As I was sitting and thinking, trying to figure out why it felt so scary to put myself out there and introduce myself as a self love coach, especially to men, the answer came to me in my inbox. “Witch wound.”
The Witch Wound is the intergenerational trauma that has been passed down through our ancestors for being different, unique, working as a midwife, herbalist, healer. So the witch wound is the pain that we hold of a past life where we, ourselves, were persecuted and hunted for being what people perceive as “witches.”
The witch wound is borne out of the trauma from the witch trials, the mass murder of women in Europe and the Americas in which more than 60,000 women were persecuted, tortured, and killed. men were burned and killed for their knowledge and wisdom, too. To put that figure into perspective, that’s higher than the number of Americans who died in the Vietnam War. And many believe the actual death toll was far higher than the 60,000.
No one was safe from the witch trials. Women could be accused of being a witch for almost anything.
Spurned the advances of your feudal lord? Witch.
Dared to earn a living as an herbal healer or midwife? Witch.
Got a pet that seems to be especially dedicated to you? Witch.
Too outspoken? Witch.
What’s worse is that women were often tortured into turning on each other, even members of their own families. And that’s how we wound up with these collective wounds.
How the Witch Wound shows up:
- Being labeled as “seperate” or “other” or “bad”
- Disconnection from your own cultural lineage
- Disconnection from the healing modalities used by your ancestors
- Feeling disembodied from yourself
- Oppression of your personal beliefs and the freedom of those beliefs
- Oppression of your emotions
- A deep fear of speaking out and/or being seen
- Disconnection from your inherent intuitive abilities and gifts
- Isolation from others and their support
- A mistrust of other women or men who are not in your “inner circle”
- Constant fear of violence being used against you
How do we heal from this wound? How do we stop living from a place of fear and stop the intergenerational cycle we’ve been born into?
The first step is exactly the same as healing the Mother or Sister Wound — awareness.
What does this look like?
- Recognizing that it’s a choice now to live in constant fear and adhere to survival coping mechanisms
- Recognizing that we can longer turn a “blind eye” to the trauma, pain, wounding, and oppression that has been happening for centuries and is continuing to happen
- Choosing to do the internal work around these wounds and being brave enough to talk about them
- Grounding ourselves individually as we awaken to the pain and oppression of others
- Rewriting the narrative that we were born into and that keeps us “trapped” in the old stories
- Reclaiming ourselves, our pasts, our lineages, our pain, trauma, and our place in all of it
Essentially the energy is telling us that “you can no longer sit on the sidelines and watch. You must be an active participant now.”