There was a time when I didn’t know if I would survive myself.

I don’t mean that dramatically—I mean that in the quiet, heavy way where you wake up every day carrying grief, fear, anger, and exhaustion like stones in your chest. I was taught, like many women, to be small. To wait. To depend. To hope someone else would rescue me, validate me, or make things better.

Growing up, I was deeply insecure. I was bullied often. I was the strange girl—the weird one. The girl who never quite fit in, no matter how hard she tried. I always felt like the girl on the outside looking in, pressing my face to the glass of a world that didn’t seem to have a place for me. I raised my voice again and again, trying to be heard in a crowd full of people, yet somehow always felt invisible.

I was surrounded by others, but profoundly alone. No one seemed to understand me, and for a long time, I didn’t understand myself either. I spent so much of my life trying to belong—trying to be palatable, acceptable, normal—trying to fit into spaces that were never meant to hold me.

Witchcraft did not rescue me.

Witchcraft taught me how to rescue myself.

When I found my way to the Craft, it wasn’t about aesthetics or trends. It was about survival. It was about taking my power back when I had been taught to hand it over again and again—to partners, to authority, to expectations, to fear. Witchcraft gave me something I had never been encouraged to claim before: agency.

Through ritual, I learned that I am not helpless.
Through spellwork, I learned that intention matters.
Through devotion, I learned that I am not alone—but I am also not meant to be dependent.

The gods and goddesses did not teach me submission. They taught me sovereignty.

They taught me that strength does not mean hardness. That power does not mean dominance. That being a strong woman means standing in your truth even when your voice shakes, even when the world tells you to be quieter, softer, more agreeable.

Witchcraft taught me to listen—to really listen.

To my intuition.
To my body.
To my dreams.
To my ancestors.
To my spirit guides who whispered when I was too afraid to speak.

I learned that intuition is not imagination. It is memory. It is knowing. It is the voice that survives even when everything else is stripped away. The more I trusted it, the louder and clearer it became. The more I honored it, the more it protected me.

I stopped looking outside myself for permission.

I stopped waiting for someone else to decide my worth.

Witchcraft taught me independence—not isolation, but self-trust. It taught me that I could call on divine forces, yes, but that magick flows through me, not around me. That I am a participant in creation, not a bystander to my own life.

It taught me that being a strong woman doesn’t mean never needing help—it means knowing when to ask, when to stand alone, and when to walk away.

It taught me boundaries.
It taught me protection.
It taught me how to transmute pain into power.

And perhaps most importantly, witchcraft taught me that survival can be sacred.

That healing doesn’t always look gentle.
That transformation often comes through fire.
That I am allowed to change, shed, evolve, and become.

Witchcraft didn’t just save my life.

It gave me ownership of it.

And that is a power no one can ever take from me again.