Raised by Wolves, Possibly Monsters: From Mobster to Reiki Master
"Raw, compassionate, and perceptive, Michael Swerdloff's memoir RAISED BY WOLVES, POSSIBLY MONSTERS is a vital excavation of toxic masculinity's rot-and an urgent call for individual and cultural transformation." Edward Sung for IndieReade
This is a story about a boy who wanted to be kind and loving but was raised by wolves and monsters who taught him to choose violence and aggression. As the boy grew to be a man, he wanted to be a protector of women but ended up being what girls and women needed protection from. As a young adult, he saw women as his to take. He lied, cheated, and scammed his way through life until he couldn't.
This is his moving account of discovering healthy masculinity from the inside out. His journey has, at times, been sensational, at others, unbelievable, but for many readers, absolutely inspiring. Will the hungry wolves outlast the desire to be loving and beautiful? Can men truly change? What role can men play in making the world safe for women?
We lose so many men. Not everyone finds their way to the other side. Yet there is hope in witnessing the depth and commitment of a person willing to try to be better without knowing exactly how. This memoir captures one man's struggle to transcend his past and imagine an entirely new future for himself premised on compassion, care, and advocacy.
This is a story about hope. We do not have to be what they did to us, but it's our responsibility to do something about it. I wish for you to experience feeling loved, accepted, respected, and connected and to live a life of being the person you always knew you could be.
A portion of the proceeds from this book are going to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) and The Good Men Project.
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"In his searing memoir RAISED BY WOLVES, POSSIBLY MONSTERS, Michael Swerdloff's story is a harrowing portrait of a sensitive soul corrupted by his poisonous abuse at the hands of a misogynistic father and sociopathic brother. Under their tutelage, he morphs from a tender-hearted child into a predatory lothario who views women as little more than objects for his gratification.
Where RAISED BY WOLVES deviates from the typical redemption narrative is in its uncompromising self-interrogation and its nuanced exploration of the ways in which toxic masculinity is conditioned and reinforced by a misogynistic culture.
In one of the memoir's most powerful sections, Swerdloff volunteers at a rape crisis center, sharing his story of transformation with survivors of sexual assault. These gut-wrenching encounters force him to confront the true impact of his misdeeds and galvanize his commitment to being an ally and advocate for women. Swerdloff is unsparing in his self-assessment: "I wanted my body to change in response to the way my mind was, but that's not what happened, at least not at that point. At times, I would feel rage at my own body for its reaction to hearing tragic and brutal violent experiences."
Moreover, while some readers may crave more detail about certain aspects of Swerdloff's journey, such as his spiritual awakening under the guidance of the enigmatic healer Betsy, the brevity of these passages suggests that this is not meant to be a prescriptive "how-to" guide but rather a call to action, an invitation for each reader to undertake their own journey of self-discovery. As Swerdloff himself notes, "Like everything else on the spiritual awareness and development journey, we always return to the same thing, be present and pay attention."
In laying bare his own struggles and transformations, Swerdloff invites us to confront the ways in which we have all been shaped by a culture of toxic masculinity-and to imagine a different way of being in the world. "The women in our lives need us to be more than our shame, self-hatred, and violence," he writes. "They need us to step out of our pain, trauma, and numbness and step into being the men we were born to be before toxic masculinity squashed it out of us." The unvarnished quality of his writing serves to underscore the book's central theme: that the work of unmaking patriarchy's harms is a raw, messy, and essential endeavor-one that requires us to confront uncomfortable truths about ourselves and our society.
RAISED BY WOLVES, POSSIBLY MONSTERS is a challenging, often uncomfortable read, but its fundamental compassion and hard-won insights make it a vital addition to the literature on toxic masculinity. Swerdloff's story offers hope that even the most deformed spirits can be renewed, and that the cycle of abuse can be broken one transformed heart at a time.
Raw, compassionate, and perceptive, Michael Swerdloff's memoir RAISED BY WOLVES, POSSIBLY MONSTERS is a vital excavation of toxic masculinity's rot-and an urgent call for individual and cultural transformation."
Edward Sung for IndieReader
