The Kitchen Witch’s Way Is Live!

Greetings, fyne readers! Did you know that in addition to poetry, I also put words together in book form? My most recent endeavor is about a skeptical, bitter young woman who crosses paths with a Kitchen Witch and her magical worldview. What a fun story to write, and it has come to pass that the first twelve perfectly imperfect chapters of The Kitchen Witch’s Way are now available for viewing on Ream! Ream is a serial publishing platform that is entirely free to join—although you can put a penny in my cup if you want to support—It’s like Substack but for book authors only. Join me if you deesyre! Here’s the link: https://reamstories.com/sabbathmaiden

And here’s a longer description of the story:

Regina is a rational agnostic with a life-long restrictive eating disorder. She hasn’t yet been able to find her way to freedom, and she’s tried damn near everything.

Everything, that is, but magic.

Somehow, Regina has suspended her disbelief and has come to find her way to studying with Ingal, a strange old woman in a quirky mountain town who goes by the title of Kitchen Witch. Regina has sought out this woman because she’s tired of her cold and measured life, and she’s hoping, one last time, to shift her mind about things. Things like finding hope and relief from her constant struggle with food and body. Things like…her lifetime resistance to receiving love.

In the wilds of Ingal’s magickal herb garden, Regina begins immersing herself in The Kitchen Witch’s Way, the old woman’s grimoire. Along with these writings, a strange crow, a fabulous bohemian caravan, and an unexpected heart connection with the town’s farmer are making it so Regina can’t quite ignore that there’s something powerful, maybe even magical, going on. And that perhaps, with that magic, she can finally find her way to freedom.

Welcome to the town of Mostly Falls, where the story of The Kitchen Witch’s Way, begins.

Just so you know, for health reasons I am taking a short break from uploading new chapters, but please do navigate your way to the site and let me know what you think. Get cozy, wander your way through, make a comment that you made it to the last chapter, and I’ll know it’s time to get back to posting. Hope to see you there!

Ps. If you’ve any difficulties getting to/around the site, please comment and I’ll guide you through the crossroads

Qualify

Photo by u015eahin Dou011fdu on Pexels.com

Do I

Qualify?

Tomorrow

I will sit before a face

A face who has seen the times

A face who has seen the terrors

She will ask me questions

Questions I don’t even know how to answer

She will be listening

For all the tell-tale signs

All the tell-tale signs

That make an insurance company required to attend

All the tell-tale signs

That make a patient worth it

I already know what’s not on that list

((I’ve been on both sides, you see))

A deep yearning for a better quality of life

A desire to stop measuring everything that enters reality

A hunger to feel true desires

To tend to an age-old grief, these unspeakable embeddings in flesh

A thirst to escape

The Cage

No, these do not qualify

But what does,

I do know

This hair, falling

This blood, anemic

These bones, porous and in danger

This confusion, panic attack, overwhelm

I want to change but I don’t know how

I want to change but I am scared

I want to eat normally, but I can’t face the fullness

I want to stop restricting, but I can’t figure out

How to be with the terror

Of that introjected hate

Of that semen forced

I tried to change but I couldn’t

I told myself that I would not do this again

But here I am

I don’t feel like I can really ever change, get well

why

keep

trying

I could stop fasting, but then what?

My whole life is arranged, like a house of cards

Around this constant schedule of control

If I let go, who am I

If I let go, what do I do with myself

If I let go, how do I sit with

These overwhelming feelings of confusion

Disgust

Purposelessness

Meaninglessness

Drowning

Choking

I want to nourish myself

See my actions create healing, strength

But each time I try

I hit this wall, old and impervious

It brings me to my knees

Do I qualify

To get help to let go of a lifetime’s illusion

I don’t hate myself

I’m not dying (yet)

And I can smile and put on the routine

My blood pressure is stable

My weight is minimal but ok

My intake is spartan but not emergent

Fact is

I look like the perfect example of what society wants

People laugh at me at thinking something’s wrong

Slim, in control, and witty

If they only knew

My little girl is dying inside

This body is not failing (yet)

And I can put on one damn good show

But am I still worth it?

This misery, this child, this ancient trauma

Calling?

Will you help me?

Is healing possible?

Will I even be able to release

What all the ones before me could not?

