Personal Update - Witches, Crows, Art, and Growth

I'm back! Welcome to Season 5! Today I'll be sharing some of what I got up to over my break, letting you know what's new in Season 5, and talking about what's alive for me in my personal healing journey right now.
In March my sister Chie and I attended Paganicon 2023, an annual Pagan Convention in the Twin Cities. I know a lot of you have been waiting to hear more about this witchy gathering! I let you know which rituals, workshops, and lectures I attended and which ones were my favorites. I share some of my time at the family cabin in Wisconsin, my progress befriending my local murder of crows, joining my local printmaking studio, and a surprising moment of post traumatic growth and healing I had recently. I'm so excited to be back! Let's gooooo

 Paganicon
https://tcpaganpride.org/paganicon-landing-page/

Laura Tempest Zakroff
https://lauratempestzakroff.com/
Art and Shop
https://owlkeyme.square.site/

Omega Artworks - Ritual Blades
https://www.omegaartworks.com/

Watchful Coyote - Jack
https://healthecycle.com/
TikTok
https://www.tiktok.com/@watchfulcoyote?lang=en

I Got Out
http://www.igotout.org/

Hecate's Links
https://linktr.ee/FindingOK

Join Patreon
https://www.patreon.com/HecateFindingOK

Letters for the Fire
https://www.finding-ok.com/blog/letters-for-the-fire-season-5/

Transcript

Personal Update – Witches, Crows, Art, and Growth

[00:00:00] Hecate: Hi there, thank you so much for joining me. I'm Hecate, and this is Finding OK, a healing podcast for survivors of sexual assault and any and all abuse. When survivors share, we share strength. You are not alone. Welcome to season 5! I'm back and I had a wonderful break. I can't believe it's this time already but I am so happy it is.

I am itching to get back to work even though I am nervous. I'm making big moves this season to level up, and that's always scary, but it is exciting. In today's episode, I'll be sharing what I got up to on my break these last four months, sharing some of the new things that will be [00:01:00] happening this season, and talking about what's alive for me right now in my own healing journey.

And now it's time for...*sound of crows cawing*

Trigger and content warnings for this episode include the following: trauma, abuse, spirituality, and chronic illness. Please check in with yourself and make sure you're all right to continue. So, it's been four months, and here we are. Uh, it's been such a minute, I'll be honest, I just had to go back and listen to my last episode to remember what I even talked about.

I rolled into this break with big plans and big britches and a big long list of things I was going to get done. I do this every time. And maybe you do too. I make to do lists for a completely different version of myself. [00:02:00] I've learned how to make a daily to do list manageable for myself. That took decades. But because time is wibbly wobbly, especially for someone with ADHD, making plans for an intangible block of four months, I look at it now in retrospect, and it had the same pie in the sky vibes that my colored marker life plan did in second grade.

I do not know how I thought I was going to get all of that done, and I do not understand how I thought when I was writing it that it would also be a break or any sort of a vacation. I was going to have a press kit put together and start approaching organizations about featuring me in articles. I've never put together a press kit.

What are you doing? Um. So, I do not have a press kit put [00:03:00] together, I did not get back into aquascaping, I don't have paintings finished, I haven't edited all the transcripts for all my past episodes, I haven't edited the Letters for the Fire videos yet, I haven't figured out how to get reverb on my mic for ASMR streams,

I haven't tried any new recipes, I haven't played 10 new video games on livestream, my garden is still full of weeds and in need of love and labor. All of that is okay. That wasn't even a third of the full list. You have no idea. I don't, I don't even know what I was thinking. Um, actually I do. I was thinking about what I wanted for myself, uh, what interested and excited me, and what would improve my life.

That's awesome, but I think it needs to be different than a to do list, and that is a wonderful thing for me to learn. I'm glad that after writing that [00:04:00] list, I didn't stay married to it. I felt pulled to it a bit as the time to write this episode drew closer, but looking at it, I felt okay, and there was only a faint shadow of shame or insufficiency.

That's progress for me. What I learned is that I don't feel entirely comfortable planning to rest. I'm pretty good at it when the time comes. I love being cozy and just pursuing what interests me. As I'm returning, though, I'm just understanding that as much as it was a breakthrough for me to schedule a break after a season, the next breakthrough will actually be scheduling it as rest.

