truth-telling, boundary-knowing, space-taking wisdom?
That’s not a crisis—that’s initiation.
I’m listening. And yes… I’m coming.
Little Franky, watching you lecture the world about women, dating, and marriage is like watching a man with no pilot’s license explain why aviation is a scam. Confident. Loud. Zero flight hours.
You keep saying men have “walked away” from women because of feminism. Let’s establish this early and clearly, because it matters.
You didn’t walk away.
You were never inside.
No relationship ended. No marriage collapsed. No great love was poisoned by ideology. There was no door slam, no dramatic exit, no loss to grieve. Just decades of standing outside the building, insisting the party is awful anyway.
You speak about what “men want” with the authority of someone whose romantic experience exists entirely in theory. Your research appears to be vibes, grievance, and comments you reread to feel validated. This isn’t insight. It’s cosplay.
Then there’s your favorite word. “Respect.” In Little Franky language, respect means agreement, silence, and women making themselves smaller so you never have to grow. You don’t want partnership. You want a hierarchy where your insecurity doesn’t get challenged and your comfort is mistaken for leadership.
Here’s the part you don’t want to hear but cannot escape. Desire cannot be argued into existence. Attraction does not respond to manifestos. No amount of cultural analysis creates chemistry. People who are wanted do not need theories explaining why they should be.
And then comes the prophecy. “Feminists will grow old alone.” You say this like it’s a curse, but you deliver it like a diary entry. You’re not predicting the future. You’re narrating your present and hoping no one notices. You didn’t walk away. You were never invited. And now you call that principle.
Little Franky, the most revealing thing about your worldview is how much effort you put into explaining why intimacy is broken instead of asking why it never arrived. People who are loved don’t write like this. People who are chosen don’t need theories. This isn’t conviction. It’s insulation. And you’ve wrapped yourself in it so tightly you’ve mistaken isolation for insight.
Feminism didn’t reject you. It exposed you. It removed the pressure for women to tolerate entitlement dressed up as masculinity. The men who adapted didn’t disappear. They’re dating, marrying, building lives, and not posting cultural obituaries for a system that stopped rewarding them by default.
You didn’t lose women to feminism, Little Franky. You didn’t walk away. You were never chosen. LOL And when choice entered the equation, you lost relevance.
This isn’t social commentary. It’s a tantrum with footnotes. A worldview built entirely around explaining why your lack of intimacy is everyone else’s fault.
And here’s the coldest part.
The world didn’t argue with you.
It didn’t cancel you.
It didn’t even debate you.
It just kept moving. Relationships kept forming. Love kept happening. And Little Franky is still outside, shouting rules at a door that no longer needs his permission to stay closed.
Little Franky, there it is. The prostate cancer line. Again. Track one on your Greatest Hits album. Plays every time someone challenges you. Same lyric. Same beat. Same confused confidence.
You didn’t respond. You defaulted.
Whenever you run out of ideas, you smash the prostate-cancer panic button and hope shock will substitute for thinking. Then, at some point, you'll wave around a link from Brave.com or Fatherly.com like you just subpoenaed the NIH. Brave is a browser. Fatherly is a parenting blog written for men who already have families.
Somewhere right now, Fatherly.com is shocked to learn it’s responsible for national health policy.
You don’t analyze.
You Google until something agrees with you.
Then you call it data.
And let’s be honest about what gives this away every single time. If you actually cared about prostate cancer, you’d talk about screening rates, early detection, access, stigma, or why men avoid doctors. You never do. You only bring it up when you’re angry at women. Every conversation. Same pivot. That’s not advocacy. That’s resentment wearing a lab coat.
Also, the irony is thick. You accuse feminism of hating men, yet your contribution to the discourse is joking about men getting cancer. You don’t defend men. You use them. You don’t care. You deflect.
Now let’s address the part you keep pretending is irrelevant, even though it explains everything. Little Franky, you’ve never been married.
Not once.
Not briefly.
Not disastrously.
Never.
And this isn’t a cheap shot. It’s the Rosetta Stone. People who’ve shared a life with someone don’t talk like this. They don’t reduce women to enemies and blog posts. They don’t need charts to explain why intimacy failed. They have stories. They have scars. They have humility. You have Brave.com open in another tab and a lot of opinions about relationships you’ve never risked being in.
