This week I sat bald and alone in a chic bar in Montreal. It was packed, my friends were running late. I was all bundled up in a vintage corduroy coat and marigold wooly hat, grasping at dignity by trying to keep my cute look together, briefly feeling like a country bumpkin with no eyebrows trying to fit in. But I am prone to wild hot flashes these days thanks to chemical menopause, and this false normalcy was unsustainable without being miserable.
I breathed and grinned and pulled everything off, down to my Cedar Eve OSHKAABEWIS (shka-bay-wis - meaning helpers/guides) tank top, and felt the cool air on my arms and over my white grey bald spot, where the weird patches of post-chemo hair aren't yet growing back in. I heard words in my ears like a spell of power, words that so many of our covenmates have repeated when sharing stories of what led them to seek out witch community: I've always been a weirdo.
I've always been a weirdo.
This cancer state is new, but feeling strange in the polished and brightly packages world is not, and grinning like a wolf in the face of normalcy to give myself strength, to take pleasure in not fitting into systems that don't feel right anyway, is absolutely nothing new.
This is part of why Amy and I became friends. She wore her strangeness on the outside. She tells a story of dressing full club kid, boots that made her feel ten feet tall, black makeup, tie dye overalls, greasy purple hair, walking a tough street at night and feeling a glimmer of fear. Then, grinning like a wolf, she realized: I'm the scariest thing out here.
And she conjures this memory now, as a Witch alone in a dark wood whispering, "I'm the scariest thing out here."
This week, after a brief respite from doctors appointments, I was back in my medicalized body, back to driving out of the mountains and into the city to see specialists in order to plan my upcoming radiation and hysterectomy. Back to wondering what kind of gender identity will make sense to me now that I'll have plastic breasts, no uterus, and a deep sense of the multiplicity of my selfhood. Fermented tree bark and beams of light move through my cells, cells which may have a life and consciousness of their own, given that they continue on after we die in what scientists have discovered is a third state between life and death.
This week, as part of radiation planning I was given 7 tiny blue tattoos, two up my sternum, the others on the sides of my chest, a way of lining up the beams to perfectly target the chest wall while sparing the heart. I had to practice holding my breath to pull my heart two centimetres away from danger. Danger is always glancing by. As I got my 7 tiny tattoos I thought about the Pleiades, the 7 Sisters, the blue constellation that holds ancient cultural memory. "The Anishinaabe constellation, "Bugonagiizhig Hole in the Sky," is the star cluster known as Pleiades. The seven stars represent the opening between the Earth and the star world. This "Hole in the Sky" leads to the spirit world." The constellation lives in stories from hundreds of cultures, and is nearly always described as a group of seven sisters, even though only 6 stars are generally visible to the naked eye. Scientists suggest that stories of the 7 sisters may come from observations made back when Pleione was further from Atlas and more visible as a separate star... as far back as 100,000 BC.
This is the prescription:
Remember you are from a line of life, story, star gazers that goes back over 100 000 years. All tyrants fall.
Remember, when you're too tired to go on, your cells have a life force of their own.
Remember, you are the scariest thing out there, you are full of wild power.
Remember, you've always been a weirdo, and you are not alone.
New on the Podcast
To celebrate the Spring Equinox of 2025 we invited the Missing Witches Coven to write and read spell poems, and we gathered together to conjure the magics of poetry, of protection, abundance and ease, to empower the powerless and bring conscience to the conscious-less.
We hope that these rhymes will become mantras we can sing in our heads at night to replace the intrusive thoughts, the fear. This is our spell, to be transmitted across the waves and webs, to reach your ears and soothe you, to reach your heart and rile you, to experience the magic of becoming.
Listen to our collective poem or read it now!
Invitation: New Moon in Aries - Building A Pillow Fort RSVP
Sunday, Mar 30, 8:00 PM - 09:30 PM EDT
New Moon Magic’s Aries chapter (Needles and Knives) talks about the stitch. So for this New Moon we invite you to join us in sewing together a pillow fort - to imagine and create a protective structure that is soft, a spell that will echo this tender magic into the world.
For your Spell Pillow you’ll need to bring:
- a needle and thread, and a scrap of material
- Small things from around your home that will make your pillow soft: a scent you love, cat fur, cotton balls, the hair from your brush, yarn ends, feathers, bits of lavender and chamomile tea…
- A bit of paper and a pen/cil
What delicate dreams need to be protected with tenderness? What wishes or spells need to be cradled and nurtured? Let’s say them out loud and then stitch them a gentle home.
COVEN EVENTS THIS WEEK:
Weekdays: Morning Pomodoro Co-Writing, Co-Working, Body Doubling
Monday 24: Weavers Cauldron
Tuesday 25: Business Mastermind with Holly
Until next time, be kind to yourselves,
and embrace the weirdo that you've always been!
oxo, BFB
R+A
