Maybe It’s You?
“I’m going to open this book at random and read a section. Someone in this room needs to hear it.”
When I do readings from my book Sacred Tears: A Witch’s Guide To Grief, I generally read from a section called “The Grief Spiral,” where grief is seen not as linear, but as a growing spiral shape that has its own Magick and power.
At the end of the reading, I will flip the book open at random and read a section I hadn’t planned to share. Spirit knows someone in the room needs to hear it.
Yesterday, I spent a beautiful Sunday in Eugene, OR at Serpent and Sparrow, a GORGEOUS Witchy pub which hosted Eugene Pagan Pride’s Mystic Faire. I had an extraordinary time.
This was the section that Spirit chose for me to read. Maybe you need to hear it, too?
A few weeks after our loss, I took the money I’d saved for a crib and went to a writer’s retreat on Whidbey Island, Washington, seeking comfort among the trees. Through strange coincidence, many of the other retreat attendees had recently left the same Church, which belonged to a particularly caustic tradition of Evangelical Christianity. In learning this, I kept quiet about my Witchcraft. I didn’t fear judgement or thought they might isolate me, but rather that they might look to me for guidance. My experience as a Priestess has taught me that people leaving their religions of origin are often curious about Witchcraft, but I was in no place to guide anyone.
However, I couldn’t do the writing work honestly without alluding to my experiences as a Witch.
During a small group sharing, one woman’s eyes lit up. She was one of the former Evangelical attendees and I recognized in her eager, hopeful face the longing to connect with a new path—one of feminine and omni-gendered divinity, free of the rules, judgements, and contradictions that had hurt her. I also recognized myself in her, as I remembered when I longed for a guide on the new path.
I could not be that for her.
“Don’t look to me,” I replied when she tried to talk to me about Witchcraft. “Witches get lost, too.”
I’d been a Priestess for many years and not so long before, I would have jumped to guide this hungry, lost soul. But at that time, I could only help myself and that wasn’t going very well. I felt sorrow, for myself and for that lost soul. I felt anger that circumstance had put me where others might look to me when I had nothing to offer. I felt shame, for not being the guide I wanted to be. And then, sorrow again, followed by anger, followed by shame.
I spiraled inward…
