initiation

Who is the Bog Hag? This archetype, familiar to us, known in our bones, surfaced for me in late 2023 when I was skulking a thread about perimenopause that came up in my search results. A woman wrote something about embracing the Hag she was becoming, flipping the bird to expectations and taking up residence in her Hag hut. Yes. That will do, I thought, my heart opened and immediately wrote the poem that ends this letter.

This is an old trick I learned as a fiction writer. When you get blocked, don't stop writing. Change course.

Return is the third phase of an initiatory rite of passage. In myth it often includes a ceremony of homecoming, coalescence, community honoring. On return the initiate may ritually take a new name, something symbolic of the new role or work they embody after transformation. Return can be a time of mourning, grieving and celebration simultaneously. It is paradoxical, an ending and a beginning, often without a place of pause in the cycle of transformation, but still marking a d

Telling a story of empowerment around these embodied experiences has been essential to my work, and this passage about disability as a corollary for power affirms what I have been feeling and thinking for a long time.

In the midst of transition I learned to trust my ceremonial practice. I’ve been through enough now to know it is the cornerstone of reciprocal consciousness, raising my awareness of the sacred balance of offering and receiving happening in every moment. When I feel off balance, overwhelmed or afraid, I turn to ritual — ritualizing my routine, my days and encoding my prayers in symbolic action.⠀⠀