Blocking off four months in a calendar and leaving them open for possibility, not writing myself some insanely bloated to do list and setting myself up to feel like I've let myself down. I'm so glad I started this episode telling [00:05:00] you what I didn't do over break. How about now I tell you what I did do, because it's pretty awesome.

Uh, the first thing that I wanted to share is that I started a new podcast over break. It's a supplemental podcast for Patreon members called Finding More. In these episodes, I share stories and expand on some of the deeper subjects addressed in Finding OK, like being a human being, post traumatic growth, healing, self care in a difficult world, relationships, neurodivergence, spirituality, creativity, and reclaiming parts of yourself.

In the last episode, I shared my recent experience participating in an immersive death meditation at Paganicon, and in this month's episode, I will be talking about being diagnosed with a seizure disorder and how it's affected my life. I mention things like [00:06:00] this in passing sometimes in Finding OK, but in Finding More I can take the time to delve deeper and give listeners greater context.

It's available to tier three and four patrons, and I am seriously excited about not only talking about things that wouldn't make it into a public episode, but being able to make this available to some of the people who are changing my life. I've loved working on this new podcast. I've been having so much fun.

If you follow me on Instagram, you've seen me share the outro video and credits I made for it. I'm so proud of it, and I think it's charming as fuck. It'll evolve over time as I shoot new video I'm excited about, and replace some of the older clips, and as I add new patron names. And I find myself really looking forward to that evolution.

It's also been a great way to become [00:07:00] familiar with a new program I'm using. When season 4 ended, I mentioned in the wrap up episode that I hadn't met my donation goal. A very kind soul, named Lisa, from IGotOut.Org heard that and reached out to donate the amount needed. Thanks to Dul, Voodoo, and Lisa's generosity, I was able to afford a subscription to a fabulous program called Descript, which is blowing my mind.

Descript is a recording, editing, and transcription tool. Not only am I now able to make sure that all my new videos will have accurate transcripts and subtitles, I'm also able to record and edit video episodes there in a completely new way. I won't get into it here, but If you ever catch one of my work livestreams on Twitch, you'll be able to see me using it.

You can edit video and audio by editing the text. It's [00:08:00] very cool. I'm also slowly making my way through the backlog of old episodes and videos to create accurate transcripts and subtitles for those. Moving forward, all new material will be accessible to the deaf and hearing impaired community. I am also working steadily to ensure that all past episodes are made accessible as well.

Dul, Voodoo, and Lisa, none of this would have been possible without your help. This program is already an absolute game changer. Thank you so much. In March, I flew out to Minnesota to visit my family, and I attended Paganicon 2023 with my sister Chie. Paganicon is a Pagan convention that's held there annually, and this was our first time attending.

I was pretty nervous heading into it because, for the most part, I've been a solitary practitioner for 24 years. I have [00:09:00] witch and pagan friends, but I'm not part of a strong community. It's been just mainly me doing my thing off in the woods. I have visited hotspots like Salem and Glastonbury, but that's very different.

This wasn't a tourist location. This was about community and education. It's scary trying to join a community. I'll say that again because it's a truth across the board. Creating community, reaching out to community, and trying to join community is difficult and scary. It can be exciting too, um, but I just want to acknowledge how hard it can be as well.

Along the way in our healing journeys, many of us can become isolated in a myriad of ways for a myriad of reasons. I think seeking out community is a sign of healing, and I'm proud of myself, because after some of my traumas, I [00:10:00] have a very difficult time trusting community. Isolating myself is a protective measure that's kept me safe.

I'm not disparaging that, either. I honor the ways that my solitude has helped protect me, and I acknowledge the growth that this extension of self signifies. It took so many spoons to extend myself, uh, even more because my practice is one of the most private parts of my life that can also be dangerous to be open about.

And then even more, because I was so fucking sick. This trip had been cancelled in 2020 due to lockdown, and our attendance had been rolled over to 2023. My sister and I had been waiting for this for years. The only thing that was gonna stop me was a positive COVID test or a hospitalization. [00:11:00] The test was negative, and I didn't have a fever.

So I masked up and got on the plane pumped full of cold meds. I was a dumpster fire. I was terrified the pressure in the airplane was going to push things into an ear infection and require medical attention, um. But I was lucky. It was incredibly painful, uh, but I made it. My sister and I stayed at my father's house to save on hotel costs.

