Think Like a Wolf
For most of the last 10 years, my wife Cindy and I have travelled to Yellowstone National Park in our RV. We tow my wife’s small Honda CR-V and we use it to get around the vast Yellowstone landscape. One of our favorite things to do is wolf watching in the Lamar Valley in Northern Yellowstone. We drive back and forth on the park road looking for them with our binoculars and spotting scopes. We try to film them with our cameras and zoom in for photos and video. It’s quite exciting to see wolves and their behavior among themselves and their offspring and sometimes with predators, like grizzly bears.
Another wolf watcher is Rick McIntyre – a now-retired National Park Ranger. He wrote a book called Thinking like a Wolf – Lessons from the Yellowstone Packs. He once went out in his truck 5,500 days in a row looking for wolves. He has over 100,000 wolf sightings with meticulous field notes. In his books he tells the stories of individual wolves from birth to death.
Wolves are divided by packs according to the territory they have claimed in Yellowstone (and outside Yellowstone).
The relationship among wolves in the pack is everything. The pack provides…
Safety – protection from predators, protection when injured
Support – relationship building, mentoring for pups
Nourishment – hunting for elk and bison, or anything else they can catch
The leader of the pack is not the alpha male; it is the alpha female. She makes most of the big decisions for the whole pack. Wolves do not mate with close relatives…like their offspring or their elders. If a male or female cannot find a mate in their own pack, they generally disperse to another pack or form a new pack. And it is risky to disperse…to be on your own.
Why am I telling you about wolves?
Because the relationships in the vitiligo pack is everything.
Like wolves, it is a place of safety and support…a safe place to share the victories and the emotional struggles of our vitiligo. It is a place of nourishment…a place of education, treatment and friendship.
Some veteran vitiligo patients can support the greater needs of the pack. While other vitiligo patients are recently diagnosed and have different needs.
But every vitiligo patient has a story to tell and that is our superpower.
The stories we tell not only help us…they nourish the entire pack. So, this is my encouragement to you…
Reach out and get to know the other members of your pack.
