Running With the Wolves

My Reflection on My Mom's Life and Legacy

It’s no secret. Kids often don’t take the time to really know their parents deeply—outside of what they do for them as parents.

As kids get older, that may change for many.

It took time, but I got there.

And without meaning to, my mom helped me see and understand who she was.

It was 1992. Or maybe 1993. I was in college (on a break), or had just graduated.

I remember it distinctly.

The kitchen table that was the center of all Pepper activity.

A book was lying on it:

“Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype”

Now that is a book title!

It got my attention.

But…I remember thinking: “Is Mom reading this?”

And then: “why would Mom read a book about wild women running with wolves?”

I didn’t know yet. Kids often don’t.

Sometimes we’re the last to see it. But for me, that was the start.

…

Let me share a few phrases from the book. Know that I now read these words imagining my Mom reading them for the first time. (I know it’s a lot, but trust me, you’ll thank me if you take the time to absorb every phrase).

The book explores “the ways and means of woman’s deepest nature…The modern woman is a blur of activity. She is pressured to be all things to all people…

“Healthy wolves and healthy women share certain psychic characteristics: keen sensing, playful spirit, and a heightened capacity for devotion. Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mates, and their pack. They are experienced in adapting to constantlychancing circumstances; they are fiercely stalwart and very brave.”

“A woman’s issues of soul cannot be treated by carving her into a more acceptable form as defined by an unconscious culture, nor can she be bent into a more intellectually acceptable shape by those who claim to be the sole bearers of consciousness.”

“Wild woman” is old archetype: “We may have forgotten her named, we may not answer when she calls ours, but in our bones we know her; we know she belongs to us and we to her.”

“Once women have lost her and then found her again, they will contend to keep her for good….they will fight and fight hard to keep her, for with her their creative lives blossom; their relationships gain meaning and depth and health; their cycles of creativity, work and play are reestablished, they are no longer marks for the predations of others; they are entitled equally under the laws of nature to grow and to thrive. Now their end of the day fatigue comes from satisfying work and endeavors, not from being shut up in too small a mindset, job or relationship. They know instinctively when things must die and when things must live; they know how to walk away, they know how to stay.”

“They are gifted with a permanent and internal watcher, a knower, an intuitive, who guide, suggest, and urge vibrant life in the inner and outer worlds.”

“She is both friend and mother to all those who have lost their way; all those who need a learning; all those who have a riddle to solve; all those out in the forest or the desert wandering and searching.”

Woman’s “wild nature, when it comes…has a vast integrity to it.”

“It means to establish territory, to inform one’s pack, to be in one’s body with certainty and pride regardless of the body’s gifts and limitations, to speak and act in one’s behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing…to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as possible.”

“She is the one who thunders after injustice…She is the one who keeps us going when we thing we’re done for.”

The book instructs:

“I hope you will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and that you will work with these stories from your life--not someone else's life--water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. That is the work. The only work.”

“Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though onE episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them.”

___

The book had a presence in our house over all the decades that followed. My sense is that it and its themes were never far from her.

A few days before she passed, I asked my Mom about the book.

Why it meant so much to her.

She answered: “I was interested because it was women’s stories. Basically, it was women finding themselves.”

It was an interesting answer.

Because what she didn’t say was that she found herself.

And there’s a reason she didn’t say it that way.

For my mom, I’m convinced, when she first read the words above, they weren’t a revelation.

They weren’t an “aha,” as if she had to change her life to meet their meaning.

Instead, the book and those stories would’ve served as a mirror.

She simply saw her reflection—she recognized herself, and the life she’d led up to that point. (And would go on to lead).

Because “in our bones we know her; we know she belongs to us and we to her.”

But for the rest of us, those words above sure make clear what she was all about. They explain everything.

You see, Mom ran with the wolves from the day she was born.

And she ran with them her entire life, and in everything she did — even if it took most of us years to see it or put it all together.

Fiercely — never flinching or caring what others thought.

Subtly when necessary. With deep intuition.

Courageously.

Through direct, practical action. No BS.

Relentlessly and focused, from how she fought for her causes to how she passed.

In one way, she couldn’t help it — she came from generations of women who’d run with wolves, going back to Seneca Falls. So she truly was born running.

She was running with the wolves every summer on Georgian Bay—directly enmeshed with nature, down to her always bare feet and daily swims in frigid water.

She was running with the wolves in 1960, when she boarded that ship in New York harbor, to spend a year in Franco’s Spain, traveling and studying and enjoying life. Falling in love.