That was very kind of him. He picked me up at the airport and, as requested, had two bottles of NyQuil waiting for me so I could take my next dose. I got to the house and just slept so I could heal as much as possible before the convention started in the morning. First day was incredible, and I was fueled by determination, excitement, and the maximum dosage of [00:12:00] NyQuil recommended on the bottle.

I was... so sick, and I still had such an incredible time. I stayed masked, uh, the entire time, so I wouldn't pass it on, and also just, I'm, I'm still masking in public. I'd done prerequisite reading to be able to attend the first workshop. It was one of the courses I'd been looking forward to the most,

Advanced Sigil Witchery with Laura Tempest Zakroff. She was one of the key presenters this year, and I've been a long time admirer of their artwork in Llewellyn Press. Tempest's book, Sigil Witchery, is the ultimate resource for anyone looking to develop their own visual language to use in their craft.

It made more sense to me than the other sigil craft methods I've heard of, and reading it was surprisingly healing for me. I wasn't expecting it, but her book helped me reclaim childhood wisdom that had been [00:13:00] violently stolen from me. I developed my own language as a child, I intuitively engaged in sigil work, and this was all stolen from me.

Just that realization that what I had been doing as a child was natural and intuitive craft was so important for me. Reading her book was the perfect signpost for a return to myself. I wasn't going to miss that workshop for anything and it was fantastic. After that, I attended a ritual called Journeying Within Yggdrasil, which is the Nordic Tree of Life.

It was wonderful reaching out to ancestral roots and seeing what was there. And after that, I had the honor of attending Noadi: A Sami Spirit Drum Journey, which was very powerful, and I am still deciphering what I experienced. Then I attended a talk called Druidry: the Language of Trees with another one of the convention's key presenters, Kristoffer [00:14:00] Hughes, who came all the way from Wales.

He was such a wonderful speaker. I learned so much and enjoyed it immensely. He's hilarious. Um. My sister and I took a long dinner break and didn't stay for the entire opening ceremony and concert because we were pretty exhausted at this point. It had been a full day and I was sick and on Eastern Time.

The next morning, my ears cleared and I was on the mend. The day started early and I rolled in with wads of Kleenex and a bottle of NyQuil in my purse, ready for more. I attended Keepers of the Veil: Queer as Sacred, Reclaiming Our Spiritual Heritage and Initiating Into Our Power with Raven Thor leading the ritual.

And what I loved most about this is that after the ritual, It was a room filled with queer witches and pagans, many of them non binary or [00:15:00] trans. And we got to connect with each other and that connection shaped the rest of the day and the rest of the convention for me. We got to stand together, hold space, share power, and just be seen fully for who and what we are.

I think that ritual and just that experience of seeing others and being seen, that might have been the most powerful experience of community from the convention for me. And shout out to Chinchilla. And next I participated in a Greco Buddhist ritual, you heard me right, and I, I guess it's an annual ritual, um, devoted to different deities each year.

And this year it was Saraswati and Tethys, which is perfect because I'm an artist. That was so beautiful. And afterwards I had a great talk with the ritual's tabla player who just happened to walk in the door because the [00:16:00] universe told him to be there. After that, I followed my intuition and attended a ritual instead of the lecture I'd planned on.

My sister and I participated in The Pagan Way of Death: Meeting Ourselves at Life's End, and it was the most powerful ritual I attended. It was life altering, which makes sense because death often is. And after that, we both attended a workshop that was so bad, we actually walked out. Um... I won't go into it.

That would be super rude. Um, but it was an incredible lesson and a wonderful personal progress for two recovering people pleasers. And shout out to Griffin, the tabla player, because if he hadn't been sitting next to us and left first, I don't think we would have found the courage. And it was amazing. He was, he was so respectful, but just seeing him value his [00:17:00] own time and walk out made us realize that we were allowed to leave too.

It was our time. We were paying to be there. We were allowed to leave. It was, uh, it was quietly revolutionary for us. Um. After a sandwich break with my sister, um, well, we just kind of processed what we had just experienced. Um, I attended a workshop on creating a personal grimoire, which was exactly what I needed it to be.

It was wonderful. I just got to learn, and play, and collect, and make. It really set me free, uh, from preconceptions about grimoires. And after that was the banquet, and the Mechanist and the Star Goddess concert. We got to see Laura Tempest Zakroff dance, which was magical. And there was the costume contest awards and announcements.

