1,000 Witchy little risks to move BIG energy
When I was a kid, I sported a unibrow and swishy wind pants in several colors, I was comically bad at ball sports, I ate Pop Tarts for breakfast every morning, and I was afraid of trying anything new. I traveled back and forth between two parents’ houses with different part-time siblings at each, never quite feeling settled and never quite feeling home. I was shy and lonely, awkward and odd, and I wanted desperately to connect with other people, but it was hard to moor when out to sea.
I was young when I discovered my aptitude for academics; kind teachers as early as first grade showered me with praise and made me feel safe as I read aloud in front of the class or figured out how to do the math problem my own way. I worked diligently to please those generous teachers – if the assignment was to write a timeline capturing an historical period, I turned it into a quilt, ironing and sewing love into the dates and fabric. If the assignment was to write a poem, I wrote one good enough to get the teacher’s name in a published anthology of student poems. I found what I was good at, and I doubled down. I was a Student. I was Gifted. I was Smart.
Despite my deep-seated desire to connect with my peers, this became harder and harder to do as I took fewer and fewer risks. I went all in on academics and allowed this to be my identity. I didn’t have meaningful friendships with my classmates because I was in a constant competition with them in my head – I had built my whole identity on being the best student, and I was terrified all the time of losing that.
One day in seventh grade, I was home with my step-brothers - Alex, who is the same age as I am, and Mike, who is one year younger. It was after school, and there was a knock at the door. I answered it and there was Steve.
Steve lived about a mile from our house and knew Alex in passing, and for some reason, he decided to come over to our house that day. In a snowstorm. In sneakers. Unannounced. He had gotten lost at some point along the way to our house and had bravely, impressively, asked a mailman for directions. By the time he got to our house, he was frozen, his shoes soaked through.
The little lady in me was awestruck at having a boy at our house who wasn’t a brother, and with the internalized sense of hospitality so many little girls pick up subconsciously in their earliest years, I kicked into hostess mode. I offered him hot chocolate, tea, coffee, juice. Just hot water was what he wanted.
My brothers, Steve, and I spent the afternoon doing I can’t remember what, but I do remember exactly how I felt. I loved that boy. He treated me like a person when I was a jumbled up ball of stress and anxiety and feeling adrift. He appreciated my intelligence and he didn’t let me turn him into a competitor. He made me feel worthwhile. He even came back. Many more times.
Steve was one of my first friends and we mattered to each other long after seventh grade. We were each other’s biggest advocates in bar trivia and we were each other’s dates to weddings. We cheered each other on, but we also called each other out on our shit. He told me when I was being a judgmental jerk, and I told him when he wasn’t seeing someone else’s point of view.
In 2014, I met my future husband and Steve found a new home where his mother had moved in Charleston, SC. I wish I could say we kept in better touch after his move, but we were living our separate lives in our separate places. Years passed without more than a happy birthday text here and there. Even worse, Steve was that one magnetic friend of the bunch, the glue of our group, and with his parting, I lost contact with many of the mutual friends we had made along the way.
In the time that passed, I became increasingly discontent with myself. Despite being married to a loving husband, living in my dream home, and having reached my career goal as ambulatory care pharmacist within two years of graduating, I felt like I didn’t have much agency over my life. The culmination of years of unresolved doubt over my own self-worth had left me feeling powerless in my job working 10+ hour days, unhappy with my weight, and trying for a baby I wasn’t ready for.
In late summer of 2022, I gathered the post-pandemic anxious little threads of myself together and organized a reunion of our gang. Steve was able to make it up from Charleston, and in September 2022, we met at my family’s place in Chesterfield, NH.
When we were there together, I got a piece of myself back. I distinctly remember hugging Steve and the feeling of infinite acceptance – despite years between our last meeting and this moment, despite the way our bodies had grown in less-than-ideal ways, and despite the vibrant pieces of ourselves we had lost and the grunge we’d gathered on our souls along the way, I felt home. It was a powerful realization; without feeling like I had earned this affection, and in fact feeling the opposite, like I didn’t deserve it at all, he gave it – for the second time in my life.
That hug and his unconditional friendship set off a powerful positive upward spiral in my own life, and I got to thinking - what if we treated everyone this way? What if we treated everyone as though they deserve radical, unconditional love? What if we gave this radical, unconditional love to ourselves? Some friends are able to spark such thoughts.
It was about a week later that I started to make some intentional changes in my life – I started to wake 30 mins earlier every morning to be able to give myself time to eat breakfast and drink coffee before I left for work instead of waking with just enough time to shower and get out the door. That time sitting alone and doing nothing other than sipping hot coffee was magick. It felt like a way to love myself.
That extra 30 mins turned into an hour, and I set off a routine hopping on the elliptical for 30 mins before breakfast. That daily exercise turned into making different choices about the foods I was choosing to nourish my body, and it turned into me valuing my time and my life enough to set some boundaries at work. It turned into a series of little positive risks, leaps outside of what was comfortable, which led me to a place I never imagined was possible, a place where I felt I could make this life something I chose, something beautiful.
Today, I set out to take some more witchy little risks, and to do it on purpose and with all the love I have. Since I spent a good chunk of time in the medical field, I value a well-designed trial. There won’t be any blinding or controls, but I will track the results. What will happen if I take 1,000 witchy little risks? I hypothesize I will be able to move some big energy. I hypothesize that with these little leaps I take to grow, I will end up with a big magickal life.
Let me know if you want to join me, or perhaps if you need that one first big hug to get you started on your own witchy little adventure. We’ve got this!
The gang in Chesterfield, NH October 2014