Prompt 238. Feeding the Good Wolf

& Amber Tamblyn on dream decoding

Photo by Kate Sterlin

Hi friend,

Earlier this week I was interviewed for a podcast called The One You Feed, hosted by Eric Zimmer. He opened the interview with a parable: 

A grandfather is talking with his grandson. The grandfather says, “In life, there are two wolves inside of us which are always at battle. One is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love. The other is a bad wolf which represents things like greed, hatred, and fear.”

The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second, then he looks up at his grandfather and says, “Grandfather, which one wins?”

The grandfather replies, “The one you feed.”

When Eric finished, he asked what came up for me, and I said, “Anxiety.” That’s my bad wolf, and recently it’s been manifesting as insomnia. I fall asleep easily enough but wake up five to six times a night, often in a panic—my body in fight and flight and freeze all at once. I lie there for hours, hoping against hope that I can fall back asleep, but it just doesn’t happen.

Last week, I started cognitive behavioral therapy specifically for insomnia. The therapist has me keeping a sleep diary (separate from my regular journal). I have to record everything from what time I go to bed to how long my awakenings last. I’ve been told that I should only be in bed for sleep and intimacy, and if I’m awake for longer than 30 minutes, it’s time to get up.

It’s so strange to get that instruction, as it’s exactly the opposite of what I’ve been doing, which is tossing and turning until I can’t bear it anymore, then dragging myself up, feeling both exhausted and defeated. It makes me realize that lying in bed for hours, admonishing myself for not being able to sleep, is actually feeding the wolf of insomnia, and feeding my anxiety.

For a long time, I was fixated on eradicating the bad wolf. But as the parable suggests, that’s not possible—because I’m naturally disposed to anxiety and also because of my illness, which is objectively anxiety-inducing. Instead I’m realizing I need to try a different tactic: feeding the good wolf.

Working with this sleep therapist is a start. So is getting out of bed and journaling, and spending time in our Isolation Journals Chat. It’s truly the loveliest, most dynamic place, like a huge group text (except not overwhelming, and also your aunt Mildred isn’t going off about her latest colonic journey). I get up early each morning and post a check-in for our 30-day Art of Journaling project, and the community responds with the most gorgeous, heartfelt messages, like this one from Paola on Thursday: “Sending loving vibes to you, and so much gratitude for this space of early risers. Insomnia is a builder of community. Together in luminous solitude with silence and words, I do not feel alone.”

In this week’s module for our 30-day project, we’re exploring thematic journaling, everything from nature journaling to epicurean accountings to dream diaries. For me, the last one seems the least accessible and also more than a little daunting. It feels complicated and scary to open myself up to that—because who knows what’s going to appear? But as I therapize my way toward better sleep, I’m thinking there’s something of Jungian, symbolic value in examining what floats up from the unconscious, and I’m intrigued by the idea of decoding my dreams.

And so, after all the talk of wolves and strange sleep and dream-seeking, today I have a very special guest essay and prompt for you that reflects on all of it. It’s from my beloved friend, the actress, director, and writer Amber Tamblyn, adapted from her gorgeous essay anthology, Listening in the Dark. We’re actually next-door neighbors, and from time to time, we intercept each other on our back porches and share a glass of wine or coffee over the railing, depending on where we find ourselves on the spectrum from dusk to dawn. May Amber’s words lead you to uncover meaning and make new connections in your dreams.

Sending love and wishes for sweet ones,

Suleika

Some Items of Note—

• We’re into the second week of our 30-day journaling project—this week’s module, called Theme & Variations, Journaling Edition, is an opportunity to explore what you dream and what you eat and also the color blue. It’s not too late to join—you can always just jump in, or you start from the beginning with Week One. Find more details here!

• This month’s meeting of the Hatch, our virtual creative hour for paid subscribers, is going to be an extra special one. It’s scheduled for Sunday, April 16, from 1-2 pm ET—exactly halfway through our 30-day project—and yours truly will be hosting. Hope to see you there!

Frederic Remington, Moonlight, Wolf (1904)

Prompt 238. In the Mouth of the Wolf, You Will Find It by Amber Tamblyn

Since I was a child, my dreams have been wild playgrounds flush with powerful imagery—imagery that has almost always included wolves or some kind of wilderness that I am either trying to protect myself from or hide away in.

In a journal entry around the age of eight, I wrote about an event in my life, half-understood, half-remembered. It came to me in the form of a recurring dream. I am lying in my parents’ bed trying to sleep when their white wicker pendant lamp that hangs above a desk is turned on to a dim light. Someone who is not supposed to be in the room is coming in or has just left, and though I can’t see them, I can sense their presence. 

Wolves begin to howl in the distance outside my parents’ window—a sound which is always protective and comforting in my dreams. The sound has always symbolized a shift taking place, signaling a listening that has begun. 

The door to the hallway is halfway open, and I can see the blackness of the living room as I wait for the someone who is there, but not there, to emerge from the shadows. The wolves have gotten closer, and soon they enter the endarkened living room. I can hear their panting and frantic sniffing giving way to snarling and the sounds of someone being attacked—the someone who was perhaps here, in this room—a man, screaming. He cries out something in his own defense, but I cannot make it out. I go down under the blankets to hide and am both terrified and relieved. I feel protected and yet, somehow, preyed upon. 

There are records of various versions of this dream in six of my journals, captured in over thirty different entries. At the time, I could not see any significance in their repetition. But as I grew older, I began to see them as breadcrumbs from my intuition—a path my body and my memory were trying to lead me down in order to discover something new about their significance. So I followed.

In Katherine May’s Wintering, she writes, “The wolf is part of our collective psyche. As elemental to our thinking as the sun and the moon… In the depths of our winters, we are all wolfish. We want in the archaic sense of the word, as if we are lacking something and need to absorb it in order to feel whole again.”

Your prompt for the week: 

Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes that a woman’s dream life is to be nurtured, cherished, and taken seriously, and that from it, we can reimagine ourselves in a freeing, new way: “Bone by bone, hair by hair, Wild Woman comes back: Through night dreams, through events, half understood and half remembered.”

Write about your dreams. The recurring ones, the lingering ones, the ones that happened yesterday or long ago. Where have they led you, or, reflecting on them now, where do you hope they might lead you? 

If you’d like, you can post your response in the comments section, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals.

Photo by Stephanie Diani

Today’s Contributor–

Amber Tamblyn is an Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated actress, director, and writer. She is the author of seven critically acclaimed books across genres including the bestselling anthology, Listening in the Dark: Women Reclaiming the Power of Intuition, which features essays by powerhouses such as Amy Poehler, Jia Tolentino, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, and many more. She is an opinion writer for the New York Times, The Cut, and The New Yorker, writing on such themes as gender inequality and women’s rage. Her most recent writing can be found at AmberTamblyn.Substack.com.

For more paid subscriber benefits, see—

• The 30-Day Journaling Project, where we’re exploring the art of journaling and all it can contain.

• On Making Art from Hard Things, a video replay of our Studio Visit with award-winning writer Esmé Weijun Wang, where we discussed limitations, creative ambitions, and how to marry the two.

• Speaking of the Night, a recap of last month’s meeting of the Hatch, where we read a poem by Jack Gilbert and tried to find words for the ineffable.