Uh, the theme for the whole [00:18:00] convention this year was metamorphosis. There were some beautiful costumes. Um, and it was a pretty late night, but absolutely lovely. And the last day I attended my favorite lecture of the convention, which was A Practical History of Ritual Blades. It was perfection. I love just getting to hear someone who is passionate and well researched just info dump and explain everything to me. That was with Gemma Zahradka of Omega Artworks, and they were awesome. They worked as an archaeologist till they came home to take over the family business... of sword making. Uh, how fucking cool is that? Um, after their lecture... I feel completely vindicated in my lack of desire for an athame, which many witches in the [00:19:00] past have been very judgy and gatekeepy about.

Without getting too specific, I'll just say the history of the athame is circuitous and a little silly. Use whatever resonates with you. And if you're on one, get off your high horse, um, because it's standing on a series of mistranslations and anachronisms. You're not less of a witch if you don't use an athame.

If an athame resonates with you, use it. If it doesn't, it doesn't matter. It's your craft. You get to do what you want. Excellent lecture and the perfect start to my day. Next I attended a lecture on Medusa called The Transformation of Medusa: Gorgan to Goddess to Great Mother. And then instead of staying through the next workshop, I made time to really explore the vendor's room and the art show, which I'm so glad I did because they were filled with stunningly gorgeous work

and I got to chat with some of the creators. [00:20:00] And after this, my sister and I attended the closing panel, where this year's key presenters did a Q& A about how the pandemic has transformed their communities. We did closing affirmations and then dragged ourselves home, completely worn out. I've never been to any convention before, let alone one with a series of back to back rituals that take emotional and spiritual energy.

But holy fuck, that was exhausting. Um, like bone deep exhausting. And that was for the best because if it hadn't been, I would have wanted it to last another week. I want to go every year till I drop dead. Loved it. For every workshop I mentioned, I had chosen that one out of about like five or eight other options.

I just wanted to attend everything. If you're at all of the pagan, heathen, witch persuasion, I highly recommend [00:21:00] it. I learned so much and had so many transformative experiences. I felt so welcome into the community and I can't wait till next year. I'm hoping next time I can get my shit together enough to enter the art show or sell some work, so, hashtag goals.

After the convention, my father, my sister, and her partner, also known as Chie and Gleeok on my Twitch channel if you watch streams, we all drove to Wisconsin. Growing up, we would visit my grandparents every summer at the lake where they lived. It's always been a second home. And I've got strong roots there.

It was my first time visiting the new cabin my father and stepmother bought there. I really mourned them letting go of the co ownership of my grandparents house that they shared with my aunt. It felt like the loss of a home I thought I'd never have to lose. And I wasn't, [00:22:00] I wasn't sure what this visit would be like, and I was worried it was all in the house, I think, and that I wouldn't feel any connection at this new place, um, but I, I loved it.

The cabin is super cute, and as a house, it's actually better in some ways. I kind of adore it. It was Wisconsin in March, so the lake was still frozen and there was still a lot of snow on the ground. It was beautiful and it was the same lake. It was The Lake. I woke up at dawn every day and started a fire in the fireplace before having some coffee with the farm fresh milk my dad keeps in a mason jar.

Um, I sat by the fire. And watched the sun come up as I journaled, and read books, and worked in my planner. Ah, Chie would practice harp on the other [00:23:00] couch, and Gleeok would sometimes join in on guitar. And I got to play and snuggle with their puppies! My partner and I haven't been able to make it out there for years, um.

The last time we managed it, uh, it was the old house, and we stopped for a few days during our move from Colorado, uh, back to the East Coast. That was 2017. It was like a balm to my soul to be back there. I felt so much peace. It was like I'd been running on batteries for years, and being back there I was finally able to recharge.

I just spent time by myself, by the fire, or with my family, and it was wonderful. We went into town to my favorite bar and grill and got cheese curds, and dinner surrounded by all my taxidermy friends from childhood. We [00:24:00] got, um, We got candy at the old fashioned candy shop where you can watch them make fudge on marble countertops through the windows.

I was sad my favorite art shop was closed for the season, but I guess I'll just have to go back when it's open. I was sitting there in the peace and quiet and just staring out across the ice and found myself thinking, I could write a book here. That's a really important thought for me, and I found myself thinking of just holing up there for like a month or two and just writing every day, and it actually felt possible there.