You don’t sound like someone who was hurt by love.
You sound like someone who avoided it.
Marriage requires vulnerability, curiosity, and the ability to hear “this hurt me” without turning it into a culture war. You didn’t walk away from women. You opted out of accountability and then declared the whole system broken.
That’s why you cling to numbers. Numbers don’t leave. Links don’t disagree. Charts can’t look at you and decide they don’t want to build a future with you. People can.
And they did.
Your obsession with funding stats isn’t principled. It’s displacement. It’s what happens when someone wants moral authority without emotional risk. You want to sound serious without ever being intimate. You want certainty without exposure. So you hide behind data that can’t say no.
Here’s the line that ends it.
Desire is not a policy failure.
Attraction is not a budget allocation.
No one is obligated to want you.
And now the funniest part. Everyone knows exactly what you’ll say next. You’ll bring up prostate cancer again. Same sites. Same tone. Same tired pivot. You’re not controversial. You’re predictable. You’re a pull-string doll with one phrase, and the batteries are dying.
This isn’t censorship.
It isn’t oppression.
It isn’t feminism coming for you.
The world didn’t reject you.
It didn’t argue with you.
It didn’t even notice.
It moved on.
Relationships kept forming. Love kept happening. Families kept being built. And Little Franky is still outside, refreshing Fatherly.com, explaining why none of it counts.
That’s not injustice.
That’s outcome.
This is my favorite episode, Little Franky. You hit every line. No surprises. Tight execution.
Let’s take your reply in order, because it’s basically a script.
First, you insist you “take prostate cancer seriously.” Absolutely. That’s why it appears only when you’re arguing about women. Very serious concern. Remarkably selective timing. Screening rates? Early detection? Men avoiding doctors? Survivorship? Never makes the cut. Feminism, though. Always on deck. Seriousness, apparently, has a trigger word.
Second, you announce yourself as a champion of men’s injustices. Love that for you. Here’s the thing about advocacy. It persists even when it’s inconvenient. You don’t advocate. You invoke. You don’t support. You deploy. You don’t stay with the issue. You drop it the moment it stops being useful in a fight about women.
Third, and this is the centerpiece, you ask whether I “think I’ll get laid by catering to feminists.”
Incredible. Thank you for this.
This sentence is gold. You’ve just explained your entire worldview in nine words. You genuinely believe the only reason a man would disagree with you is sexual strategy. That empathy is foreplay. That respect is transactional. That principles require a payoff. This isn’t an insult. It’s a diagnostic revelation.
And now we get to the part you keep trying to shout past, even though it explains everything.
Again, it's no surprise that you’ve never been married.
Again, not an insult. Just data. The kind you don’t like because it doesn’t come from Brave.com.
People who’ve shared a life with someone don’t think this way. They don’t see relationships as ideological battlegrounds or sex as a reward system. They’ve had to practice compromise, accountability, and the deeply humbling experience of being wrong in front of someone they love.
You haven’t.
So you built a closed system instead. A worldview that never updates. A philosophy where opting out of vulnerability becomes wisdom, where never being chosen becomes moral superiority, and where disagreement is always explained as hatred or manipulation.
It’s elegant, really. Nothing is ever your fault. Nothing ever needs to change. Brave.com is your emotional support browser, Fatherly.com is your peer-reviewed journal, and feminism explains every unanswered question.
Let me thank you explicitly, because you summed it all up beautifully.
If a man respects women, he must be trying to get laid.
If someone disagrees with you, they must be brainwashed.
If no one wants to build a life with you, it must be ideology.
That’s the entire theory. No footnotes needed.
You accuse others of “man-hating feminism,” yet your response to disagreement is to mock illness and question strangers’ sexual motives. That’s not seriousness. That’s projection with a spreadsheet.
And yes, I know what comes next. You’ll say “man-hating feminism” or call me a "mangina" again. You always do. That’s the last line in the script.
So let’s end this cleanly.
This isn’t censorship.
It isn’t cancellation.
It isn’t oppression.
It’s outcome.
The world didn’t reject you.
It didn’t argue with you.
It didn’t even linger.
It moved on.
People fell in love. Built families. Changed. Grew. And you stayed right here, insisting none of it counts.
Segment over.