I hear howls on the wind as dusk falls; it has been blustery today, on the cusp of summer. Unseasonably cool, the air is thick with pollen as it settles in my lungs and lights me up with an inner warning: protect thyself, nurture thyself, go within and see where healing is being called for.
I do not know what summer brings. But I hear it on the wind: change, power, force. It will be a time to rise and to speak without fear and without self-imposed limitations. It is time for my truth to come out.
I am a careful, cautious person. I am also opinionated and outspoken. The world has not been safe for me to be so; careful and cautious is much safer. And so my focus has been on others, to support others to heal and grow, as I do my own work in solitude and privacy, so as not to be told:
“You’re too much”
“You push people’s buttons”
“You’re intimidating/overwhelming/overbearing.”
These words hurt my young self enough that there came a time when I began to self-censor, to silence my truth, to prioritize others’ comfort over tending my own inner fire. But the fire is igniting, and the wind fuels it.
I am a witch. My magic is my words, and you are welcome to be transformed by them. I believe in deep mystery, and I weave spells in the darkness of the void.
I am a memory and a dream of my ancestors. The dream is not a pleasant one: mothers who have abandoned their children, fathers who have beat them into submission, powerful intelligent women who have been relegated to service to the men, rendering them resentful and bitter and filled with rage. Girls who have been ruthlessly shamed for their inevitable womanhood and assaulted and violated by the family who is meant to love and support them. Condemned to hell, left in an orphanage, forced into servitude, disconnected from their lands, all this and more lives in my DNA. There is an entire branch of my family that I know nothing about, it is shrouded in the shame of an illegitimate union that two generations ago was enough to take a child away from a mother until she was married, for how could she possibly have any value to nurture a child into the world without a man to validate her existence? How could a little boy be loved and valued in the world without fitting into a mold of two parents, perfect family?
These truths have been kept at arms length in my psyche, me seeking to cut myself off from my own history, as it has been too painful to be integrated into my own identity. But they are calling now, my ancestors, they will no longer be ignored. They have wisdom to share with me, if I can tolerate the remembrance of their pain.
I am a space-holder and a deep listener. I see you. I know you have a story as well, it lives in your blood and in your bones, and when you are ready, you will acknowledge it in its fullness, the pain and the joys of your own personal truth, and you will bring it forth in those tender, safe moments when someone is ready to witness you without judgment and with a full, loving heart. And you will feel whole again.
I am a lover of Mother Earth. She is my deity, and her wisdom is infinite. She has long been silenced, violated, dominated, abused. She has been dismissed and ignored, used as a tool to feed greed and amplify the power of the few. She is done with that now. She is teaching me the cyclical nature of time, that we do not move simply from past, to present, to future, but rather our growth happens in a spiral, and if we look down we can see our past selves looking up at us, seeing the lessons we are learning again and again, that things die away to be reborn, that there is always a sunrise after the darkest night, that sometimes the moon illuminates the night and sometimes it stays in shadow; but all is well. It is as it should be. There is no conquering here.
Mother Earth desires relationship with us. For we are extensions of her, we are a small component of her vast diversity of life that is her creation, and we are designed to work with the entire system, not exempt ourselves from it. We are learning that the lie of disconnection is costing us our lives.
I have been poisoned by the world we have created; both physically and mentally. My poisonous thoughts tell me I’m not good enough, not smart enough, that I’m a fraud, that my brilliance hurts others. My body is responding to the poison in our food, our hygiene products, our furniture and carpets and air and water. Some of us are becoming the canary in the coal mine, developing “disorders” because of the way we live out of balance, thinking that some poisons are okay but not considering what happens when they are all piled on top of each other. Our hormones are out of balance because the medical industry cares little for understanding our bodies and gives us medication and cuts out our uteruses and ovaries out of convenience, while other women are dying in childbirth because it cares more about dominating women than nurturing and supporting them.
The Earth, too, is becoming poisoned. Right now, those in power tend to shrug their shoulders and say “that is the way of things” but others know better. They know that now is the time to bring ourselves back into balance with the Earth, and the way we must begin is within.
This is a spell to bring you back into the spiral and out of the lie that life is a forward march toward progress, achievement and domination. Life is a celebration, life is a miracle, life is a wave. Life is connection and tears and hugs and moments of quiet and moments of shouting and it is the butterfly breaking out of the chrysalis and the flower spreading its seed and the sun setting and the river flowing. It is all it needs to be. You are all you need to be. You are exactly where you need to be. And all is well.