That feeling is a sign of healing for me. Trauma has alienated me from writing, and finding that in myself again is an ongoing process. Being at The Lake was a really important reminder that. Places can be [00:25:00] healing, and silence can be healing. Not just that though, they can also reveal the healing that you've already done and didn't have a clear view of.

Milestones can sometimes reveal themselves in our everyday lives, but sometimes we have to exit the everyday to really see how far we've come. During the trip, my dad asked me again if I'd gotten around to listening to any of the Taylor Swift albums. I hadn't. He said nothing, but the 3 hour drive to the St.

Paul Airport to return home was spent listening to Taylor Swift. I was not consulted. Um, he's a Swiftie. After those 3 hours, I will say she's very talented and I will be listening to more. I realized on that drive I have a bird bucket list, birds I want to see in the wild before I die. I hadn't realized this list was a thing until I saw a bird that [00:26:00] was on it.

I saw a ring necked pheasant. I've always wanted to see one. It was just bopping around by the side of the road, and then I saw another one several minutes later. It was magical. I grew up looking at these, um, vintage glass perfume bottles from Avon at my grandparents house. And one was a pheasant, and one was a quail.

And I've wanted to see both those birds my whole life, and there one was. And I caught my flight home, and um, Have you ever been on a flight where there's a medical emergency? And they page on the comm systems asking if, if, is, "is there a doctor on board?" Yeah, I was the medical emergency. Uh,

due to some circumstances out of my control, paired with some unfortunate [00:27:00] decisions on my part. I had a mild seizure on the plane. Uh, I won't go into it here. Uh, you can catch that in the patron podcast. I'll be talking about it soon. Um, but that happened. And it sucked. Uh, do not recommend. Zero stars. It always takes me about a week to recover fully afterwards.

Uh, but I bounced back. And since then, I've been mostly streaming on Twitch and working on being a person. I did lapse for a bit on my morning ritual and daily habits I talked about in my last episode, but I didn't get too down on myself, and instead of shaming myself about it, I'm just doing my best to pick them back up and encourage new ones as well.

I have ADHD, and if you have it, you know that forging new habits and maintaining them long term is extremely challenging. [00:28:00] It's normal for us to struggle with it. Letting go of perfection has been important. I've made progress, uh, just in my attitude. Instead of having difficulty re engaging with lapsed habits due to a feeling of shame or failure, I just allowed

that the lapse might happen, and when it did, I focused on the positive. I was able to re engage with the habits again, and they were there, sort of waiting. Instead of beating myself up that I hadn't been reading on a daily basis for a few weeks, I focused on this new thing I'd learned about myself. That I am capable of reading every day.

The book sitting on my nightstand feels less like it's judging me and more like a light left on in the dark to guide me home. A new daily habit of mine is helping me work on one of my lifelong dreams to befriend my local murder of crows. I've been feeding them [00:29:00] daily, and I taught myself how to call them.

I taught myself a crow call. My crow call is a work in progress, but it's pretty good. My relationship with the crows has been quite the journey, and it's been one of the things I look forward to when I wake up in the morning. It's just become this beautiful part of my day. If you follow me on TikTok or Instagram, I sometimes post videos of them there.

Earning their trust has been a process, and it's still ongoing. If you didn't know, studies have shown crows to be as intelligent as a human 7 or 8 year old child. They have families, language, names, emotional bonds, uh, some form of justice system, actually, and a generational memory. When I first started feeding them, I was actually under surveillance for over a week.

Might have been two weeks. I was watched and silently tailed and observed whenever I left the [00:30:00] house. They learned my patterns and weighed my intentions. I had to gain their trust and making a real effort to speak their language, uh, definitely seems to have helped. It's just polite. They started waiting for me in the mornings, uh, when I usually come out, and checking in afternoons as well.

Gradually, they started exchanging calls with me. And I can call them in from a few miles away now. I don't have to very often though, because they seem to be nesting close by. When I was deemed trustworthy enough, um, maybe after a month or so, the three adults I'd been feeding decided the babies they were raising were allowed to visit, um, before they'd been carrying the food away to them.

So, it started with the three adults, and now I've counted seven crows, as more baby crows are deemed mature enough. I've been able to watch them as they get used to feeding themselves. Um, they look, baby crows, [00:31:00] like, once they're out of the nest, uh, they look almost exactly like the adult crows, but they still have a little bit of red at the corners of their mouths from having their big baby bird beaks, uh, that open wide in the nest.

