When I think about what incredible sea changes which happened in my life in 2022, please forgive the superlative–that it was the most fundamental year of my life. 2023, I suspect, will be even more powerful, and I fully intend to begin to manifest those changes. The groundwork for 2022 was laid in 2021, which was also a pretty incredible year, certainly one of gathering energy and happy-making storm clouds. 2022 appears to be the same in relation to the year which lies ahead.
This is what happened to me in 2022
Change. Transformational change in every aspect of my life.
I came out to myself. Not in the way I began to do in 2021, where I was still exploring, dabbling, and trying to figure out what lay ahead. No. By coming out I mean that I crossed the rubicon. Still fully male-bodied, not yet on hormones, I made the decision to live as female. At long last. Most everything that happened to me after was a consequence of that, but some other things which are equally important, also took place.
The other things? I was released by ex-Mistress. This is a good thing, as our goals were fundamentally misaligned, and it was causing trust issues, turning our dynamic into an energy sink rather than a healing and growing place. For both of us. I would have liked it to happen differently, perhaps when I initially did it, rather than “patching things up” and then flying half-way around the world to see her and then getting stood up. But it makes a better story that way. More important than being freed from this relationship was what I learned about my own boundaries and how important self-care and self-protection is. More important still has been taking time and distance to find how much I appreciate what we did together and how much I learned. I shall remain sorry that she didn’t get more from me, but that was her choice, so I can’t regret that too much.
What else? I moved back to Italy after 4 very happy sun-soaked years in Miami. And now, despite how yummy everything is again, and how it is nice to be close to my children, I miss the warm weather, and think I may be forever tied to the beach in my heart.
The big stuff.
Taking oestrogen has been life-transforming. I don’t hate myself anymore. I don’t hate my body anymore. I get to look at myself in the mirror and appreciate the minor changes that take place almost every day. To watch my beautiful breasts grow. To see my skin change. My children have noticed. They have also commented that I look skinnier, which is ironic as I weigh the same. But my body is changing. And my hair line has not only stopped receding but has begun to advance again. It is amazing.
This is nothing compared to my emotional landscape. Maybe I cry more. I was always “in touch” with my feelings…kind of odd considering how aloof I always came across. That was a protective mechanism, and now I no longer feel I need such a protective mechanism. This could be what my God-less brother referred to as a palpable change in my energy.
This is my commitment to 2023
First, I will make a definitive break from my wife. I have promised my lawyer to not make the mistakes of her other clients, and to go and find the same kind of person all over again. I won’t look at all. The right people are coming to me already.
Second, I will land on my feet as a transgender professional. I will find glorious opportunity and I will put aside those aspects of me that get in the way and will make sure to capitalise on the good fortune which reveals itself to me. I will set an example for a trans person’s right to exist, and will be there for any trans person, directly and indirectly, so that they too can find the space to breathe.
Third, I will make charitable giving and work central to my existence. This will be through contributions in time and money, and more importantly, through joining a board or other body which has as its mission to help women—through education and the creation of opportunity, through creating and ensuring safe spaces. The downtrodden and marginalised need the same, and I will advocate and make room for sex workers and transgender women. What form this takes, if not multiple, will be a joy to figure out. How to give with impact. Dear reader, if you have thoughts on this topic, please let me know.
Those are my three goals in terms of what I will do. But that is nothing compared to the importance of continuing to step into a life of how. I do believe that how we live is the only thing that matters about our passage here on earth.
The How of Being
I am a white witch. This means many things, a great number of which have yet to reveal themselves to me. Discovering how to give voice to this will be my prime focus not just in 2023, but forever forward.
The gene keys, something I recommend to anyone who is curious about spirituality, eschews organised religion, and is open and curious to learn about their own purpose, should give it a try. The books are a challenging read—they are quite dense. You can explore them here.
There is meaning in everything. The people who come into our lives, and don’t, or who do and leave, have all done so for a reason. I rarely draw tarot on the future, as I believe it is dangerous to play with that which will be. We can seek to understand the ‘now’ and the ‘past’, but I look at future seeing as grey magic, or at worst, black. We go there at our peril.
