The following is a written version of a short talk I gave at the Ethical Society of St. Louis on September 29, 2024. You can also listen to audio of the original talk.
Our kid was three months old, and of course, we were in the backyard digging a trench. The trench was going from the house to the garage so we would have power there, and my partner and I were digging it so we wouldn’t destroy the garden with a machine.
As we were digging this trench, I leaned on my shovel, and I turned to my partner. I said, “I am a witch.”
And he, being very patient and loving, said, “What does that mean to you?”
I honestly hadn’t really thought about it, because it had spontaneously come out of me. I paused to think and then said, “I am a woman, I am powerful, and I will not let that power be taken away from me.”
The journey to this declaration starts from many places, but one is when a few years before, I realized that I had been very grumpy during December, for several Decembers in a row. That year I finally figured out that it was because I really didn’t like Christmas. Specifically, I realized it was because I didn’t like the labor that was expected of the women around me. Some of them are really delighted by it, but others seemed more exhausted than content.
As I approached motherhood, I was worried about how I would respond to that expectation.
The next few years—this takes a long time to figure out—I reflected on celebrations. Fourth of July and Thanksgiving got called into question. Eventually I got back to the end of the calendar year. I came to Winter Solstice.
You may know Solstice as a pagan holiday, but really it is squarely based in science. As the earth takes us around the sun, our axis tilts across the year. Winter solstice is when the northern hemisphere has tipped as far away as it will be from the sun. That's why it is winter.
On solstice, it is the day when we experience sunlight for the least amount of time. The next day, we have a little bit more light. That means that if you work a 9-5 job, like I did at the time, you might get to go home without streetlights.
That was something I could get behind celebrating.
So, we started celebrating it. First I just noticed it. Then I added a poem, and now we read the poem aloud as well as have a fire in the backyard at night. We enjoy its light and celebrate the coming of the light.
Now holidays, nor one holiday, does not make a witch. There are other things.
I grew up in my family with the religion of observation, discussion, and pancakes on Sundays. But now that I've had this introspection, I've also added sacred spaces to my life. They are the woods, the library, and floating in a lake, gazing at the sky.
I am what is known as a solitary witch. It is well defined by two of the Ethical Society SEEK core values: “I am free to choose what I believe,” and “I strive to live my values.” There are lots of other people who are practicing this, and we are taking this term to mean what we choose for it to mean.
I do have some inspiration, people who lead me through this, fiction and non. First, of course, there is Sabrina the Teenage Witch, of Archie Comics and television fame. I adore Ursula the sea witch—if you go back and listen to her song from The Little Mermaid, you will discover that she is simply a woman trying to survive capitalism. I promise you.
But my favorite witch right now is called Little Witch Hazel. She’s in a picture book that was written recently. You see her across the seasons. She raises a lost egg into the owl it eventually becomes, but most importantly, in the summer, her friends show her that she must also take care of herself. They go out and enjoy the water, and each other, and share a meal in the evening.
I do have some real life teachers, through the great thing that is the Internet.
Tricia Hersey is the founder of The Nap Ministry. She went to seminary for her PhD, and discovered that she was exhausted and couldn’t go to class. She was falling asleep, and so she chose simply to nap and rest. She did finish her PhD, and now she leads other people through rest, and shows us that it is an important part of who we are.
adrienne maree brown is a scholar of Octavia Butler, and they have taken the lessons from her books that change is inevitable and who we are, so that we may apply that to our lives in the real world.
And finally, although I know she would not appreciate the title of “witch,” I know that my great grandmother was a midwife. That fact brings me a lot of joy and connection to my ancestry.
Basically, calling myself a witch makes me feel brave when I might not feel otherwise. It helps me go and do things that I want to do that seem kind of scary. I think about these other people and how I have this identity. I think about how, as Terry Pratchett in Discworld has his characters say, a witch “does what is needful.”
Four years later, I have a little kid, and I find that the definition that I gave my partner, Tony, still stands true. I am a witch. I am human. I am powerful, and I will not let that power be taken away from me.
Mentioned in this essay: The Nap Ministry, adrienne maree brown, and some rather delightful fictional witches.
The 1961 Grinnell Students for Peace
A new project, a new newsletter section
In September, I began a project to write a nonfiction graphic novel!
I am researching Grinnell students who may be the earliest participants in the student peace movement of the 1960s.
One year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, in November 1961, Grinnell College students picketed and fasted in front of the White House for three days. Through their signs, their actions, and their carefully crafted statement, they advocated for the United States to resist testing nuclear bombs in the atmosphere, despite the USSR breaking the voluntary moratorium between the two countries.
Even as they were demonstrating, fellow students on campus in Iowa were gathering connections and making calls to arrange what would become more than 100 schools who continued the peace fast over the coming months.
I’m extremely excited that my research for this book includes gathering oral histories. These students are now in their early 80s, and it is so incredible to hear their perspective, and gather parts of the story that aren’t documented in existing primary sources.
If their story sounds familiar, it’s because I wrote about these students this past spring, in a Finding Out piece:
I hope at least some of you will get just as jazzed about their story as I am, and follow along. For now, you can read a bit more about the Grinnell Student protestors in a summary that I will be updating as I continue my research.
There’s so much more to discover!