And they still cry for their parents and, um, and whine a little bit, and beg to be fed, and flap around like, uh, like giant nerds. And they all hang out in my yard now and see it as a safe space for their family. It's adorable and has been bringing me so much joy. And a feeling of connection with my environment during a time when dwelling on thoughts of the natural world, um, can be very stressful and pain filled.

They return my calls, and follow me when I walk Phthalo sometimes, and say hello. They're still shy and careful, but it's wonderful. I hope to one day achieve, uh, gift giving status [00:32:00] with them, cause crows sometimes bring you gifts. And I encourage everyone to find some way to connect with your environment. Um, you don't have to befriend crows.

Like, you don't have to be the creepy crow lady. Uh, it can be anything. Start learning the names of the birds or plants or insects in your area if you don't know them already. Um, even just learning the names for things makes you feel more connected. That's important. If you don't own a houseplant, look into getting an easy one for beginners.

Nurturing something is healing and grounding. There are many scientifically proven benefits to houseplants as well. If none of that's possible for you, consider choosing a tree or a plant nearby, maybe in your city, and offering it some water when you pass by. These things change your brain.

Neuroplasticity [00:33:00] is a blessing and it's very real. You can heal and you can change the way your brain works. I've been connecting with plants and animals and I've been managing to connect with IRL friends as well. Humans. Uh, it's been wonderful. I don't see them as often as I'd like, but when I do, it means the absolute world to me.

I recently attended a friend of mine, Kim, uh, her birthday, and she started teaching me how to play poker. It was awesome. And, uh, one of my big goals for break was to join my local printmaking studio and start working on new etchings. And I did it! Patreon members got a studio tour and have seen some updates, but it's been slow going between finances and some, like, tech related holdups.

But I'm back on track and slowly working on the drafting stage of probably the most detailed etching I have [00:34:00] ever worked on. I've got edges beveled on some smaller copper plates, and there are things in the works. There will be printmaking live streams on Twitch when the time comes, so make sure you're following me there.

This month I'll be taking an aquatint workshop as well as a cyanotype workshop. I'm nervous and excited about both of them, uh, but looking forward to pushing myself, learning new techniques, and producing new work. When it came down to it, uh, despite the extensive studio tour, when I became a member, I realized as I started working that the last printmaking class I took was about 10 years ago.

Uh, the specifics are a little fuzzy and I don't want to be winging it or guessing when it comes to acid etching. So the Aquatint class will be an opportunity to learn [00:35:00] a new process and also get a quick refresher on studio practices. This is It's all scary, um, but I'm in love with my print ideas and I'm determined.

It's also a local art community, uh, I do want to be a part of. Once I have some work ready, I'm eligible as a member to be a part of the annual print show. And it would feel so great to not only be producing work again, but showing it. It has been so many years and I think that'll be an important sign for me that I'm bouncing back and moving forward.

This is all terrifying, by the way, but I'm doing it anyway, and I'm proud of myself. I waited till the time felt right, and I'm slowly and gently doing the big scary thing. I feel like I've been learning how [00:36:00] to care for my inner child, and I'm finally understanding how to act towards myself. It's like I'm carrying my own heart with big, cushy oven mitts.

I learned how to be soft with myself and hold my own hand. I grew up with everyone teaching me I had to push myself around and teach myself harsh lessons. Untrue. I'm focusing on doing things the way I need to do them, and learning to value the strength in my softness. I made myself fierce to survive.

And I value my fierceness. It saved my life. As a child, I was so sensitive, everyone was concerned. I cried easily, and often, and got anxiety nosebleeds. Uh, so for a long time, my inner child appeared to me as a weak, weepy, blood [00:37:00] covered reject in the corner. But, that image has transformed, and I feel like I've led that child out of the corner, cleaned them up, and restored their crown.

Now I've started working on healing my inner teenager. We've been listening to a lot of nu metal. Rum ba dee boo rum ba dee. Anyway! On the subject of healing, uh, I had this experience a few weeks ago. It was really powerful, and it surprised me. I wanted to share it with you. I was watching a creator I really love on TikTok.

I really hope it's not going to weird him out, uh, that I tell this story. I debated not sharing who it was, but I really love his videos and they're incredibly important for men to watch, especially. He's incredibly articulate about the emotional healing work he's doing as a man and his journey with intersectional feminism and deconstructing patriarchy.

