What If Our Response Is the Initiation?
What if the initiation isn't the circumstance itself, but our response to it?
A reflection on the Witch Wound, fate, initiation, and practical magic.
❤️🩹 The Witch Wound
🌙 What If Fate Is the Invitation?
🗝️ What If Our Response Is the Initiation?
🌱 Recognizing the Invitation
🔥 Responding Differently Is the Healing
🕯️ Where Our Attention Is Needed
🚪 The Monster at the Door
✨ Practical Magic
❤️🩹 The Witch Wound
I spoke with someone about the Witch Wound this week.
Fear of punishment.
Fear of banishment.
Fear of being cast out from the village.
Fear of being accused of being a witch.
Or consorting with the devil.
Fear of being too visible.
Too powerful.
Too sexual.
Too sovereign.
You don't have to identify as a witch to carry a Witch Wound.
The Witch Wound lives anywhere we have learned that authenticity comes with consequences.
Because the Witch Wound isn’t really about being a “witch.”
It’s about expressing our deepest truths.
Pursuing our deepest desires.
Becoming our most powerful self-expression.
It wasn't the conversation itself that stayed with me.
It was an insight that arrived a few hours later as I contemplated:
How do you heal the Witch Wound?
You can't walk into an herbal apothecary and ask for a tincture labeled "Heal the Witch Wound."
Or "Restore My Self-Worth."
Or "Reconnect Me with My Desire."
Or “Erase My Fear of Banishment.”
Or “Stop People From Projecting Their Antiquated Beliefs Onto Me.”
Actually, perhaps you can.
I make my own essences and tinctures, so I get it.
But I suspect these tinctures and essences help create awareness.
A shift in the unseen field.
And then conspire with the Fates to orchestrate a series of situations and circumstances that could offer countless opportunities to engage with the Witch Wound.
To bring it to the surface.
To reveal where we still hide.
To show us where our attention is needed.
Witch Initiations.
The moon seems to participate in this process already.
🌙 What If Fate Is the Invitation?
In my work with the moon phases, I've come to understand the Moon and Sun as partners.
The Moon represents fate.
The situations and circumstances that arrive whether we want them to or not.
Sometimes they arrive with a heavy emotional punch.
The conversation.
The rejection.
The desire.
The conflict.
The Moon—the Fates—present us with an invitation.
The Sun represents our response.
How we meet what arrives.
Our willingness to meet fate consciously.
Our willingness to respond differently.
Our capacity to choose to accept the invitation.
Or not.
🗝️ What If Our Response Is the Initiation?
At first I thought the situations and circumstances themselves were the initiations.
But lately I've begun to question my initial perspective about that.
The circumstance is merely the doorway.
Fate provides the opportunity.
The invitation.
Just because we receive an invitation doesn’t mean we need to attend the ball.
Maybe you put your hand on the doorknob, pull it open, take a peek, and step in.
Maybe you don’t even open the door.
You lock it and toss away the key.
Maybe the initiation occurs when we respond differently than we have before.
When the one who has spent a lifetime silencing herself speaks.
When the person who expects abandonment remains present.
When the one who has suppressed their desire allows themselves to want.
When the person who feels small takes up space.
When the person realizes she’s been rejecting someone’s experience of her because she first rejected herself.
When the one who’s afraid to be seen posts something on social media.
When the witch steps out of hiding.
Our response—not reaction—catalyzes the initiation.
This is why awareness alone rarely provides long-term healing.
🌱 Recognizing the Invitation
Perhaps awareness is less like healing and more like preparing the soil.
The gardener cannot force spring.
She cannot command the rain.
Or demand that seeds sprout on her timeline.
But she can tend the soil.
She can remove the rocks.
Pull the weeds.
Nourish the earth.
She can prepare for what will eventually arrive.
Awareness does something similar.
It helps us recognize the pattern.
See the wound.
It prepares us to recognize the invitation when it arrives.
Fate brings the weather.
Our response determines what grows.
Or withers.
🔥 Responding Differently Is the Healing
Fate also seems to arrive in its own timing.
Not ours.
I can become aware of a fear of banishment.
But awareness alone doesn't heal it.
Eventually, situations and circumstances present other invitations.
Another conversation.
Another rejection.
Another accusation.
Another moment when the wound rises to the surface.
And then a question emerges:
Will I respond the same way I always have?
Or differently?
The wound doesn’t go way.
We just respond to it differently.
That’s the healing.
That’s the initiation.
We can't demand the next initiation.
We can't order the next lesson from a catalog.
We wait for the invitation to arrive.
And when it does, we decide whether to open the door.
Or not.
🕯️ Where Our Attention Is Needed
About twelve years ago, I recognized that I carried a witch wound.
I could see my life through a different lens.
I could recognize patterns of fear, suppression, and exile.
I could understand that perhaps this wound extended beyond this lifetime.
Perhaps it traveled through ancestral lines.
Perhaps through stories, religions, cultures, and collective memory.
Perhaps through lifetimes.
The recognition mattered.
But recognition alone didn't heal anything.
Knowing I carried the wound wasn't the same as transforming my relationship with it.
Awareness changed my perspective.
When fate offers an invitation, I can see it as such.
I can open the door.
And respond differently.
Response changed my way of being.
Healing seems to happen in the space between what arrives and how we dare to meet it.
Not all healing can be forced.
You can’t skip ahead to the final chapter.
You can only meet what arrives and notice what it awakens.
And fate continually offers invitations.
And every invitation asks the same question:
Will you respond as the person you've always been?
Or will you respond as the person you're becoming?
Perhaps that is the initiation.
Not what happens to us.
But how we respond to it.
And who we become in response.
Perhaps when fate presents another invitation, we could engage with it instead of playing hide and seek with it.
Or avoiding it altogether.
Like a little monster hiding under the bed or in the back of the closet.
And we’re too scared to look.
So we avoid those hidden places.
We continue to banish parts of ourselves.
Our desire.
Our power.
Our truth.
We become the very force we once feared.
But when we don't engage with the little monsters, they keep returning.
Knocking louder and louder.
Not as punishment.
Not because we've failed.
But because the invitation remains unanswered.
And they desperately want us to R.S.V.P.
To show up.
See them.
Meet them.
Accept them.
Respond differently.
They’re not trying to hurt us.
They’re trying to show us where our attention is needed.
Maybe we have a conversation with them.
🚪 The Monster at the Door
Hello, little monster.
I see you there.
I feel afraid of you.
Oh.
You feel afraid too?
Tell me all about it.
What do you need from me?
What do you want from me?
Recognition?
Love?
Safety?
Acceptance?
Belonging?
No wonder you've been trying so hard to get my attention.
✨ Practical Magic
Perhaps practical magic isn’t what most people think it is.
Maybe this is what practical magic looks like.
Not banishing the monster.
Not pretending it isn’t there.
But sitting down beside it and asking:
“Tell me about yourself.”
Perhaps that’s the deepest medicine for the Witch Wound.
Not proving we were never witches.
Because many of us were.
And are. 😉
Not convincing the village to let us stay.
But refusing to abandon ourselves when the monster surfaces.
When the accusations happen.
When the fear arrives.
Perhaps practical magic isn’t about bending the will of the Fates.
Perhaps it’s about responding differently than we did the last time fate knocked at our door.
Perhaps that is the initiation.
Love,
Heidi
🌙 An Invitation
The Moon will continue presenting invitations.
The question isn’t whether they will arrive.
The question is how we'll meet them.
What invitation is being placed before you right now?
If you feel open to sharing, I’d love to hear about it.
And if you're ready to engage your own initiations more intentionally, you can explore my offerings here.
