What the Wolves Taught Me About Letting Myself Fail
By Barb Lang
My name is Barb Lang. I'm a 26-year-old filmmaker based in St. Louis, Missouri, currently directing a documentary about youth advocacy called Children of the Wolves. If my name doesn't ring a bell, there's a reason: the last time I was publicly active as a filmmaker was two years ago, before I got married and changed my name.
Since my last work with Wild Lens, I've moved through a lot of personal struggles and transitions. There were stretches when I had the time but not the energy, and others when I had the energy but not the time. Matt Podolsky argues that I never really left—I just went silent.
My film never left my mind. Neither did the guilt. I felt like a failure for leaving something unfinished, and the feeling compounded a little more each day. I wanted to hide. I did hide. And I’m here to recount how and why I came out of hiding, because I know others know what it’s like to have to walk away from your creative dreams, for whatever reason, and what that does to you emotionally... And how you can come back from it.
The Inspiration Behind It All
It started in May 2023 at a Society of Environmental Journalists Conference in Boise, Idaho. I had never been to Idaho. I didn't even know where it was on a map. I knew little about the wolf controversy out west. But the conference offered a day trip to learn about wolves in what is seemingly the epicenter of the conversation. On that trip, a local high school graduate named Michel Liao stood up and spoke about his club’s wolf advocacy work.
Michel had just graduated from Timberline High School, where he was president of Teens Restoring Earth's Environment (TREE). He described the plight of his school's adopted wolf pack—studied inconsistently for twenty years—and how federal agents had eliminated the pack and its pups with no crime having been committed. No sheep killed. He explained that it wasn't just their pack: wolves are being systematically removed from their native landscape across the entire state. His passion was palpable.
I saw myself in Michel. As a fresh college graduate (December 2022) looking for the next big adventure, I wanted my next project to be something impactful. This felt like the perfect fit.
So my then-boyfriend Derek and I packed up our college apartment and moved across the country.
Everything Falls Apart—Quietly
We settled in Boise. I found a part-time gig at a local production company. Derek was working toward his Master's at Johns Hopkins University remotely. When I wasn't working, I was filming: students giving testimonies at Idaho Fish & Game meetings, going to softball games and climbing competitions, and even prom. We ran a crowdfunding campaign and raised $20,000 for production.
After completing a shoot in Yellowstone for the film in May 2024, Derek and I found ourselves in a debacle with the house we were renting: the landlord was selling the unit at the end of the summer. We had to decide: find a new place in Boise or move elsewhere.
To be completely transparent: we were broke in every sense of the word. The rent we were paying was 150% more than where we'd gone to college in Columbia, Missouri. My part-time income was nowhere near enough to cover the bills. We were hemorrhaging money the entire year we lived in Boise. When Derek graduated and landed a job in St. Louis, we chose to spend our last couple thousand dollars on a U-Haul back home.
I found work as a videographer at a local wealth management firm. For a year, until summer 2025, I didn't touch the film. I fell out of contact with everyone involved in it. I focused my time and energy on rebuilding our personal life. My dad got sick. I started therapy again.
The Weight of Unfinished Things
During this year, I was constantly thinking about the film and my lack of work on it. People in my life would ask about it and about any updates I might have. I would look down, mumbling something about it still being a work-in-progress. But every time I opened the project file, I would see the characters I thought hated me so much, and the footage would suddenly become too intimidating to touch. Thinking about working on the film felt like touching a sore bruise that would never heal.
I blamed myself for being a hindrance to these students’ important high school moments and for having nothing to show for it. Some of the darkest moments of my life were during this period, and a lot of it was due to feeling like I had failed. Not only had I failed myself, but I failed these students. I failed the supporters. I failed the wolves.
I wanted this film to be worth it for all of them.
Coming Back
In summer 2025, I visited Boise—largely just to let people know I was still alive and to quietly signal that I hadn't given up. Around that time, Matt Podolsky and I started meeting weekly on Zoom. We began going through the footage I had shot a year earlier: he would watch a select reel from a given shoot, and we would theorize together about how it might fit into the film. We did this until March 2026, when we'd finally gone through everything, and there was nothing left to do but start putting the building blocks together. Shortly after, Seth Randal rejoined as producer after two years away. Our duo became a trio (again).
I put together an hour-long assembly cut with no interview footage, because I hadn't shot any originally. And then I did the thing I had been most afraid to do this entire time: I reached out to the characters, who I felt like I had failed.
I contacted each of them personally to reconnect, to let them know where the film stood, and to see how they were doing. I would call this a "pivotal moment” in my plot. The realization that not everyone hated me and thought of me as a failure. They saw me as a human being trying to navigate life, just like them.
That was the most humbling thing I could have heard in that moment. It gave me a kind of strength and confidence in this project that I hadn't felt since we left Boise.
Where We Are Now
In July 2026, I flew back to Boise to shoot interviews. We captured five key characters on camera. The team now meets weekly to review whatever progress has been made outside of regular work hours.
We don't know exactly when we'll wrap. There may be a few more events and interviews to shoot, and we're still working on crowdfunding incentives. But consistent progress is being made. Which is more than past me could say.
I feel a thousand percent better about this film than I did even six months ago. A lot of that is owed to Matt and Seth, who have believed in this project, and in me, since the beginning, sometimes more than I have believed in myself. Their contributions have been invaluable, and I owe them more than I can ever possibly express. Thank you, both. And thank you to everyone who has supported this project in any fashion. It doesn't go unnoticed, and I believe it will amount to something great.
You Can Come Back Too
I felt like this was an impossible process for a long, dark time. I was lonely in the realm of filmmaking for a year. I felt like everyone hated me for seemingly giving up. I felt like I had given up on my dreams.
And then I took even just the smallest step of sending a heartfelt message to the characters—and the process suddenly became possible again.
I recognized that there were people all along who had never given up on me, and they were there for me for support. I just needed to ask for it. My biggest critic is myself. I'm working on that now in many areas of my life. I share all of this because I can't possibly be the only one who has poured my heart and soul into a project and then had to walk away from it for a long time. I can't be the only one who has struggled to reintroduce myself to a world I care about deeply.
All I can do is try. And so can you.
Learn more about Children of the Wolves here, and follow their journey on Facebook or Instagram.