I Am Pretty Much a Witch Now

For what is a witch but a woman unafraid of her shadows

Jun 21, 2026

How do I begin to put words to this magic? How do I pin it to a page?

It is not any hocus-pocus mouse-eared trifle. No pixie dust or holly wand. This magic is the deep green hum of a coastal forest, the night wing of owl, the curling tendril of creeping vine and crushed velvet of cat’s tail moss. The electricity of finger tips. This is that magic that holds the center of the planet in place; first birdsong, last light. The way you tilt your head to the stars and understand where you came from. The way you curl in to the hush of your own breath and remember your self. The way you tip in to the expanse of your own hot, florid heart. The way a universe opens inside you.

If you think I exaggerate, you have not been a woman in the woods at Hedgebrook.

A couple of weeks ago, I was. A woman in the woods. Alone in a cabin on Whidbey Island, one hour north of Seattle and then hook a left on the Puget Sound. Four decades ago, a woman named Nancy Nordhoff bought a farm overlooking Useless Bay, with Mount Rainier looming in the far off sky. She planned to live on the farm herself. But a different vision came to her as she walked the forty-eight acres of Douglas Fir, Hemlock, and Cedar. The land told her it wanted not to be a home for one woman, but for many. “A place for women to come and be in solitude and community.”

And so Hedgebrook came to be: a writer’s residency for women. Six cottages, situated in the green embrace of the forest. Far enough apart that each woman has total privacy, but close enough that you can see the light of the next cottage through the trees and know you are not alone.

I applied for the residency last year, sent in writing samples and an artist statement and all the reasons why I needed this: time with myself and my words and nothing else. Just as 2025 came to an end, I got word — they had a place for me. I’d go to Whidbey in May.

I can’t tell you how I counted down the days, how I thumbed through photos of the cottages and wondered which would be mine. How I pinched myself to make sure I hadn’t hallucinated the invitation. How I tried to temper my expectations. Nothing is ever quite as good as it seems, was the caution.

Except it was. Hedgebrook was as good. Better, even. Every notion I had, every dream. The reality of this experience outshone them all.

I arrived at Whidbey Island a bright red mess. Shards of my heart shining through.

It wasn’t all metaphorical. I hadn’t bled since January, but the morning I boarded the Mukilteo ferry, my cycle began. I took that as a sign — a potent sort of alchemy. Of transmutation. This, I felt, would be a time of release and renewal. A time of creation. (And if that kind of talk makes you squeamish, I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong witch’s cottage.)

The great gift of Hedgebrook is the time and the space to come home to yourself. I’d never say I dislike my life. By any metric, my life is gorgeous. Has been, for a very long time and only keeps getting more so.

And yet. Sheltered in the green of the forest, the call and response of barred owls outside my window, I realized I had never lived like this. Entirely at my own leisure. What time did I need to get up? Whenever I wanted to. What should I do with my day? Whatever I wanted to. There was no one else to care for, no one to feed, no errands to run, no kid to pick up, no dogs to crush pills for, no to-do lists, no weight of expectation. My only obligation was to show up at the Farmhouse for 5:30 dinner with the other women — a meal cooked up by a rotating cast of wildly talented chefs, served to us at a homey table overlooking Useless Bay.

Any goals, any accomplishments, any whim or wheedling, it was all mine to decide.

In the first few days, I couldn’t get over the freedom. I wandered the woods, walked to Deer Lagoon, combed the beach for strange stones, read a novel in the window well. I stayed up late for no reason at all. I woke when the morning birds began to sing, lay there in my loft and watched the light find its way through the tall trees, then rolled over and laughed into my pillow before I fell back asleep. Who even was I in the forest? A whole different woman.

Or maybe I was just myself. Unvarnished. Unscheduled.

Whoever I was, I liked her. Whoever she was, she couldn’t stop grinning. Like some kind of cat who got away with murder. Feather on her chin, blood on her fangs. Whoever she was, she belonged there. In the woods, on the island, with a pen in her hand.

