Alexandra Hughes 0:03
Hi, Don, welcome to the witch hunt Podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today. Hey Alex,
Speaker 1 0:10
I'm equally excited, if not more, so to be here with you. Thanks so much for the invite.
Alexandra Hughes 0:17
It's a real honor and pleasure and this is going to be such a juicy important educating conversation for our listeners and for myself. But let's begin with you off the cuff introducing yourself. Yeah.
Speaker 1 0:35
So off the cuff My name is Dawn Moore. I am probably a multiple generation which although I am still on raveling that ancestry, living loving laughing and learning on the unseeded and surrendered territories of the Algonquin initial avec people whose land I try to honor every day by walking on with great respect and gratitude. It is the land that holds the majority of my practice. And I feel very tethered to this land. And my craft is in an our kids social justice, a eclectic weirdo witch who wants to get other witches involved in the revolution, and in bringing change to this world that is so much overdue.
Alexandra Hughes 1:31
Right, you've convinced me already. Let's go.
Unknown Speaker 1:37
Sunrise.
Alexandra Hughes 1:39
I you know the message that you have done is so and the work that you do is just so important. Let me ask you to begin, how do you define the word witch or your experience of being a witch? And this can turn into a story or it can be a one sentence answer.
Unknown Speaker 2:02
Whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 1 2:05
Which so I mean, I go back to the definition that I was taught, which is to bend shape to spark. And so for me, I come to witchcraft, formally, very, I guess, late in life, because I was raised in a very staunchly Christian family as the black sheep. And when witchery finally found me, I finally understood my black sheep nature, why I didn't seem to fit with these other things that were going on around me or hold the same values. And to me it was, it really came up through having an intuitive sense of injustice. And then the futility of being a child and not being able to do anything about it. And then carrying that feeling through into my adult hood and realizing oh, grownups actually do get to do stuff about injustice. And, you know, luckily being put in contact and in relationship with wonderful guides and teachers along the way who were there at exactly the right moment. To show me the next step I could take into working on creating a more compassionate, a more equitable, a more inclusive or more loving, a less warmongering, a less materialistic, a less resource, hungry kind of people. And so witchcraft to me not only became a way of coming back to myself, because I was raised in a tradition that was not really mine. And then it also became a guide for what to do with all this energy of injustice that I had in me, but that had no place to go. And so witchcraft finally gave me and because being a witch and claiming my identity as a witch finally gave me that kind of not it's not a moral compass, but the imperative, the spiritual framework to say like, it's not actually even a choice to act. It's your obligation. Right, and it's all of our obligations. If we are here to bend to shape and to spark then obviously, we have to be in the middle of this struggle. Right? And so to me, witches are healers. And I think we know which is very well as healers at this particular moment in time. I think we need To remind ourselves that witches are also warriors. They are revolutionaries. They are catalysts for change. They are the fighters, they are the protectors of the week of the ones who can't protect themselves. And if witches are all that as well, then witches have never been more needed in this world than we are right now.
Unknown Speaker 5:23
Oh, I
Alexandra Hughes 5:24
just got full body shivers shivers up Absolutely. Like, you know, and that is one of the questions like why now why this rise in the Divine Feminine now why is everybody feeling called by this word, and the six not everybody, but a lot of women and men and everything are being called in, you know, by this word and what it means to people. And it's because there's a need a desperate need, right?
Speaker 2 5:56
Can I can read like,
Alexandra Hughes 6:00
I want to dissect a little bit and get into the minutiae. And then I want to talk about how I immediately said, Women, and then I said, Mom, and then I said everything, but because I want to break that down. And I want you to lead that conversation. But let me first ask you, you know, what are the injustices that you witnessed and that you experienced? What is tell me about little Dawn, tell me about the little dawn. And maybe I don't know if you remember a moment in time, when you realized, when you saw
Speaker 2 6:33
the candle, light the torch, I think that that
Speaker 1 6:40
realization actually came a little bit later. So it's not so much me as a child, but me as a very young adult. And the story that I always tell like my sort of, if we were Buddhist, I would say that this is my kick to the head story, right? So I was out when I was in grad school, I was out with two friends, we were gonna go to the bar and have some drinks, we decided to stop in the back alley and smoke a joint as you did back in 2000. Because it wasn't legal to just smoke joint wherever you want it, right. So we were sitting, you know, looking out over this Park in downtown Toronto smoking and joined before we went to the bar, and one friend of mine was a black guy. One friend of mine was a Filipino guy. And then I was there the white woman, right? And we look at this park, and we see you know, there's some dogs running around. And then we see this guy start to beat on this dog. And all three of us are like, holy shit, what do we do like, this is awful. We need to stop this. And my black friend and my Filipino friend, both guys, they get up to go confront the guy, me, the woman, white woman, I pick up my phone to call. And my friend Terry grabs me by the wrist. And he scared me for a second I thought what the hell is this? And he looked me in the eye. And he said, Who's getting in the back of that cop car, Don, who? And I said, Fuck, yeah. Right. And I hung up the phone. And that was like such a profound education to me that I was about to put my friend into grave danger. Because I hadn't checked my own white privilege or thought about it enough to recognize the implications of my own privileged actions, that I had the ability to not put myself in physical danger to stop an animal from getting hurt to call somebody else to do it. And that I would be safe in that encounter no matter what. But my bipoc friends won't be. And I can't put them in danger. So we have to find another way. So that for me was the moment of realizing that, okay, the justice system we have is not a justice system. It's an injustice system, we can't turn to it for any kind of support or protection. So what do we do instead? Because we got to make it through this life. Right? And what do we do because which is also we have an obligation to do what we like, but to cause no harm. Right? So how do we intervene? So even when people are struggling and doing crappy things to each other? How do we intervene in a way that doesn't cause additional harm? And that includes not bringing in the violence of the state for me because that's where so much of my work lives
Alexandra Hughes 9:43
Wow, thanks for that story. It's it is it's so true. You know, the the different ways you choose to act without even thinking twice, right? Just because you were Born and the stories that you hold inside are the stories that you hold inside. Right. But that lack of awareness can lead to so much damage.