Do I give up now and prevent the disappointment?

Do I

Qualify?

Blessed Mabon

Blessed, blessed Mabon

Blessed, blessed Autumnal Equinox

Light and Dark, equal

How will the Descent

Serve our Transformation?

And blessed, blessed Spring Equinox to my Southern Hemisphere friends :}}

Transforming Symbols

I was once asked

“What symbols were you born into life with?”

And immediately,

I thought of her

Head spinning, pea green hurling from mouth

Her

That’s the symbol I was born into life with

Literally, mother thought it was cute

Not realizing it was her life symbol, too

She named me with this

Woman, small, weak, victim

Possessed by unknown forces she’d never control

Her story, now was

My story

Always looking for a savior

But

Not even Big Daddy

Could do the job

Forever doomed

That was the symbol

Better just accept it

Take your meds

Hope for normality

And tell no one

Well

My soul wasn’t having it

And soon, I was a girl possessed by

An eating disorder, not some ancient demon

(Well at least we’re progressing here)

But it was basically the same story

Try as hard as you can

But no one, not even yourself

Will be able to save you

Accept it

Take your medicine

Follow your meal plan

Don’t trust the lies your body tells you

Hope for normality

And tell no one

Again, the soul rebelled and wrote a memoir

Told everyone

Went off meds

Left the nine to five

And tried its hardest

To trust the sacredness of this body

All the while battling whispering voices

You’re crazy

You’re possessed

Your body is trying to kill you

No one or thing will ever rescue…

Still, the soul persisted

The soul

Wanted another symbol

I was hard at work on this,

When one day

A great pain terrorized my core

Memories of my mother, once more

Travelling from doctor to doctor

Trying to find the cause

Trying to find the cure

But ultimately

Finding nothing

Crazy

“We’re sorry lady

We’ve got nothing to offer you

We’ve done all the tests

And there’s nothing there

So just take these medications

And learn how to manage”

Her story

Her symbol

Woman, weak, victim, possessed

Powerless

And doomed

Well, this pain, it found me too

As will the ancestral symbols

And at first, I was her

Looking for cures, looking for causes

And finding none

Empty looks in doctor’s eyes

“Sorry”

Her story

Had become my story

Once more

But again,

The soul wouldn’t settle

And it put all of its shamanic, witchy tools to the test

Trusting, visioning, chanting

Trying to transform

Trying to transform the symbols

Symbols born into this life with

Symbols it just couldn’t accept

The question came one day

“What would you like your life to symbolize?”

And I looked back

At a life of so many other people’s symbols

And I decided

To call in my own

From possessed to compassionate de-possessor

From anorexic to vibrant, wise and magical kitchen witch

From crazy, chronic illness throwaway patient to

Somatic healing, dreamworker and sexual abuse recovery mentor

This is what I’d like my life to symbolize

Symbolizing

The transformative journey

The decades long struggle

The persistent, never-give-up-on-myself

Stubborn goat-like fighter

The one who refused to accept the label

Of what so many of her lineage died still tortured by

A transformer of symbols

Steadfast by my own sacred soul’s side

Believing that there is more

Believing that my body is wise

Visioning another way

Communing with the Old Medicines

This journey to transform

Finding a path to heal, for all my relations

This is what I’d like my life to symbolize

To be the ancestor that finally finds resolution

Or at least the one

That will die trying

Thanks for reading!

What symbols were you born with/into?

What would you like your life to symbolize?

The Kitchen Witch

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

She throws off the sheepskin

Stretching her wiry body that’s been through so much

She smiles, taking in this simple home she’s created

A hearthfire crackles in the corner

The scent of woodsmoke fills the air

She

Is happy

Shuffling into the kitchen

Before her are odd shaped and gleaming

Glass jars filled with all sorts of herbal beauties

Golds and greens and sunflower yellows

One in particular calls her aim

Trusting

She pulls down the shining canister

And shakes a bit of the plant into a pot

Cold water trickles from the well-sourced tap

A match hisses as she brings the stovetop to life

Humming and stirring

She’s thinking of magic

All of the things she’d like to bring in

Stories are words, words given meaning

And speaking them, infusing

Like matchlight, will bring them to life

What stories she wonders

Does she want to create and dance in today?

