How to find your way home.
Report from a desk in Western, MA
I find myself at home again.
The smells, the sound, the trees. The way the fluffy fairies of spring dance on the breeze.
This is the place my little heart first learned to sing. It was to these winds that I sang my praises. I fell in love with moss here. I would lay in it like it was a magical bed laid out for me by my REAL parents. The magical woodland creatures and spirits who I firmly believed in.
Yes, I am a witch.
A native of Northampton, MA.
A magical land of lesbians, healers, philosophers, artists and freaks.
My birthplace.
What’s so beautiful now as I am coasting towards my 40th birthday - Is I’m learning that I’m at home here.
Because I’m at home HERE.
Inside me.
I finally found my way back.
Northampton lives inside me.
My magic lives inside me.
I wasn’t simply initiated in Northampton, I am OF Northampton.
I was crafted by the mud of this pleasant Valley.
The daughter of two lost souls
Two intellectuals who found solace and solitude within their relationship and created three beautiful children.
We believed in God. We believed in spirits. We lit Shabbat candles and prayed in the tongue of our ancient ancestors. We celebrated holidays and solstice and gospel music and meditation. My parents spoke French to each other, having spent their first year of marriage in 1976 living on an archeological dig in Tunisia.
Yeah. I’m that kid. I am of…magical and mysterious roots. Education and money and spiritual and artistic gifts. And whiteness. I come from all of that.
My father was the Chaplain at Smith College, then still an elite college for women only. We were surrounded by the most fascinating minds in the lesbian world in the 80s. It was radical.
It was exciting!
My mother ran a La Leche League group in Noho. There were women in my house constantly breastfeeding and sharing homeopathic recipes with each other. We didn’t even have refined sugar until…like 3. My mother baked homemade bread and made her own yogurt. We were hippies. I breastfed until I was 5 years old.
No wonder I am queer.
I fit in here in Northampton. This was my wonderland. My play space. My magical world. The place where I first imagined what the world could be. And it was beautiful.
And then we moved to Columbus, GA when my Dad joined the army in the 90s.
And…
“What a world, what a world, what a world! I’m melting!!!”
That’s when the queer witch inside of me went underground. Way underground.
I left Northampton, and my truest, most grounded, authentic self, left my body.
We parted ways as I navigated living in a new world that wasn't as kind to artists and intellectuals and queerdos like me.
But the witch is back. I've returned — to the surface. Back in my body. Running the show again. And low and behold I have found my way home. I am queer, bi - out - still married to my trans partner of 6 years - poly - a witch - a pot smoker - an artist - and everything in between. In Northampton, I’m accepted. I am finally back here because I accept myself.
Some day I will live here again, but for now, I'm happy to be home within.
That is the way to the Holy Grail.
You are the Grail you have been searching for.
Your quest is to return to the sacred feminine.
A return home.
To your roots, your mother’s womb, the goddess.
Inside and out.
The part of you that was shunned? That is the key to the front door.
Pick it up again.
Unlock the door.
You are home.
And if returning to YOU, seems too far to travel…
Try going to the earth place where you were born.
See what you can uncover. There.
See what the theretherness is.
And if you still can’t find it there.
Go farther still. To the ends of the earth, to the birthplace of women.
To the mystery.
Go back until you find it.
Go to the ocean.
Go to the valleys.
Stare at the moon.
But whatever you do, don’t ignore the quest.
Stifled feminine power will destroy you.
From the inside out.
Take it from me.
As I sit here, my there, - 5 miles west from the exact place my soul first inhabited this body 39 years ago —
I can hear the sound of the Wild Geese more clearly.
When I’m here, I know they are singing to ME.
Calling me back
Begging me to remember who I am and where I came from.
I hear you now.
I’m here.
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