Healing the Witch Wound
Reading fairy tales to my children I flinched as I came across the wicked witches, ugly, haggard and out to cause the evil demise of the innocent princess…
The shadow of the word moving with a cloud of shame, a feeling of hiding away, closeted and recalling that ancient feeling of being separate to the rest of the world… never fitting in or knowing my place.
As a teenager that felt comforting to lean into that label and find society and culture for my misplaced sense of self. An acceptance with my difference to the world around me.
As I grew older, and moved deeper into the world, the shame rose and suddenly it felt like it needed to be hidden and put out of sight so that I could ‘grow up’ and adapt to the world as an adult… fit into the corporate world and be a ‘successful’ adult.
My altar became shrines placed around the home, hidden in plain sight, they looked like simple bookshelf displays, bedside table altars that were sustained in simple practices that were kept just for me. I stopped talking about my beliefs and the way I viewed the world…
And slowly my magic slipped from my world until I felt like an empty shell. Disconnected from my Earth, my Source and myself.
For me I came to a breaking point, it could no longer rest unspoken, when searching for my deepest parts and weaving myself back into connection with the Earth, Source and Myself I found I was suspended in fear of pushing the boundaries of my witch wound.
I recalled repressed memories of my ears ringing and then SCREAMING for me to listen to my higher self… I felt my throat constrict and hold me down….
Rasping as I tried to find my way forward. There was so much throat chakra work to shift through, to embrace my truth, connect my heart and my visionary self and TRUST that my instinctual self would know the way…
There is a wound that runs deep through the shame of claiming our magic and strength as women, one that has been squashing the power and wisdom of the feminine since the patriarchy rose to its height thousands of years ago.
It has woven into our DNA, etched into our bones and passed down through lineages Mother to daughter… traumatic experiences from our past ancestors leaving their molecular scars in our epigenetics.
We inherit our belief systems through our history and herstory of our ancestors and all they have grown through, from trauma to wisdom.
The gendercide of the feminine as the witch hunts spread across the world and still linger today when we claim to have a deeper knowing or a natural instinct for healing. Their age is done, this is our time to rise with the new world.
Passing knowledge down through stories in the red tent and around the kitchen table, there was no need for institutionalised learning… there was no way to monetise or control the growth of this wisdom… no way to contain it… What a threat to man…
It has left a wound that strips away the confidence to be heard, to be seen in our strength… in what makes us different to the accepted and expected role of leadership, success and power.
In the corporate world this can look like sensitivity and empathy looked down upon as weak practices in a boss. This can look like intuition and flow not trusted when new and creative ideas are thrown into the ring. Rest is frowned down on and it is expected that you hustle until you drop, squeezing every ounce out of a human until breaking point with lack of sleep and overworking put on a pedestal… increasing issues of mental and physical health, shame for sick days and lack of balance and connection for working families.
Rising with the stories of the manic woman, crazy and hysterical in her emotion and imagination… Yes in the first recordings of herbal remedies it describes a woman with diseases of the womb or of depression to be of hysteria... The imprinting leaves us with self doubt and constantly withholding our full intensity for fear of being too much… or not enough…
I ask you, how does it feel when you are called to voice what you instinctively know, when it goes against the common grain?
Do you feel that anxiety that bubbles until it threatens to tear you from the inside if you are to reveal yourself and your true feelings?
When you are required to take up space, there is that terror that rises and begs you to shut it down and go back into hiding?
The feeling of persecution and abandonment can feel so strong… yet when voicing it outloud we feel silly… I must be overreacting?! But this is contrasted against a deep need to feel and trust our instinctual knowing it’s so hard to ignore it and I know for me, when I tried it felt like my ears were bleeding from the inner scream at not being given the recognition it required.
Our past life memories flood us with intense memories of our wisdom, or sometimes with whispers of a memory of a scent… we have walked these paths before and just as we hold the traumas of our mothers mothers, mothers we hold their wisdom and their knowings of the Earth and her strength.
Whenever we begin to rise into our power, our truth, our freedom… we feel the terror of the oppression that has been inflicted on women for centuries and we retreat. Reaching that upper limit we self sabotage in order to keep ourselves ‘safe’ hidden and unseen. We prevent our own evolution and success on a regular basis. But we do so out of an instinctual survival need that has been built into our being.
Women are powerful, when in tune with their instincts, their intuition, and their will of strength and values they are unstoppable forces. With the knowledge of the Earth, her cycles, the plant wisdom she can heal body mind and spirit and flourish…
I would love to show you your magic, I invite you to come work with me here, the Earth needs your magic our children need your light.