Welcome to my sacred space

some history, some magic, some plans & my sacred WHY

Hello sweet soul, I’m Sarah

After waiting the fashionable amount of digital time, I’ve decided to join the party and add my voice. What a lovely platform! I can already tell that the abundance of beauty and depth available here will curate and call in exactly the right hearts desiring my particular brand of magic. I’m happy to have landed here in the realm of word weavers, and glad to have you here with me. Welcome.

My fundamentalist roots

I was born in the Deep South (Georgia, USA to be precise), into an evangelical/endtimes/apocalyptic Christian family, the oldest of eight kids. My dad was never diagnosed, but he was almost certainly a borderline personality disordered human, pathological liar with grandiose delusions. My mom homeschooled us until she absolutely could not, sometime around my 18th year. She finally kicked my father out when I was nineteen, but by that time, I had already been living with (had been placed with by “the word of God”) the leader of our church (cult) for two years. Among other things, I provided childcare for her four daughters, cleaned her home and ran around doing all the different various tasks she required to earn my keep in the apostle’s house. There was abuse in that house as there was in my family home, and because both wielded the fear of God as their preferred weapon and prod, I was effectively subdued into terrorized obedience. Dating was forbidden. Secular music was forbidden. Most movies were forbidden. Reading anything outside the Bible or church-approved books was forbidden. One day I’ll spend the time and energy to write more thoroughly about this experience, but not today.

It took me years to eventually escape that life, and in the summer of my twenty-third year, I drove myself and two black garbage bags filled with all my belongings in this world to my mother’s home and began a healing journey. I sold my car and changed my last name so I wouldn’t be found (yes they came looking for me), and after a long time, I started to feel safe.

My spiritual awakening

The Sacred Feminine found me in the mud, face down, arms and legs weary from the battle and a wicked case of regret, resentment and shame wrapped around me like a filthy cloak. I’d been emotionally, spiritually and psychologically battered, and my soul was screaming for peace, but more so, clarity. Why had this happened? How did this series of insane events have power over me and how would this shape the rest of my life?

I was ripe for an awakening, but just didn’t know it. I lived a short period as a proclaimed atheist. I hated every notion of spirituality, religion and anything to do with god or spirit. I was deep in the descent, losing myself and floundering, unmoored after years of steady (if terrifying) solidity and religious anchoring. Someone gave me a Doreen Virtue deck, Healing with the Fairies. Somewhere a book by Sylvia Brown ended up found its way onto my kitchen counter - Mother God - it was titled. It was all Greek to me. I knew god the father. But mother? My spine tingled and my stomach jumped at the heresy. Interesting.

Then I found Sue Monk Kidd’s The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. It changed me forever. I never looked back. Soon after finishing that, I found Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance, Merlin Stone’s When God Was a Woman, and so very many more treasure writings that became my teachers, women teachers in my own private unlearning and detoxification.

WITCH

I ran into the arms of the Great Mother. At last, God in an image that spoke for me, to me, OF ME. I read everything I could get my hands on, tried all kinds of spells and rituals, finding the ones that felt right and holy to me. I began remembering - my Self, my soul, my personal power, my voice. I began to take it all back, retrieving myself one red thread at a time. Ellen Dugan’s witchery books were a precious and gentle hug around my shaking witch shoulders. Judika Iles provided encyclopedic information on all things witchy and magical. I took up a daily yoga practice that was far more devotional and prayerful than cardiovascular in its intention. I began to unwind all the deep tension within my body and started hearing my own subtle hum.

I hid my books and tools whenever people came over. I did that for a very long time. But eventually, truth will rise and mine did. I came out of the broom closet bit by bit. I went back to school and got my license in massage therapy and energy healing. I began reading tarot for myself and then others, and then created actual sessions for purchase. People from all over the place began booking with me, asking for clarity, healing, space holding. The Witch was most certainly IN.

Spirit began speaking to me on behalf of others, sometimes loved ones who had crossed over, sometimes angels or other guides, sometimes deities and ascended masters. I began to distinguish their different voices and the wisdom they brought through was a balm and encouragement to myself and those who received their messages with an open heart and mind.

Poet & Author

I’ve written since I was a little girlchild, weaving fantasies out of fireflies and cattails. Poetry is my first love language, my first fluency. What arose so naturally was the words to describe my spiritual path. I wasn’t interested in writing love poems, romances and erotic encounters. I didn’t want to write stories of fictitious people crashing into events and experiences. I yearned to reveal the beautiful underbelly of the divine, the glittering sacred of the dark descent. The imagery of the unseen realms is dense and rich within my life and love, and I stole every spare moment to attempt coherence in ink and paper - always reaching, always not quite grasping. Rumi, Hafiz, Maya Angelou, David Whyte, John O’Donohue ~ these master teachers poured words over me like warm maple syrup, coating my eyes and ears with the sacred and holy waters.

In 2016, I self published my first book, Her Strange Angels: a book of invocations, beauty words and divine presence. It was a pivotal moment in my becoming, to have gestated and then birthed that work into the larger world in the midst of a XIII-Death year (in the sacred tarot). I wrote prose of my awakening, of my struggle, of my bleeding heart and aching soul. The words traveled the world and women all over have reached out to me with their precious thanks. Is there anything sweeter than knowing something you’ve created has brought life and light into a darkness?

Now, I find myself at that same point in the spiral once again, again living out a XIII-Death year albeit one layer deeper, closer to my own soul center. My next book, Midlife Isis, will be published by Inner Traditions, and this time, the platform larger, the support structure more layered than little old me, I will change and evolve again. My work has pulled me deep into the initiatory territories of the midlife queen, the sovereign empress within each woman’s journey, and Midlife Isis provides a luminous map through that terrain. She is currently being readied for release, and I hope to offer a pre-sale date soon.

What you will receive here

Beauty, magic, ritual, sacred writing and prose poetry. Channeled messages, seasonal observances, witchy living, spells, incantations, wise woman pathwork, and more. I want to grow a community here, I want to host circles, to connect with YOU, sister. My heart has always been to create something lasting that feeds the heart and expands the soul within women. That is my highest, holiest work. With my Pisces sun and a Cancer ascendant, I hold gentle comfort as medicine as you make your way through - it all. My Aries moon tolerates no manipulations or lies, lives with fiery outrage at injustice, and stands as warrior and protector for those being victimized. My calling is for women, women leaving the destructive systems of power and moving back to their feminine root. My work is to shore up and comfort the woman deep in descent, reminding her. of her inevitable return to the surface and the land of the living. My work is to hold, nurture and validate the lived experience inside the truth that always abides. I am here for you. You are welcome here, as you are.

I’ve walked the path of the wounded healer, and have retrieved medicines for the sharing. I’ve been living the seasons of motherhood, more than two decades of partnership with my best friend and husband, the realities of owning and running a small business, testing and teasing boundaries and benevolence within my practices and daily obligations. I have wisdom to pour out. I have sweetness to share. I have ears to hear your stories and questions. I have a heart big enough to welcome all of your real to this space, and we will sit at the witch’s fire together, summoning the spirits and whispering the old stories.

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