Here she lies focus, here she sings into being

The Kitchen Witch

She dances in the kitchen

She thinks back to times

When this place was but a cage

She recalls the journey, the transmutation

From being assigned to duty here

From being accused of poisonings and torture here

Through the epigenetic spirals

She’s arrived, finally

To delighting in creation here

At her healing cauldron

For her

Only for her

And when she wishes,

She crafts things here for others

And when she wishes

She invites the young ones

So struggling with nourishment

And body

And being alive in this cold, confusing world

Sometimes, when she wishes

She sits them right down at her splintering wooden table

And they drink tea

And talk about dreams

And look out the window onto her garden

The Kitchen Witch

She remembers

She re-members

She hums and she stirs

She focuses her stories, her words, her

Spell-ing

Into the waiting and willing plant potions before her

She feels the soft fur of the familiar brushing against her ankles

She smiles

She is grateful

For this long road

And how the magic

Of the Kitchen Witch

Found its way

Into her heart

Questions

((Tales From Dark Times))

I know what to eat, and when

Those meal plans were installed

In my programming decades ago

But, ironically

In trying to escape this cage

Those same structures

Only trap me now

Never was I really shown

How to recognize my true hungers

My true fullness

How to discern when fear

Fills my stomach falsely

How to know when nausea is caused

By the slough of word daggers

Pointed my way

When immersed in a world of grieving

When surrounded by suicidal misery

When it all is so loud

When everything seems too much

When all I seem to do is absorb shadows

When I’m already full of psychic ghosts before eating

Never was I really shown, in this,

How to hear

My hungers

Food hungers, life hungers

How

Do I detect

When it is all so loud

What the body really needs?

At first meal plans seemed the answer

That measuring and plotting

And eating the same every day

Would help me

Help me to know that I was getting enough

Help me to know that if I felt like puking

It probably wasn’t due…to the bread

Help me to know that I most likely

Wouldn’t cross the line

Where I feel

What I don’t want to feel

What I don’t know how to feel

What I fear feeling

Will drive me

Insane

Same thing, same time, every day

I thought

My calculated allotments could ensure me

My rationed experiments could help me

From going mad

But over the years

Of measuring, scouring shelves for perfect numbers

It’s all just left me feeling cold

Disconnected

Isolated

And confused

And here I am

Again

Asking questions

Yes

I know what to eat, and when

But how to deal with

Choice overwhelm

Fullness anxiety

Unexplained terror just thinking about

Throwing out my scales and measuring cups

And why opening a cookbook

Walking into a grocery store

Causes my whole system

To solidify

Frozen

In the frozen isle

Can I even stop doing all of this

Will I ever be able to

Let go of my strange fear of satiation?

Will I ever be able to

Enjoy and feel free with food again?

Will I ever be able to

Trust my hunger and fullness again?

I’ve lived so long by clocks and grams and labels

Why does it linger

What’s wrong with me

And how do I get help

To recover…that will last?

These

Questions

I’ve tried so many times

Treatment has cycled through me like a broken record

Yet, here I am

Still calculating

Still measuring

Still watching the clock

Still fearing fullness

Still mistrusting body’s signals

Still terrified that without all of this

I will kill

Myself

That without this control

My body

Will kill…me

I want to receive the food you gift me

I want to sit and laugh and share plates on the veranda

I want to cook with joy from the kitchen witch’s grimoire

I want to sleep through the night

I want to know what I want

I want

To be free

Questions

Is “free” just an illusion?

Is “recovered” one too?

Does one ever “do the work”

And never look back?

Am I like the person with diabetes, dreaming of recovering

But destined to a process of accepting and managing

Something I have to live with

Forever?

Questions

I keep wondering

What my why is

What my dreams are

What will inspire me to face this

Again

If what I have to look forward to is pain

If what I have to look forward to

Is finding myself here

Again?

