Today, I am on a sacred journey. And although out of my window there is no snow, I first took this trip in the cold, and will forever remember it is a journey into the domain of a Great Witch of the North. She was a muse and a midwife to many things. But just as a mother pushes her baby from the nest, an act of beauty and sacrifice as much as one of risk and cruelty, so too for me. She never knows if her baby will take flight—how many baby birds have we ever encountered helpless, lost, doomed, on the ground below the nest?
That first flight was/is the scariest of all. For my life I have believed I was born with broken wings. The midwife felt and said otherwise, and indeed, until that moment of first flight, her faith was only half-believed—hoped for, but no less scary for it.
Those first flights were nervous, ungainly things. Scared, fearful ventures out into the world…raw emotions, new ways of engaging with people, being seen for the first time. Ferocity was present in those moments, “yes I exist, and I’m beautiful, and if you are uncomfortable around me, that is about you, not me.”
The Great Witch’s domain is where I was re-born. My first physical self first saw light only a short drive from this place. More recently, I re-found my calling as a witch in these lands. What shape that will form is not yet revealed, but is felt.
These are all spiritual and emotional journeys, deeply enriching and felt. It takes little to imagine how one might never forget the first time as a trans-woman I stepped outside as me…not even yet knowing that is who I am. Those steps were taken before hormones, the blessing of Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy (GAHT). They were taken when I was resolute in my agnosticism about pronouns. They were taken before I “knew” that I would make surgical changes to bring my physical self into alignment with my desired form of gender existence.
Someone may never give me “she”, but in truth, I don’t need it from anyone, as I carry it in me. And she is strong. She has been living inside of me waiting for her time, and that is here now, and she is not to be denied. Not for anything.
My second birth was in these lands. Quite literally in the domain of the Great Witch. Not at her hands, but in a space she brought me to. In those moments, my intention was to “let her out” and thus it has been. From there, the intention to let her take over my life has given me uncommon joy. Today, quite literally, this teen girl body and teen girl mind, for the truth of second puberty is intensely real, I see my endocrinologist for the first time since I began the chemical changes officially under her care. Admittedly, I self-medicated for a while, and was most definitely in the game with herbal treatments, but there has been no substitute for the real thing.
A train journey has a calming and hypnotic effect. The Great Witch used to ask me to consider my comportment in the presence of the Goddess—how do you carry yourself, how do you walk, how do you eat, how do you be…to embody “dripping with respect, reverence, grace.” My words, not hers. A pearl of wisdom, a “small” comment takes on life inside of us if we let it. Part of being a witch is allowing these threads to enter us.
I had visions of the Great Witch, she came to me in dreams. I remarked to her that her insides were made of little glass threads, a delicate network infinitely more complex than one spiderweb, as hers was made of the handiwork of millions of spiders, the threads existing in infinite complexity. She does not know of their infinite complexity any more than I do, but it is there, felt, at once fragile, but strong. This is the feminine, whose strength lies in its fragility, its power to seduce in its magic. You cannot hear the magic unless you listen. Not just with your ears, but with all of your senses. All of the body talks at once. The skin has texture which changes, perhaps there is the slightest pull at the corner of the mouth.
So too, in our own bodies. We cannot hear it unless we train our bodies to feel it and hear it…and this can only be done through exercise, fasting, diet, discipline, and mental-emotional-spiritual contemplation. The loneliness of the people around me is colossal. I can see it and feel it at times. I do not have this feeling. I am complete. It pleases me to connect, to spiritually caress the people I encounter, with a smile, a compliment, a thought, a gesture of kindness. This is the nectar of the Gods which courses within all of us. It is a choice to share it, to give it. But know this truth. The more we do it, the stronger it becomes, the greater the flow. We do not deplete ourselves by giving, we grow stronger. Only to do this, we must learn how to give without expectation.
Life is as holy as we wish to live it.
Today I feel deeply grateful for the person who opened this door. I carry the gifts inside. This journey is rich with memory, joyful nostalgia, and as with all really delicious things, is slightly bittersweet. I am ready for life. I am already alive. I am ready for love. It is spilling out of me.
May you have a divine day.
Beyond Non-Binary 
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