I've decided the work he's doing is too important to not shout [00:38:00] out just out of the fear of it being awkward. Fuck it. His handle is watchfulcoyote on TikTok and everyone should go watch his videos. If you have a man you love in your life, direct them to these videos. I'll drop a link in episode notes for you so you can find him.

I've been sharing the his videos with my community in discord and the men have been saying how much he speaks to their experience. So he was talking about healing cycles of wounding and being a better partner for his wife, and I had a strange moment. It lasted maybe 30 seconds or less. But in that moment, I looked at him and had the thought, could that be my abusive first boyfriend from middle school?

Is that him? I haven't seen him in 18 years, so I'm in that [00:39:00] odd space as a survivor where I don't know for sure that I would recognize him. I don't, I don't know what he looks like now. I just remember what he used to look like. That's nerve wracking because the thought of one day running into him has caused me many a panic attack over the years.

But this many years later... The thought is also strangely reassuring, um, that maybe he could be in a queue at a coffee shop a few people back and I wouldn't even notice. The people who hurt us and then disappear from our lives, uh, just, just live in our memories as past versions of themselves. Even being aware of this, I can't, I can't stop that process.

We all experience this. You aren't the same person you were 10 or 20 years ago, but the people who knew you [00:40:00] then and don't have the privilege of knowing you now will forever remember you as who they perceived you to be back then. Not even who you were, but who they perceived you to be. That's an uncomfortable existential fact.

Everyone has a different version of you in their head. I don't know who my ex became. I don't get to know that, and that's okay. He'll never know me either. I am I'm 100% okay with that. Ultimately, it doesn't matter, because what I have to deal with are the wounds he inflicted, and the patterns he instilled in the past, and the version of him that lives in my mind.

Maybe once every few years, I find myself actively curious about where he is and what he's doing. And I'll look him up online just to see if anyone has filed a domestic violence [00:41:00] report or if there's an arrest that's public record. I worry about what my silence cost his future partners. That worry and the worry of running into him unexpectedly are usually what fuels, uh, the mild Google stalking that lasts, um, a matter of hours.

I wonder if he's married, and I worry about his wife. I will have fleeting hopes he's healed those patterns, but they're slim hopes, and I don't give them much energy. But watching this video of WatchfulCoyote, I don't know what it was, I think something about the eyes, or in his expression, for a moment.

And it was enough to just allow me to wonder if it was him. I thought how wild would it be if [00:42:00] he had done all this beautiful work, and become a good partner, and taken responsibility for his abusive patterns, and started helping other people to heal as well. And for that split second he was married and good to his wife. And it just lasted a few heartbeats before I realized it obviously wasn't him. But those heartbeats were so incredibly powerful and healing for me, and I'm gonna tell you why. In those heartbeats, I was happy for him.

In those heartbeats, I realized that I was capable of being happy for him. I realized I was capable of being proud of him. And I know you're thinking, yeah, but that was all in your head. Yes! That's the point! All of that was entirely in my head. It was entirely within me. It required [00:43:00] nothing from him. Those few heartbeats shifted something massive and painful inside me that I've just been working around because I knew that it wasn't time to touch that yet.

And when the time is right and you're doing the work, sometimes things just happen. And realizing that I was capable of those feelings towards him, that those dwelled within me It was such a tiny, pivotal moment that happened in under a minute while staring at my phone alone in my studio. And it took me longer to unpack it, and I still am, uh, to be honest.

But looking at this man, who was not my abuser, but who was doing the work to heal himself, I was struck that when we do that, when we heal ourselves, we heal those around us. I have never spoken to this man, but his healing helped me in [00:44:00] my healing. And I'll take it to a gendered place for a moment as well.

When men heal, they can help women and non-men heal as well. We're all in this together. I do want to clarify though, um, in case there's confusion. I don't have a goal to be happy for my abuser. I don't even have the goal to forgive my abuser. My goal is to heal myself, because that's my responsibility.

Healing himself is his responsibility, and it's unlikely I'll ever know if he chooses to undertake that challenge. The reason I say that my goal is healing, rather than feeling this or that, is that framing it that way actually makes room for me to feel whatever I need to, in order to move forward. I've had forgiveness as a goal in the past, or being [00:45:00] happy for him, and those were things I was striving for, for years at one point.

It wasn't healthy, or very helpful. Because it meant I skipped over and pushed away what I actually needed to be feeling, and that was anger. I needed to allow myself to feel angry and acknowledge fully the harm that had been done. Feeling angry about being hurt was important to me because it was a part of learning my own value.