I don’t think I’m fat

And I don’t hate myself

And I’m not afraid of gaining weight

I don’t know why I do this

That is the ultimate

Question

Why, when I’m tired of…

Waking in the middle of the night starving

Being overwhelmed by food choices

Needing to weigh or measure everything

Being terrified of fullness for reasons I don’t understand

My hair falling out

Being anemic and weak

Feeling confused and unable to think clearly

Feeling purposeless and lost

Being afraid to go out to eat

Being unable to accept friends food

Having to follow a clock and meal plan to eat

Mistrusting my hunger and fullness

Feeling afraid of pain, consequences of eating more

Having to eat same food same way every day to feel safe

Having to rely on nutritional shakes for sustenance

Counting calories

Thinking about food

Every

Fucking

Minute

Why it is,

After all the reclined leather

Conversations,

That I can’t…

Just…

Eat

Questions

“Maybe you should get more support

A higher level of care?”

Those words, while so dreamy

In my past yearnings to be coddled

To be forced, wrapped, in warm bleach-scented linens

To slurp and chew and receive way more

Than I’d ever let myself, alone

Those words

Are suspicious to me now

A higher level of care?

How would it even help?

Would anyone understand

What I am going through?

Is the time, and money and

DRAMA

Worth it

If I eventually end up

Here

Again

Over

And

Over

Asking

The

Same

Damn

Questions!?!

~If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, reach out for help. Don’t get lost in that maze, alone.

National Association for Anorexia And Related Eating Disorders (ANAD) Hotline: 1 (888)-375-7767

Synergy

(You)

As universe itself

In the power of its own creation

Each of us has the ability

To reflect upon our philosophies and actions

As individuals and as groups we can decide

Within existing conditions

How we will take action, and

As we imagine

What kind of systems we want to create

We can imagine the world from various perspectives

From the Neolithic Mind,

From the Industrial Mind

Or from the Synergistic Mind of the New Era

What do you think will be important?

How can we begin to proactively create conditions

In the New Era?

~Image and text paraphrased from Pamela Eakins’ Visionary Cosmology

Gates And Lizards

Finally

I stand here at the gate

The gate of small dreams

The gate of what was once

Unaccomplishable

No longer am I hiding under covers

Racked by waves of grief

Fearing defeat

Raging at the uselessness of it all

I am here

At the gate

I step through the splintering brackets

And onto the once familiar path

Sandy dust kicking up

My mind in meditation as I face the danger

I cry out to the spirits

My spirit that has brought me here

That has enabled hope and vision

That has given me courage to try

To this I ask for removal

Of all thoughts

Of all beliefs

Of all programming

At the root of this struggle

Releasing what oils the wheels of its persistence

I cry out

I ask

I keep walking, slowly

One foot in front of the other

So much slower than this goal driven goat once was

I feel into my body

I ask for its guidance

I ask

What the first place of rest

Will be

I keep walking

I keep listening

And at a moss-laden trunk’s reaching

I know it is where I should stop

While I’m ahead

My fire

It wants to push on, scout the next curve

Reach the vista

But I know, my body is teaching

So I stop

And I look out from this shaggy tree

I see glimmers of a view

I see oaks and pines and soaring hawk

I see

Where I am

I see

Where I have brought myself

I see

Hope for the next leg of the journey

In time

I begin to descend

From this short test of possibility

And in front of me

Is a large lizard

Frequent to these dry, dusty trails

I think nothing of it

Expecting it to scurry as I pass

But the lizard

He remains

He stares straight at me

Even as I inch closer

Even as the threat of me

Shadows over him

He stays

And my fantastical child mind

Asks

“Sacred Lizard!

Sacred Fire Elemental Being!

Why have you stopped me

Here in my tracks?

What message do you want

To deliver?”

I stop

I listen

I hear the slight rustle of the leaves

I hear a faint cry of a raptor

I feel the momentary dread that there will be no answer

And then I hear

“Who is the dreamer?

And who is the dreamed?

Who

Is dreaming you?

Is it you?

Is it you?”

Knowing not if it is he

Or I

That spoke this truth, this riddle

Regardless

I listen, I absorb

And then

I start to sing

I sing to the lizard

I sing to the ancients

I sing to the thoughtforms

And beliefs

And programs that have kept me safe

By creating these struggles

By weaving this dream

I sing to them all

I know it is time to leave

And the lizard stays

I have to walk around his grand presence, in fact

I look back and he’s still staring at me

I turn

And descend

Filled with the questions

Sparked with hope

And having felt magic

I know I will be back

To step through the gate

To let loose the scaffolds

To scout another twist

To try again

Soon

Freeing The Force

Cards from the *Tarot of The Spirit* deck by Pamela and Joyce Eakins

There is a pulsating, overwhelming force

Smoldering, sparking

Seeking its direction

Seeking where to land, seed, focus, grow

Seeking where

To nurture, connect, become

Compass spinning

The yearning is so terrible

And the voices are so loud

A wanting

A hungering

Suffocating and aimless

What stands in the way

Of this sacred force’s aim?