Being a white witch is about feeling and tapping into this meaning. The etheric chords that bind us to life. It requires a kind of “listening” well beyond what we do with our ears, eyes, smell, taste. To improve my ability to do this, to “listen”, I spent a year and a bit trying many modalities, learning about what works for me in my own body and soul. My adventures in exploration included:
- Intensive spa treatments such as sensory deprivation tanks, cryotherapy;
- Fasting, yoga, meditation, colonic irrigation, veganism, exercise;
- Gyro-tonics, pilates, stretching;
- Cranio-sacral therapy;
- Rosen Method;
- Reiki;
- Hypnosis;
- Massage;
- Talk and somatic therapy;
- Ayahuasca and micro-dosing of mushrooms;
- BDSM.
There are others and there will continue to be others. I am not finding that any one discipline has everything I look for, and so I will formulate my own. This might include dance in many forms (including the pole dancing course I have been invited to in March); hyperbaric chambers; other methods such as Feldenkrais…Your suggestions would be most appreciated.
Some daily practices which have come into my life assist with being of clean body and clean mind. Chief among these are exercise and writing, both of which I seek to do every day, and notice that I don’t feel quite right if I haven’t done both. It all boils down to self-control and what we have to control.
One of my “Witch” friends (she doesn’t like the word because of its breadth of connotation, and prefers ‘healer’) is an energy worker, specialised in helping women tap into their female energy and power. She has taken me on two journeys which are amongst the most powerful physical and energetic experiences I have ever had, and I look forward to continue to work with her to get to know my body and soul. The stronger this becomes in me, the better I am able to feel the energy threads all around me.
And that is the essence of the “how” which I refer to. I will not live in any way that interferes with cultivating this listening. That means no alcohol will get in the way, no bad juju, no hate, no self-destructive behaviour. Body equilibrium. It means treating my body and mind like a temple and being disciplined about this so that I am able to grow without self-made encumbrances.
It also means continuing to cultivate those listening and healing skills which have appeared to me. Over the past 18 months I have earned a qualification in herbal medicine. In addition, I have qualified in nutrition science, a subject of lifelong interest and study. This latter has informed a book I am working on, though is not one of the ten manuscripts I have just submitted to an editor. Can you guess what the topic is? Cooking. The good news is that these books, all ten of them, two per year for the next five years, first release 2024, will all come out as me, as transgender me, as out and proud. It is very exciting.
I did try to buy a business last year that is a supplier to the herbal medicine trade, and whilst that was not successful, I shall continue to look. But I have also taken the first steps towards starting my own product business. I am working with a small number of inspiring women on their beauty routines and am formulating for them. This will become a line of products and a business which is charitable, and whose profits will support the cause I have identified above—empowerment of women and the marginalised female.
If the formulation of products which heal and care for our bodies are the praxis of witchcraft, there are some foundational skills which I will cultivate. Shakti, tantra, the divine feminine are all aspects of female energy which I will continue to experience and learn. I will return to BDSM with a clear-minded desire to explore the divine feminine, as I do with Mistress today, and with a few other professionals who I have met or “discovered”. My desire is to play with these people in a mutually satisfying and exploratory way. In conjunction with this, I will study tantra. Being able to connect sexually and intimately with people whose spirits come to dance with mine, is about learning to speak a new language.
I do not always expect to be welcomed into the sisterhood, but there is no greater motivation in my life, no higher purpose…and I will seek to honour it. As if coming to a potlatch dinner, I shall bring gifts and shall be in service to the group. Never to assume, always to honour.
And lastly, in 2023, I will have lot’s of sex. Yup. Sex. It’s about time. Oh, and one other thing. 2023 will be for me the year of the vulva. No matter what, it is time to up-cycle my whotsit.
Beyond Non-Binary 
Sounds like just the start of a beautiful journey, my friend! And lots of sex definitely sounds like a GOOD year to me! XOXO
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Its kinda hard to believe just how eventful last year was, but I can easily see that this year has the potential to be positively explosive in a most positive way.
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