She was running when she said no to that love, picked up and moved home—because she was fiercely independent, and knew she would lose that independence if she stayed.

Dad, if it makes you feel any better, when she kept that distance from you in those early years—amid your entreaties—it wasn’t your fault; she was clinging to her valued independence, as she always had. You were courting a women who was running with the wolves. That’s not an easy task.

But once you gracefully showed her that she could still run even if married to you, she agreed.

When she fought and took such pride in her kids, through thick and thin—lifting us to become the four different people we’ve become—she was still running. After all, women who run with the wolves “are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mates, and their pack.”

She was running with the wolves driving that old blue van all those years, sporting her pigtails and directing that her last words, read out loud at her own funeral, be as directly political as her’s just were. After all, women who run with the wolves can’t “be carv[ed] into a more acceptable form as defined by an unconscious culture, nor can she be bent into a more intellectually acceptable shape by those who claim to be the sole bearers of consciousness.”

She was running with wolves when she spent her life fighting for survivors of abuse and violence to have a safe space for them and their children. And running when she supported causes and individuals, including many folks gathered here, as well people we never knew about it and will never know about.

Because a woman who runs with the wolves “is both friend and mother to all those who have lost their way; all those who need a learning…all those out in the forest or the desert wandering and searching.”

When she got sick, she didn’t stop running.

She outlived her bleak cancer diagnosis by years—as she wrote, “I still have a lot to accomplish and I don’t want to miss a minute of my grandchildren’s growing up”

And those added years didn’t come by happenstance. She earned them, through grit and strength and self-advocacy.

And they indeed allowed her to see her grandchildren grow, gave her time her to finish two books that she had always wanted to write, and allowed her to create a new pack—the most wonderful community of loving caregivers, neighbors and friends who became part of our extended family.

And years into stage IV breast cancer, she was still “thundering against injustice”—helping secure reproductive freedom for women in Ohio in 2023, while gathering signatures to end gerrymandering and hosting post card parties twice a week all last fall for candidates up and down the ballot.

And, finally, women who run with wolves “know instinctively when things must die and when things must live; they know how to walk away, they know how to stay.”

She knew that too. Faced the moment as bravely as anyone could.

She chose to stop treatment so she could go out on her own terms—courageously, focused, saying good bye to family pain-free and with a clear-head, and sharing memories with lifelong friends.

And that’s exactly what she did.

And have no doubt, she’s running with the wolves now — she’s joined those generations that came before and inspired her. They’re running together now, watching all this.

And even in her passing, as she watches now, she still left us a message.

When my mom passed (it was around three in the morning), three things happened in rapid sequence:

First, a bird chirped loudly just outside her window.

Next, out of the blue, came a soft rain.

Third came a strike of lightning followed by a loud clap of thunder. Less than a second apart—it felt like it was right over the house. The room shook.

All of our family noticed the sequence. It was not an accident.

The bird chirping was her telling us: “don’t worry. I’m still here. I’m ok. I’m at peace.”

The soft rain was her crying, because she will miss us on this Earth, along with the conversations and stories, and the work and activism she was so committed to. And we will miss her dearly. There’s no sugar coating that.

And finally came the bolt of lightning.

The most direct message of all. Unflinching and direct as always.

To not let those tears stop us.

To get going.

Keep going.

Don’t stop.

I have no doubt she was urging her granddaughters and other girls and women: “run with the wolves like I did!” Always. On all things. Don’t flinch about it, either:

“Thunder after injustice.”

“[G]o out and let stories, that is life, happen to you, and…work with these stories from your life--not someone else's life--water them with your blood and tears and your laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom. That is the work. The only work.”

And she was telling her grandsons and other boys and men — you get on board too:

Run with us (my Mom always cheered me and my brothers on in all we did.)

But let the women run too.

And whatever you do, when they are running, do NOT get in their way.

She’s watching out to make sure of that.

That chirping bird, that brief rain, and that bolt of lightning made that perfectly clear.

So let’s keep celebrating the full, joyous and wonderful life of Francie Pepper all weekend. And beyond.

And the best way to do that is to keep running ourselves—bravely, fiercely, unflinchingly, not worrying what others think—just as she did.

And just as she would.

This essay comes from reflections I shared at yesterday’s memorial service for my mom, Francie Pepper.

For anyone who wants to watch any parts of yesterday’s service, there’s a link HERE.