What happened to me could only matter If I mattered. Processing that took time. Making room for whatever I need to feel also makes room for the possibility that yes, maybe someday I will feel happy for him. Maybe one day I will forgive him. And now I know that those are, those things are in me, but I make healing the [00:46:00] goal and understand that it might not happen the way I expect it to.

In fact, it probably won't. If I knew exactly how to do it or what exactly would it look like, I would have done it already! When I just make healing my goal, I'm making space for the unknown and expecting the unexpected. Just putting one foot in front of the other and focusing on what's alive for me at each step along the journey.

And every so often I get to take a rock out of the backpack I'm carrying, set it down, and leave it behind. And when I get to where I'm going, I want an empty backpack, and I want my heart to be level with the feather on the scales. Well, this has been an odd duck episode. Um, but people seem to appreciate the updates and knowing more about my process and my life.

I feel odd having [00:47:00] talked so much about Paganicon, but whenever I have a friend that says they went somewhere to hang out with a bunch of witches and learn things, I'm always like, um, please say more immediately. So moving forward into the season, and again, same as before, episodes will be dropping every other Tuesday, and I've already been hard at work getting episodes ready and setting up tech calls with new guests.

Jumping into a new season felt scary after such a long break because you do get a little rusty, or at least I do. Especially, especially with people. People are scary. Um. But I had a really wonderful tech call with Andrew Pledger last week. It was my first tech call with a new guest in months and I wasn't feeling too sure of myself.

And we just talked for twice as long as we had scheduled the call for because we're both so passionate about the work we're doing and [00:48:00] so excited to be having these kinds of conversations. So that set the perfect tone for the season behind the scenes. Thank you Andrew. Something new in season five, you can leave me voicemails on my website and there's a chance that your message will be played in an episode.

If you have a listener question you'd like answered or you just want to drop me a note letting me know an episode mattered to you, I'd love to hear from you. Sometimes I might even try asking you a question. In fact, it's happening right now! I want to know your number one song that lifts you up and helps you find the strength to keep going.

Whether it gives you joy, hope, motivation, energy, makes you want to dance, whatever it is, what song helps lift you up and keep you going? Go to my website, leave me a voicemail with the artist and song title, and I'll collect these for a while and then share them in a future episode. And [00:49:00] on that note,

Letters for the Fire is back, and I will be accepting Season 5 entries till the end of the year. If you're new here, Letters for the Fire is a listener participation project. Listeners are welcome to write a letter to their rapist or abuser and send it to me. I read all of these letters in a special episode at the end of the season before burning them.

It's my honor, each season, to offer this opportunity for community catharsis and healing. I hear from so many people what a positive and empowering experience this has been for them, and that just makes my heart sing. If you'd like to participate, you'll find a link with information in episode notes.

You've got plenty of time, and there's no rush. This is a permanent part of the show now, so you'll have another opportunity if you're just not ready yet. Oh, all right. I'm excited to get into this season. I feel like if I keep talking it will be even [00:50:00] more season five, but it couldn't possibly be any more season five than it is right now.

It's time. This is happening. I'm back, bitch. Let's go! Let's gooooo. Thank you so much for listening. Please check episode notes, that's where you'll find all my links, so you can check out my website, follow me on social media, subscribe on YouTube, and catch me live on Twitch. If you enjoy the podcast and you'd like to help support my work as a podcaster and an artist, please consider becoming a Patreon member.

Membership starts as low as $1 a month, and membership at any level changes my life. Shoutout to all the patrons that made today's episode possible. Thank you Emerald, Christopher, Meadow, Kathleen, Betty, Ashley, Sadonka, and Bryony. You all mean so much to me, and none of this would be possible without you.

Thank you. Today's episode was edited and produced by me, Hecate. The music is Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist, used with the [00:51:00] permission of Ramshackle Glory. Thank you again for listening. This has been Finding OK. Black Lives Matter. Take care of yourself. 

[00:51:09] Ramshackle Glory: Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist.

Keep on loving. Keep on fighting. And hold on, and hold on. Hold on for your life, for your life...

Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist. Keep on loving. Keep on fighting. And hold on, and hold on. Hold on for your life.[00:52:00] 

[00:52:02] Hecate: Holy shit I did it! 

Yes!