The wolf is both domesticated and un-domesticable. Looking out at the world from behind the bars of the cage I put him in, snapping occasionally at the door. A short run away is the expansiveness of a lush, deeply green forest: the smell of moss, insects singing to the trees, the thrill of the hunt, the solidness of the pack. This wolf is hungry, tired, restless, agitated. I hear his whining, and though part of me longs to let him out, I have given the key away. I am watching him bite at himself and cry out in desperation, and I am silent. 

When the moon is full, when the veil thins, the bars of the cage become liquid and the wolf sneaks out. He is rabid, unwieldy, temperamental. He hunts neither for nourishment nor play but to enact violence on his jailer. And I, who was trained to contain and incarcerate my wildness, send him back with torch and pitchfork. 

If the wolf is my wild nature, the cage is shame. It's the cultural, relational, personal framework through which I have learned to hide, and this hiding is one the ways I cause harm in the world. Rather than owning and settling in with the reality of who I am and what I want from life, shame has me handing my dignity to other people: external authority figures and cultural norms. It has me keeping my wild nature in the shadows. 

Shame has been embedded in my life from the very beginning, embedded in the DNA of my family and our community: tamil brahmin culture. It’s not just us, though; any culture that benefits from the domination of people, from making some ways of life holy and others profane will carry the atmospheric river of shame. 

When my parents first came to this country, a country that had limited vegetarian food, where non-native english speakers were ridiculed, where darker-skinned folks were denied opportunities, they sought refuge in those that came from the same place, who had the same cultural and religious references, who offered them care and generosity. 

There was an immense amount of care: big, spontaneous parties to commemorate the arrival of a new child, multiple reference books to help pass a driver's test, sleepovers and community childcare and passing the seasons together. Even now - after everything - on the day before we sent my dad off into the beyond, many, many people from our community came together to see him off and share their grief and gratitude. 

There is also a cost, though, an often unspoken dark side: the pressure of conformity, the fear of gossip or loss of social glue, the whispered stories of battered women or precocious youngsters taking their own life. Our community came with rules, some of which were upheld back in India going back generations - perhaps to colonization or even before - some of which were inspired by the individualism stemming from puritan, united states culture. 

Rules like: It's better to have a legible career, one that makes money. If you don't have children by a certain age there's something wrong with you. Don't get a divorce. 

No one is out here speaking these rules into existence. But they are enforced through the insidious, dominating nature of shame. Shame that's so scary to reveal that even writing about it right now brings tension to my stomach, chest, and throat. 

It was in this shame that I was raised, where I learned right from wrong. 

My family couldn't rely on any kind of american social fabric for belonging or well-being. So they conformed according to these shame rules. But we are a pack of wolves, and as the full moon thinned the solidity of the cage, my family and I have broken many of the rules. We have had to face the shame that comes with breaking from conformity. We have had to unlearn what is "good" and what is "bad" so we can better listen to ourselves. 

I remember, when I first left software engineering to discover what kind of service I wanted to perform in the world, the mother of my friend told me to "stop being silly and go back to your regular life." 

I remember how my dad worked his ass off to seek belonging from people who would talk shit about him behind closed doors. 

I remember many things that I am unlikely to ever share online because they're our stories and not yours. 

See, the thing that has helped me most with navigating shame is cultivating a sense of discernment. not what is right or wrong but what do I know to be true that I have been hiding from? What do the quieter voices say, over and over again? Who am I, really, and who do I want to be?

I knew through the entire decade I heavily drank that I didn't want to be living that way. But I let shame suppress my true nature, and alcohol was both a way to numb out and to release the feelings that were kept under wraps. I was wearing the face of conformity, hiding when I was unexpectedly angry, feeling stepped on, seeing the world reflect my own pain. And I had a lot to be angry about.

After a weekend of heavy drinking I'd wake up, thick with shame, wearing my mask as I led classrooms and meetings, hungry for the weekend to come so I could do it all over again, because drinking was the way I knew to unleash my wildness, to allow the feelings that had otherwise become trapped inside of me. 

Deciding to quit, learning to be angry without the support of substances, was one of the finest steps of discernment I've taken. 

Many of us learned to shut down our senses to survive. I'm aware I still have a long, long road to walk with shame. But I'm discovering a path to aliveness and whole-life satisfaction through re-awakening.

Sometimes, when I notice the wolf is caged again, I practice letting him out myself, and we run through the forest together. We wrestle under the full moon, getting muddied and play-biting at one another. We lay under the stars and feel the wind on our faces. My fur is starting to grow, again.

I genuinely want to know. What is your inner wild nature? Where would you run if you could unlock the cage?