Healing the Witch Wound and Reclaiming Love

Not in a poetic, tragic-romance kind of way – but in a bone-deep, exhausting way. Love felt like work. Like sacrifice. Like bracing myself for disappointment while pretending everything was fine. Because that was my definition of love, I kept choosing people who confirmed it.

So there I was, lying in a puddle of sweat on a yoga mat in a dark, overheated studio, trying to breathe through another moment of realizing I had once again fallen in love with someone who was slowly destroying himself… and taking pieces of me with him.

That morning, I had found tiny powdery bags of drugs scattered across my bathroom counter like glitter after a rave. I remember thinking, How is this my life again? And more so, why does this keep happening?

The instructor’s voice cut through my spiraling thoughts: “Send forgiveness to the men in your life.”

My internal response was… not spiritual. Forgive them for what exactly? Lying? Cheating? Stealing? Having the car towed after defaulting on a title loan I wasn’t aware of?

Then she said, “Now send forgiveness to a woman in your life.” My chest tightened. I searched for someone – anyone – and came up empty. Panic bubbled up. How terrible a person am I for not being able to think of one woman to forgive?

Then everything shifted.

In my mind’s eye, I saw a woman standing before me, calm, energizing, familiar. I heard her name: Persephone. She smiled, and suddenly I understood. I was not there to forgive someone else. I was there to forgive myself.

Tears fell, the kind you cannot hide in the very public setting I was in. The truth hit hard and fast: love was mine to have. And, I was the one standing in the way of feeling it.

That moment planted a seed. I just did not know yet how deeply buried I still was.

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