The Little Boy Got a Wolf

I got my inner child a little surprise today.

And somehow, this feels exactly right.

Not something solemn.

Not another symbol he has to carry carefully.

Not armor.

Not a gate.

Not even wings.

A little Max in his wolf suit,

standing above Central Park

with his arms thrown completely open like:

WE SURVIVED THE WEEK.

WHERE ARE THE WILD THINGS. 😂😭

There is something beautiful about giving the little boy something physical after all this interior work.

Because so much of what I have been doing has been asking him to trust things he cannot touch:

safety,

acceptance,

the gatekeeper resting,

the hand reaching into the woods,

the possibility that love can remain love

even when the story becomes complicated.

Today, I gave him something he can touch.

Something soft.

Something playful.

Something that doesn’t ask him to understand anything.

And I love that Max isn’t tucked safely into bed.

He’s standing at the window overlooking this enormous world,

arms wide open.

After everything this week,

that feels almost hilariously perfect.

The wild things were real.

The woods were real.

The storm was real.

And the little boy is still here.

Still tender.

Still curious.

Still allowed to want things.

Still allowed to play.

Still allowed to stand at the window

and say—

Let the wild rumpus start.

Yeah.

He earned his Max. 🐺🌙

And maybe the grown man did too.

Because I think I understand something now

about the woods.

Before I ever entered them,

there was a window.

There were clouds gathering over a world

I could see

but could not control.

And there was my hand

pressed against the glass.

For so much of my life,

I think I believed reaching was about

what might reach back.

A hand.

An answer.

A person.

The sun.

But sometimes there is only the glass.

Sometimes the clouds do not move.

Sometimes you reach anyway.

So I did.

And somewhere along the way,

I found myself in the woods.

Not wearing armor.

Something much less impressive.

Something tattered.

Something tender.

Something that had been dragged through branches

and weather

and still remembered

it was once made for play.

And somehow,

the crown stayed on.

Not because I never fell.

Not because nothing hurt.

Not because I emerged untouched.

The woods left their marks.

They were allowed to.

But every time the crown fell,

it was still mine

to pick back up.

And when I came out of the woods,

I discovered there were two small things

I was still carrying.

One for the moon.

One for the sun.

I did not ask them

what the sky would become.

I did not ask the sun

when it would return.

I only held them in my hand

and remembered:

there was a time

when your light found me

across an impossible distance,

and something in me

became warm.

Whatever the sky does now,

I will not make that light a lie.

The moon remembers.

And somewhere beneath the tattered clothes,

the little boy still keeps

a place for the sun.

No promise required.

No answer needed.

Just this:

You were loved here.

You are loved here.

And perhaps that is another thing

I misunderstood about healing.

I thought eventually

I would have to decide

what to leave in the woods.

The grief.

The questions.

The love.

The versions of myself

who believed things

I can no longer know for certain.

The little boy

who still believes in magic.

I thought becoming whole

might require traveling lighter.

It doesn’t.

We can carry what was beautiful

without pretending nothing hurt.

We can remember the sun

without demanding that it rise.

We can love what happened inside us

without knowing what happens next.

We can leave the woods

without abandoning everyone

we became inside them.

So I took the staff in one hand.

And with the other,

I reached down.

There he was.

The little boy.

Still tender.

Still wild.

Still here.

This time,

I wasn’t reaching through glass.

I wasn’t reaching into the woods.

I wasn’t reaching toward someone

thousands of miles away.

I was reaching for him.

And he took my hand.

Maybe that is what all this reaching

was for.

Not to move the clouds.

Not to make the sun return.

Not even to find someone waiting

on the other side of the woods.

Maybe I was learning

how to recognize the hand

I could actually bring home.

So we started walking.

The crown a little crooked.

The clothes tattered.

The moon above us.

A little sunlight

still tucked safely away.

And neither of us

particularly interested

in pretending the woods

hadn’t happened.

We did not leave the tender things behind.

We brought them home.

And tonight,

the little boy and I

are walking home together.

Still tender.

Still wild.

Still here.

The moon remembers the sun.

The crown stayed on.

And nobody—

nobody—

got left behind. ❤️