Hi! I hope you're doing well today! I'm a alpha and recently I've sent out a advertisement to start my own pack on a miscecanis discord server. Although now I'm kind of panicking because I haven't seen a lot of content on being a good pack leader 😅 i was wondering if you have seen any posts about such a thing? Or have any advice yourself?
first of all, I’m SO sorry for how long it took me to reply to you. So much burnout from winter term 😅 but I hope things have gone well with your pack-forming!
second, I took a look for other posts about being a pack leader. I know I’ve seen some but they were old and i couldn’t find them :( so instead I put together all my thoughts and asked some friends from a miscecanis discord server. Here’s what I’ve got!
(also disclaimer: I’ve never been in a pack, but I’ve been in plenty of relationships and friend groups, so I’ve had my share of successes and failures with all that to learn from. Hopefully you find this helpful)
How to be a good pack leader
The big things that come to mind for me are time and dealing with heavy feelings
Work out some boundaries around time. You can’t always be there, so what is reasonable? If people are demanding fast responses from pack members all the time, that’s not healthy and sustainable
You aren’t personally responsible for everyone’s wellbeing
This isn’t just for your well-being, it’s also for the sake of your pack members. When you take on too much emotional burden, it creates tension that affects everyone. Instead, as a pack leader set a precedent for healthy mutual support, coping strategies, boundaries, etc
Talk with your pack about what they would like the leader’s role to be, and what roles they hope to play and to see from the pack
Consider some structure, but don’t make it a hard rule—people have things to do out there
By structure I mean things like daily check ins, weekly activities, scheduled events, etc.
It would also be a good idea to start a conversation about what miscecanis means to the pack and how they want to express that
Omg if I had a pack I'd love to do pack ‘scenting’ time where you say nice things about each other and stuff aaaa
On structure: “Not all Packs have a leader or hierarchical structure and don't have to. The Possums don't have any particular order. It should also (in my opinion at least) be laid out on the table if the Pack Leader thing is gonna be a role they always have or is something voted on, inherited, etc. And how the order is going to be established (dynamic? Age? Etc?). It's also important to remind them that a Pack is a community, so if things get hard you don't have to be a Leader all the time, everyone takes care of each other no matter what. A leader should also make sure everyone's voice is heard. Pack expectations might be good to set out from the get-go to so everyone can be honest with their feelings and needs. A Misce thing to add might be deciding on 1 particular thing as a 'Pack Scent'. For example, everyone has their own scent of course but it also has this specific herb scent involved bc they're in that Pack.”
On activities: "We've talked about doing mystery game nights together, and playing TTRPGs at some point (cries in scheduling shdkwsja). Most of what we do is chatting. We talk about life, joke about each other (few of us can cook, some of use don't care...one of us is legally not allowed near an oven.), we talk about what a Pack House would be like, we have a billion channels and somehow use all of them lol, we talk about how much we wish we could make food for each other (we talk about food a lot don't we;;), we love rambling about our interests/fixations, we love hearing about each other's interests/fixations, we share playlists we've made just to each other, anything just to kind of have an excuse to talk and virtually be around each other. The most important thing about being a Pack is that you feel happy and contented even just to be if that makes sense, lol, at least to me."
“Most people I've seen who implement a pack hierarchy don't have Just One Leader- they'll have the pack head, head alpha, head omega, head beta (less common but does exist), and/or some sort of second in command, as well as other roles depending on the pack. Just one person taking on all the responsibilities of a pack can be overwhelming!”
~@miscellaneous-miscecanis
I really hope your pack forming goes well!
