About Emily
I have always loved anything to do with witches and magick. As a child, I consumed witchy media like nothing else. I watched Roald Dahl’s Matilda every time I was allowed to pick a movie at the BlockBuster and I obsessively marked on my calendar when Hocus Pocus would be on TV at Halloween in October. I was and still am a super fan of Harry Potter – in fact, my bachelorette party was Harry Potter-themed, and my most memorable Halloween costume was when I dressed up as a witch, outfit complete with a sparkling purple cape I made myself, at age 11. Every year, I throw one rager of a party, and guess what holiday it’s for. Yup, it’s an all-out shindig at my house on Halloween.
My first thoughts about witches as having anything to do with me for real were when my mom told me my grandmother, a genealogist, had uncovered that we were descended from sisters who were hanged as witches in Salem, MA during the Salem Witch Trials. At the time, I was probably in high school, and thought, wow, what a horrible thing to accuse and hang innocent people in order to take their land. What horror to have whole towns rally against a person for no good reason. I didn’t really understand that to be a witch actually meant something, and that the something had to do with what makes a woman* powerful.
My education in school left no room to consider witches could actually be magick or that magick existed at all. “Witch” in this context seemed to just be a term used inappropriately to describe a woman – it didn’t have any actual meaning other than as an accusation and ultimately a death sentence. I had trouble reconciling this meaning of witch in a historical context – a word which in my mind came to be devoid of magickal innuendo or power and imbued instead with a sense of victimhood – with the meaning of witch in popular culture with all of its connotations of magic, power, mystery, and delight. How could the same word mean powerless old woman hanged in Puritan Salem, MA and also powerful, self-possessed, mystically connected healer?
At some point, I put all of my witchy curiosity and confusion about the inherent dichotomy of the term on the shelf marked “Halloween” and left it there except for once a year when I take it out with the plastic pumpkins. That is, until recently.
In the fall of 2023, I started to become discontent with my job as a clinical pharmacist and diabetes educator. I felt powerless. I felt powerless to actually help my patients in a meaningful way and I felt powerless in my personal life, going to a job every day where I was buried under hours of documentation, and my time for myself outside of work had steadily shrunk away to almost nothing. I was grouchy, starved of sunlight, and not taking very good care of myself or the people most important to me. In February 2024, I gave my notice, and I jumped without another job to catch me.
As I left my role at the health center, I experienced one of the greatest gifts of my life – I was able to hug my patients goodbye. This was the first time I had hugged these folks whom I cared deeply for, and over and over, I felt like these hugs were some of the most powerful “treatments” I provided. These connections, not exactly forbidden, but certainly not encouraged, by the medical system, were part of an answer to a question I hadn’t quite formulated in my brain at the time.
I ended up finding a new job as a pharmacist, really a dream job for an ambulatory care pharmacist. In fact, I had personally dreamed about this exact job back when I graduated pharmacy school. The best thing I did, though, was I gave myself 4 weeks off between the two jobs. It was in this little month-long window that I came to know my destiny, or at least a piece of it, while I followed my feet around Key West, FL on a vacation I’ll never forget. I learned what lights me up, and it isn’t telling people what to eat and what medications to take, it’s helping people find their passion. I learned to believe in something wonderful, something we might call divine guidance, universal intelligence, or Source.
A couple weeks later, with my newfound self-knowledge in mind, I started my dream job at the Brigham, and quickly realized it wasn’t my dream job any more. The question that had crystallized in my mind was “am I helping people to live their happiest and healthiest lives in the best way I can in this setting as a pharmacist?” – and I knew in my heart the answer was no.
As I deliberated on what the flavor of this new endeavor would be, I danced around the idea of spirituality and how this would factor into my work as an academically trained clinician beholden to an accrediting board and license. I hemmed and hawed and tried to do it partway until I realized I couldn’t do this partway. I am a witch. And this is witchy work I am doing – I am practicing health and wellness with radical compassion and curiosity.
Welcome to Witchy and Well, a place where I have embraced what makes me powerful. I will help you find your magick too!
MORE ABOUT ME:
My wish for every human:
To know they deserve all the things the way Ellie knows she deserves all the things (especially love and snuggles)
My favorite quote:
We are all just walking each other home. – Ram Dass
My educational background:
Bachelor of Arts (BA) in English from Hamilton College, Clinton, NY
Masters in Teaching English (MA) from Columbia University Teachers College, New York, NY
Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) from MCPHS University, Manchester, NH
My employment background:
Ambulatory Care Clinical Pharmacist at Mass General Brigham, Boston, MA
Ambulatory Care Clinical Pharmacist at Lowell Community Health Center, Lowell, MA
Clinical Pharmacist at Lowell General Hospital, Lowell, MA
English Teacher, Pentucket Regional High School, West Newbury, MA
English Teacher, Hillbrook School, Los Gatos, CA
*I say what makes a woman powerful - this is not intended to exclude all other folks who embrace the identity of “witch” and do not identify as women, but rather to shed light on the fact that throughout history, the majority of persons persecuted for being witches were women, and it was their power and influence that made them targets. It is my hope that anyone who finds a home in this space, regardless of gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, etc will find their power too!
