“Running with the Wolf / Bleeding with the Truth”

“Some people speak in whispers. Others arrive like wildfire. Lauren, with Love writes like both.”

—Forged & Rooted

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This collaboration with Lauren, with Love the voice behind The Light in the Night, started with a howl.

Not one we planned. One that rose out of both of us.

Her words are the flame that sees in the dark. Mine are the ash that refuses to stay buried.

Together, we followed the wolf.

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I never used to think the wolf was mine. Not like the hawk. Not like the elk. Not even like the fucking pheasant that always flew too close when I needed a sign. Wolves? I respected them. Admired them. Wrote a damn report on their reintroduction back in high school when they were just starting to roam the Yellowstone wilds again… when everyone still thought it’d be a “small, manageable number.” Back when I believed what I was told. That was my first taste of the wolf. But I didn’t know what I was swallowing.

I thought the wolf was something out there. In the trees. In the debates. In the teeth of controversy. Turns out, he was in me. I just didn’t hear the howl until everything else got quiet. Or maybe until she came along.

Red-light filtered profile picture girl. Wisdom under a hoodie. Talking wolves and synchronicities and energy that doesn’t flinch. Something about her made me pause. Made me feel seen and called out in the same breath. I joked once… hell, maybe it wasn’t even a joke that she was Little Red Riding Hood and I was the damn wolf. Another wrecking ball in a long line of collateral damage. Another story where I fuck it up.

But I got it backwards. She’s the wolf. The kind that doesn’t destroy, but devours what no longer serves. She doesn’t let the low-vibration version of me show up. Won’t let me bring my shadow-skulking Eeyore moods to her door. She calls me out by not saying much… just holding the line with such fierce clarity that I rise without even knowing I’m doing it. She doesn’t just chase the wolves away. She is the wolf.

And that flipped the script. Because the wolf’s been tracking me. Through replies, posts, whispers in lyrics I didn’t write but somehow already knew. It’s a mirror more than a message. And in it, I see all my contradictions. My hunger. My rage. My deep, aching longing for someone to hold space while I hand them the raw pieces of myself.

That’s the heart of it, ain’t it? You can’t ask a man to be vulnerable and then flinch when he hands you the bloody pieces. You can’t call for his truth, then turn it into ammo when he bleeds on you. Vulnerability doesn’t come cheap for most men. It comes after war. After shame. After we’ve been told we’re too much and not enough in the same breath. It comes through fire. And if it’s not received with sacred fucking honor, it calcifies into armor that won’t come off next time.

And that’s why I wrote The Fire That Burned It All Down… because the armor stopped fitting. Because I was standing in the middle of my life not even sure how I got there. Promotions, deployments, pretending… it all became some haunted house tour through my own burnout. Everyone talks about the climb. No one talks about the fall that doesn’t look like a crash. But feels like your soul left the room.

That quiet smolder, that ghost-walk of spiritual homelessness… that was my bottom. And brother, when you’re forged in fire, you either rise with purpose or disappear pretending it never happened. I chose to rise. But not clean. Not polished. Not some fucking Instagram redemption arc. I rose in ashes. Scorched. Still smoking.

And the wolf was there. Every step of the way.

See, the wolf doesn’t show up when things are calm. He shows up at the thresholds. When instinct matters more than approval. When the comfort zone starts to rot. He doesn’t bark. He doesn’t beg. He howls. From the wound. From the gut. From the place no one wants to look. And lately, I’ve been howling back.

Because something’s shifting in me. I’m not chasing happiness anymore. That’s not my currency. I’ve traded it in for something heavier. Alignment. Purpose. Integrity. Bleeding out truth even when I don’t know if I believe it myself that day.

That’s the deal. That’s the fucking vow.

Keep the wolves away? Nah. I am the wolf. I’ve just learned when to howl and when to protect. And some days, it’s brutal. Some days I write just to feel like I still exist. Some days I hold the line for everyone else while silently wondering who’s holding it for me. But I’m still here. Still forged. Still rooted. Still refusing to be a mirror for anyone not willing to look.

And here’s the kicker… Some people will need you to stay the villain just so they can keep playing the victim. Let ‘em. You’ve outgrown that script. They’re still acting in a play you already walked off the stage of.

This journey, this becomingit ain’t for the faint. It’s for the wild ones. The ones made of jagged edges and sacred rage. The ones who flinch when touched but still long to be held. The ones who sleep alone on the ridge because they’re not ready to run with the pack, but they’re listening to the howls anyway.

It’s for the men who stopped drinking not because of the bottle, but because they realized they couldn’t stand to look in the mirror anymore. For the ones who discovered the real monster wasn’t outside… it was the part of themselves they abandoned to survive.

And now? Now it’s time to remember. To come home. To sit in the rubble of every false identity and whisper, “I’m still here. And I’m not fucking done.”

Lauren, you cracked something open in me. Not with softness but with sacred ferocity. And maybe that’s what this collaboration is about. Not just wolves and numbers and signs. But about remembering the animal within us that doesn’t need permission to exist.

This isn’t a love story. It’s a soul story. It’s not about being tamed. It’s about being true.

So if you’re reading this and you feel it… good.

If it stirs something… better.

But if it scares you? That means it’s working.

The wolf doesn’t knock.

He howls.

And if you’ve heard it…

You’re already changing.

So let’s run.

Let’s write.

Let’s remember what we are when we’re not trying to be who they told us to be.

Because this ain’t about being saved.

It’s about becoming the fire.

And walking like your soul wrote this moment long before you were ever born.

And maybe that’s the truth of it.

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The wolf didn’t come to be understood.

It came to be felt.

To stir the hunger.

To burn down what no longer fits.

To remind us that endings are sacred

when they lead us back to ourselves.

Lauren wrote from the center of winter.

I wrote from the smolder of the burn.

But we both came out tracking the same scent

truth, in its wildest form.

So if you hear the howl…

don’t run.

You were meant to answer.

- Forged & Rooted with Lauren Lauren, with Love