Taking flight in the name of a good fight!

Know what’s really scary?  

Stigma. Particularly when it comes to mental health and neurodivergence.

Know who knows A LOT about stigma?

Witches.

Stigma is a word about as loaded as the word witch and I think that there is no better time than the crisp jewel toned days of October to clear the air when it comes to them both. So, I’m serving up something dear to me that I’ve been long brewing up in my cauldron:  

Welcome to Well Healed Witches.  

Here’s a bit about it.

What’s in a name? Why “Well Healed Witches”?

Words are powerful. Especially in a post algorithmic society spellbound by screens. Uttered as curses or blessings, words can be skillfully used or painfully misused. Meaning makers and story spinners that these little gems are - words have always been my favorite. Since I was young they are what have kept me going on my hardest days. So, believe me when I say that I’ve thought a lot about these three words. 

Witches

My middle name is Dorothy and like my namesake, for many years, I forgot that “I’d always had the power”. It took not just Galinda but a whole host of witches from the best folk and fairy tales to help me reflect and recover my way back to my most authentic sense of self. For that gift I am ever grateful. I owe my recovery in large part to them.

My enchantment with witches, since I was little, can be boiled down to this - like words (and in fact because of how they respect and wield them) witches are powerful. In all of their multicultural storied appearances over the ages they’ve done two things in particular that inspire the heck out of me; they’ve aspected the power full wise-woman archetype and they’ve rebelled. I look in the direction of “the witch” when I’m looking for a mirror in which to scry and conjur up my most courageous authentic self. In times of being pushed (again and again!) into fight or flight, I turn toward “the witch” for inspiration regarding how to craft new ways of being with ourselves and with one another. The longer I live, the more curious I get, “What is so dangerous about a wise, powerful woman taking action? And, when it comes to women challenging, rebelling against, and working together to change ill-fitting or down right harmful cultural “norms” - tell me, what’s so scary about that?”  

Apparently, for some people, a lot.  A whole Salem’s lot.  

I became acquainted with this intersection of superstition and fear on Rose and Ruth Avenues in Venice, California in the early 2000s. It was delivered right onto the doorstep of The Red Tent studio I had quietly opened for local women. Oh how I wish the street light on our corner had still been gaslit because if it had, most certainly, we could have caught the over-culture red handed in its crazy making of dimming and denying. In the two years that we inhabited that studio space we experienced a steady stream of bizarre, almost-comical, as well as a at times downright frightening actions “against” us that repeatedly showed how those who were bothered by us adhered to far more superstitious, occult, and taboo beliefs than any of the women inside ever did. We weren’t bad, evil, or “troubled” - as one local well-being magazine obliviously labeled us in a promotional “good news” story. We were women wondering why we had been fed so many lies about women and power. Why our bodies were not seen as blessings but, rather, as cursed. We were reveling in the relief of finally being together in the truth that we are ready made to tend and befriend each other - rather than endlessly compete and undermine. If there was any cackling coming from that building it was joyful not evil in origin. But that’s a whole other story...

For the sake of this story I mean to clear the air about the occult when it comes to well-healed witches. So, “Am I serious about believing in the supernatural accounts that trail behind fabled broom flights?” No. For me the natural world is super and more than enough. Nature is it. Nature is the magic. The stories are merely metaphors for understanding who we can become if we allow nature to work its magic of giving us perspective and insight in exchange for our undivided attention. I’ve found a Well-Healed Witch is a woman who turns to nature (rather than that spooky shadowy overculture) for a trustworthy reflection about her life. 

So, now that I’ve explained the witches part, I have to cast a circle back to shoes... 

Well Healed

“Well healed” is of course a play on the phrase “well heeled”. Many times where you find a hag witch in a tale you find some meaningful shoes in that story as well. Handmade, patchworked, or otherwise one of a kind (as in made of glass or rubies...) - fairy tale shoes emphasize an important point - what defines a well-heeled woman and what defines a well-healed woman are very different things indeed. Well-heeled calls to mind a person who is wealthy and when it comes to shoes - name branded. Well-healed, on the other hand...well, that is what this gaggle of witches is interested in. Our footing is in the wealth of well-being - in helping to heal the haunting experiences of those marginalized by the narrow, stunting, “ideals” and “norms” of our dominant systems and, together, craft a new way forward. In particular, we recognize the painful curses - stigma and shame - that are the insults added to the injury of “othering”. We are working to raise awareness, grow compassion, and offer support for their healing.  As an act of rebellion, we persist and pursue the well-healed life - in-spite of it all. Together, we chose the handmade shoes. You have that power too - you always have.

Ok, I’m in! When and how can I circle up with well-healed witches?

October is a big month for raising awareness, combating stigma, and envisioning new ways of supporting neurodiversity and mental health. This became clear to me years ago when I found myself around our homeschool kitchen table, with my weary head in my hands, staring down into a bowl of alphabet soup. That particular October was the month, with our house decorated with spirited homemade Halloween decorations, that I suddenly “caught a glimpse into the future” of our situation. It was as if the lonely, isolating, terrifying, and undoubtedly extremely important thing I was doing - homeschooling two neurodiverse learners who were not ready made to thrive in a traditional classroom - became a cauldron for scrying the future. I suddenly saw our homeschool days together as a crucible where all our acronyms mixed together, like alphabet soup itself, combining to make something exciting, at times frightening, and ultimately powerfully transformational for us all. It was a knowing that was only half cooked at the time, as we still had lots of simmering to endure, but it was a turning point for me. I began to trust that our exhausting efforts would not end with us. And, that even though we had been painfully pushed to the margins for childhood, I would find a way to write us back into a bigger story in a greater good kind of way.  

I took much solace and support in this knowing and I tucked it into my heart. I called upon it as my “cauldron cure” on the days I didn’t think I could keep going. Which were many. The letters in our homemade soup, beyond being sometimes backwards, and hard to form, contained among the acronyms both ADHD and CPTSD - and depending on how those two are combined on any given day... well, that “s” in stress can turn a cure into a curse pretty darn quick.  

Looking back now to those vulnerable and often volatile times - if I could offer something back to the mother that I was it would be more than compassion. It would be accompaniment - an offer to travel with and to lighten the load by sharing in the burden that is self-doubt, shame, and stigma. A very practical and important kind of magic. One that I hope through FUNdraising, writing, and peer-to-peer community support projects, we Well Healed Witches will help make manifest. We’ve boiled it down to a simple spell:

“Spell For Lightening The Load”

By the power of three:  Raising awareness.  Hexing Stigma.  Sweeping away shame! So mote it be!

So, this October (Dyslexia Awareness Month, ADHD Awareness Month, World Mental Health Day Oct 10, National Depression Awareness and Mental Health Screening Month) grab your broom and help us get things rolling with a the first annual “Well (W)Healed Witches” Full Moon Skate (or scooter, bike...) to, together,  combat the shame and stigma that (still!) all too often can make neuro-diversity feel like a curse.  Together, with the power of our stories we can flip the script and with some hocus-pocus we can focus on the gifts.