I’m turning 40 next month.
“How does it feel to be 40?”
I don’t know.
I don’t even know if that’s a helpful question. It’s a common question. But is it a helpful question?
What’s been more helpful for me is closing my eyes and imagining the feelings I want to conjure on the day I turn 40.
Conjure.
When did I turn into a witch? I have no idea. But I started becoming very interested in this world about a year ago—right after last Halloween and right around the time that Lady Gaga dropped the first single off Mayhem, “Disease.”
Potions, elixirs, tarot cards, energy—words and concepts that I pushed back hard against for many years. I grew up around a very religious family. Once I discovered science and logic and reason, I dove in headfirst. I had found my new religion. But just as all disciplines, regardless of the “truth” of it, I have, on more than one occasion, found other frameworks more helpful in decoding my own mind and body.
What I’m trying to say is that witchcraft is fucking fun.
Witchcraft is art for the soul. Rituals as play. Science is nerds in lab coats. Witches are nerds that fly on brooms.
So how do I want to feel for 40?
Free.
Connected.
Healed.
But how do we get there?
Last year, The Monsters of Howl Harbor was conceived as a safe space for people to show up and be themselves—no matter who they are.
This year, The Circle of The White Witch is a safe space for our shadows to show up and reveal themselves—no matter what secrets lurk beneath the surface. When we are vulnerable and show our true selves in a space that’s judgment free, I believe that leads to something even more than connection.
Healing.
Witchcraft allows us to feel the tension of being and becoming. Of lightness and darkness. To dance along that line, exposing just enough of our true selves. And realizing that we’re okay. As kids, we learned to put on masks just to survive recess. As adults, we should be able to take them off—to sit in the circle unarmored, and finally feel all of us.
Without fear or judgment.
The seeds of healing might be planted as you journal in the solitude of your quiet apartment, but they only grow with the nourishing, half-tired, half-wired energy of sitting around a circle of humans who let you be exactly as fucked up and luminous as you are.
When we’re met with acceptance over exile.
When we discover that we’re not alone.
For a few years now, I’ve been slowly realizing and unwinding the very real social atrophying that I experience during the lonely quarantine of COVID.
And now that we can gather, it’s time to actually gather.
So. It’s time to retreat to a cabin in the woods and not ask a million logistical questions. Let’s obsess less over how many beds and bathrooms there are and obsess more over what rituals we’ll engage in together. It’s time to have a celebration for 24 straight hours—a marathon of connection where we forget about age and responsibility and the beautiful mess that is the world right now. It’s time to focus on ourselves. On our healing. On reconnecting not just to ourselves and each other but nature itself.
It’s time to remember that life is short as fuck and the only weapon we have against it is being present with people who nourish us, make us laugh, and make us feel seen.
And maybe with enough self-healing, we’ll emerge renewed, refreshed, rebirthed—as animals that can reenter society and spread that healing to others.
I truly believe that’s possible.
And we’re going to test this theory for my birthday.
In The Circle of the White Witch.