Tens of thousands of swords

Piercing the mind, twisting the strength

Over the centuries, ancestral

Illusory confusions

Bleeding out lifeforce

To stand, to aim, to thrive

What then can I do?

Voices, betrayals of the past

Survival scaffolding that must now break away

Once valid, it is no more

Begin the peeling, the shedding, the grieving

So the pulse, the yearning, the new creation seeking

Can see its target

Can find the direction

Can muster velocity, and belief

To land, and blossom

On its mysterious and otherworldly surface

How then

Do I align the soul’s condition

For this whittling to occur?

So long have these layers sheltered me

So tightly do I cling

How then, do I let go

For this blast off to succeed

After so many failed launches?

And out of the darkness,

She answers.

Sister Fire says

I dance

I place myself in the center of the trees

I lay down my obstructions and fears

On the altar, I offer

A sacrifice

I let the wind pivot my limbs

I open my mouth, spinning

And let the wildness sing through me

Sister Fire says

I am the one who brings forth the knowings

I am the one who has travelled through the fire

I am the one who cannot be denied

I am

The Master of Spontaneous Expression and Liberation

Sister Fire

Mouth open

I let her dance me

I become her

Envisioning bold stance, supple curves, chin to stars

I twirl

And scream

And partner with the rhythms of dirt and sky

Allowing it all to burn away

Letting her reveal me

Letting her open my eyes, my channels

Loosing the magma

When it is time

And the layers have dropped away

Lion, lizard, and flame my allies

And Fire Sister, a twinkle in her eye

We will be soaring

We will be aiming

We will be burning

Towards the one True Will of my heart

This pulsing will connect

This blazing will form

Like supernovas and our great central stellar core

This yearning

This wanting

This hungering

Will finally come

To Be

Verse or Curse

This morning I awoke

To a bible verse on my phone

My first reaction was cringe

And an urge

To reject

The sender, sweet

But in no way knowledgeable of my being

So I stopped and listened

And I heard “wait”

So I waited

And I walked

And I thought about

All the reasons I cringe

For the witches

And the women

And the oppressed

And the ancient ones

Many persecuted with these very

Verses

I thought

Of the shaming of the body

Of the simplistic duality

Of the good and the wicked

Of the woman’s penance

For the downfall of man

And then

I was there

Thick trunks smoldering beneath me

Witnessing the jeering faces

Thumping these black books

As my skin began to burn

As my loving heart

That worshipped the beauty of trees

Began to break

Their fervor, like arrows

Against me

Liminally wafting

The lifetimes informing…

And then

Back to my here now feet walking

I thought of the archetype

Of that man that carried love in his heart

That fought for the downtrodden

That held both the light

And the struggle

With compassion

I wondered

As I reread that bible text

Did this man, Jesus, exist

And if he did, were any of these words

Actually his, spoken?

How much of these verses

(Now perhaps turned curses)

Are lost in translation of the projections

Of humans, of fear?

Not new thoughts

But interesting they’ve been called

Into reflection

I look at my phone as in a dream

And wonder why the message has come

This bible text beaming before me

These questions

Such a veering away

From this fence sitter’s witnessing of it all

So, having waited

I felt a strange challenge

Battling in my throat

Shall I stay silent

Shall I swallow the message

That does not align?

Or shall I share my truth

On the dark wings of respect

And Love?

Forming my letters

I did my best to express

My response did not reject

But inform

I am a believer of belief

Enjoying what brings you pleasure to share

But let’s get this straight

I’m not right

And you’re not wrong

And we can live in this

Strange and mysterious dance

Together

In between words

Feeling

The wind

Just think about this

Before you assume I’m neatly in your court

And please

For some future misuse and slander

Don’t quote me on that