Why did we howl?
My school girls. Most of the group is married with kids and mortgages now but regardless of the different roads we’ve walked since our school days, something still happens when we’re together - we become those teenage girls again. Fierce, loud, instinctive and vulgar. Usually fighting to be heard over one another. Cackling, always - you know, from the gut! Heads back, throats open, bellies spasming. I always leave our gatherings looking rather dishevelled, like a possessed Kate Bush. With a tinge less integrity.
We love and respect each other as the separate women we have become but there’s something very powerful about knowing where our path began. Together. We were there for each other through the first tampon insertion, navigating first kisses with a mouth of metal, the first Bacardi Breezer, the first holiday without the parents, the first time. The break ups, the break downs. At the time, that togetherness wasn’t a big deal. It was what it was. I look back now with immense gratitude and smile at all those awesome memories we accumulated over our formative years. Even the plethora of occasions I claim I want to forget - being trolleyed home along an A road when I was paralytic being one.
On a particular occasion out of the many, many hours our tribe spent together, something magical occurred. I knew it at the time because it simply felt so frickin’ good. Though, I have only come to realise why it was so magical these years later…
Collapsed in a heap on top of each other and talking about dogs (what else!) we all collectively began to howl. No prompt, no reason, just howled. We scratched our necks with the backs of our hands, raised our heads up to the skies (accurately some parents’ ceiling), scrunched our eyes up and howled like Wolves howling to the full moon. It was a special moment. But where did it come from? What on earth summoned us as a tribe of young girls to howl like wild dogs?! Suddenly! In that moment!
We didn’t discuss it after, there was no analysis. We simply picked up the conversation from where we left off. Simple. And yet, something had been born. Or awoken. The wild woman within us all had been summoned and we responded instinctively with our bodies and our voices and our souls. Even if we didn’t know it. Though, I believe we subconsciously understood the need for it, the release. Our expression beyond words became this feral sound! And I am delighted to write that the howling continues, from time to time. Perhaps not as a full gang anymore, though some lazy Sunday afternoon at the pub one of us might feel inspired to return the power call. She may crave to shed off some skin or shake out some stagnant rage or celebrate some electrical surge of joy or perhaps she just fancies it! And, I have noticed that when the howling starts, no Wolf ever howls alone.
There is always someone ready to call back.