Because I did write, from the first day, I did write. Three days went by before I dove into the depths of the book I had come to create. But in those early days I wrote a poem. I wrote a journal. I wrote pages that no one but me will ever see. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.

My cottage, the farmhouse, and spellwork in progress

For five months, I had been collecting research just for these days on the island. I had a pile of notes in my suitcase, and took full advantage of the large, L-shaped desk to lay everything out where I could see it. I even taped color-coded index cards on the walls and window frames, a luxury to have so much space in which to crack my project wide open.

There is a book I’ve been trying to write for almost seven years. A book I’ve been trying to write my whole life, maybe. I’ve had three false starts. Each time, I’d put it aside because the story just wasn’t flowing the way I wanted it to. But there, in the forest, I tapped a vein. The words were waiting for me when I woke up, ran behind my eyelids while I slept. Shimmered under the surface. I started to make connections between the research I had done and the story that lived in my brain. I began to think of myself as a feral writing gremlin because I’d sit down at the desk and five hours would pass before I looked up. It seemed that at last, in this place, I was ready.

I took breaks from my desk to go out into the trees. I downloaded music I hadn’t listened to in decades and danced around the cottage like a girl from fucking Mars. I wrung myself out and went back for more. I couldn’t stop laughing. Couldn’t stop staring around me in wonder like what is my life? Like what kind of sorcery?
I was so goddamn happy.

I read something, right before I got to Hedgebrook. It moved me, and I made it my intention for my time there…

Life is not theoretical. It is happening now.

Bodies change now. Opportunities disappear now. People die now. Illness progresses now. Love arrives now. Art either gets made or it doesn’t.

I’m not writing for the market. I am writing because it needs to exist.

(Adria Moses)

“I am here to make art, now.” I told myself. “I am writing because it needs to exist.”

Found Poems & Enchantments in the Whidbey Woods:

cottonwood fluff, falling like snow
locking eyes with an owl
following any mossy trail that caught my fancy
talking to the trees
solo dance parties
long, meandering walks
late night candlelit baths
crying as much as I needed to
waking, sleeping, eating, reading, writing, whenever the fuck I felt like it

I didn’t just make art in my time in the witch cottage. I became someone new. Someone more. And this is the part I really don’t have the words for.

There was a day early on, maybe my third day in the forest, I was walking back to my cottage from the woodshed with an armload of small split logs for my cast iron stove. Suddenly, from the forest floor, a flash of wing and an owl lifted silently skyward, settled itself on the branch of a Douglas fir. It fluffed its barred feathers, curled its talons into the branch, and then very deliberately turned its head downward and with night-dark eyes, stared straight at me. Into me.

I stood there on the forest floor, neck arched backward, mouth hanging open in the shape of awe. We looked at each other, the strigidae and I. For a small eternity. And I felt something shift aside within me. I felt something crack open.

A portal, perhaps. A galaxy.

I’ve never been big on woo. Too much Jesus early in life makes me a skeptic, especially to the kind of nonsense white women tend to peddle on the internet. But something happened to me in that moment. Something expansive. Fundamental. Too profound to pin down to this page.

Time will tell, I think, what tore free, broke loose. But I think it’s a revolution that’s been coming for a long, long time.

The world at large acts as if middle age is a travesty. As if menopause is a kind of dying. There is so much urgency around skin smoothing creams that reduce lines and wrinkles. So much insistence that women lose something vital when they tuck too many decades inside their craw. Not fuckable anymore, they say, and therefore not valuable. As if the inexperience and idiocy of youth is preferable to the ache and wisdom of age.

But there was a time when the crone was queen. When she was sought after for her knowledge, foresight, and intuition. When the witch in her cottage in the woods was the best kind of magic anyone had ever heard of. A woman in touch with the natural world, with the rhythms of the land and the water and the bodies they bore. Pulling threads from the ether to weave all manner of healing spells. A woman who knew her own mind, her own heart. The breaking light and the deepest dark.

May she be the woman I grow into. May she be the crone I become.

The Long Scrawl

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The Long Scrawl

I Am Pretty Much a Witch Now

For what is a witch but a woman unafraid of her shadows

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