Unknown Speaker 10:09
Absolutely, yeah.
Alexandra Hughes 10:11
Yeah. And that's in Toronto. Like, one of the most when we moved here, I looked it up. It's actually one of the top three most diverse cities in the world. And one of the things I love about it is that you've got so much diversity and in general, people get along. Yep. Right, in general. But yeah, wow. Okay, so then what happens? So then you realized, you've got, you know, bipoc, friends, communities or neighbors have a different experience? And what did you decide? Or what what was the path that opened for you at that point? So then
Speaker 1 10:56
I started thinking more were is actually watched a documentary about this woman who was just kind of quietly walking around the world being this route, amazing, badass social justice activist. And the question that she asked herself over and over again, is where's the shit in this place? Because wherever the shit is, that's where I'm needed. And she would go to the darkest, crappiest places, because she would know that those are the places that have been forgotten. So I asked myself the same question and said, Where's the shit in this country. And of course, there's a lot of places that I could identify, but one that was very readily apparent to me was the prison system. And that's not because I had any direct experience with it. But it was more so learning vicariously through particularly racialized friends of mine, like how many of them so that same friend of mine, he, I met him when I was teaching him as an undergrad because one of his cousins had been shot in a drive by shooting, right. And then in the drive by shooting was perpetuated by somebody else he knew. So that person was in prison. So I was watching this whole scenario unfold, and seeing like four families decimated by this one incident, right. And then seeing what was happening to the person in prison and realizing that things were just getting worse. Right, and that whatever whatever state they entered prison into, they were most certainly going to exit in a worse state. And I couldn't abide by that. And I couldn't abide by, you know, because at the same time, I went into a prison for the first time, I could not abide by a world in which we thought it was okay to put another human being in a cage. Let's think about that for a second. In what world is it okay to put any living creature in a cage, let alone a human being. Right? We put witches in cages to burn. Right? Human beings do not belong in cages. Nothing belongs in a cage. And the first time I saw a human being in a cage, a little part of my heart died, but also a little fire about lit in me that said, like, this is not acceptable. And I will spend the rest of my life fighting this because it is not acceptable. Not in Canada, not anywhere. But we are one of the richest countries in the world. Surely, we can think of a better solution than to put people in cages.
Alexandra Hughes 13:58
You know what, what blows my mind about what you what you've just said is that nobody's ever said that to me before nobody's ever said what kind of a world do we live in where we put people in cage or any living creature in a cage? Right? And it just occurred to me what kind of but it's it's just become so normalized, it's just it's like the only the punitive system is it's the only system we we think we know. Right? But I got so excited when you sent me your bio yesterday and I read about your work with inclusion and decolonization and prison abolition and gender based violence and, but but those three first words that I said inclusion, decolonization and prison abolition,
Unknown Speaker 14:54
can we
Alexandra Hughes 14:56
speak a little bit to how They dance together and about cuz you know what people are gonna say they're gonna say, well, what's the alternative? If you've got a serial rapist or a serial, or like a mad a madman, you know, who's gone around killing people? What else are we going to do with them? Right? So tell me, Don, tell me tell me the new way. And I also want to say just sorry, I do talk a lot during my interview. But
Speaker 1 15:30
Alex is talking about with her hands to really enjoy.
Alexandra Hughes 15:37
Yeah, and like I've already cried twice anyway. But, you know, I think the fact that we identify with a demographic, you know, witches who have been in cages burned, you know, on the periphery of society, like, it makes us so much more aware of the shifts that need to be made, but also the pain. Like we've, you know, we've lived it in lives, many lives. And so I understand when you talk about that little piece of your heart die, and sparking something inside of you. So anyway, thank you.
Speaker 1 16:25
Well, you're welcome. And thank you for giving me another entry to just get even louder about this, because I do want to be loud about it. Because you're right. People don't think about these issues. And it upsets me but it also pisses me off, because it's an easy way out, right? It's like hiring somebody else to clean up your dirty bathroom. Right? Like, I'm sorry that your bathrooms dirty, you gotta clean it yourself. Right? That's your mess, right? The fact that we have people out there in this world who are hurting each other is our mess. It is not about these one, that one individual person. Right. If you go back in the history of any single person that you meet in prison, you will find trauma, you will find abuse, you will find neglect to levels that you will find on imaginable. And that go on for their entire lives. Like these are the people who have been the most wounded. And instead of meeting them with love, we meet them with hate and violence. And then not surprisingly, they come out the other end, hateful and violent. So I understand people's fear. But I think we have to also like, take a breath. And like, get some facts out there. Right? So here's a fact. Do you know the most likely reason why somebody goes to prison? is drunk driving. Why is it drunk driving because drunk driving is really easy to prove. Right? All you have to do is blow over on a breathalyzer test. So this idea that we have that prisons are teeming with monsters, I mean, I lost a friend of drunk driving when I was 19. And then again at 22. Like, I don't have a lot of love for drunk drivers. And I do not think that drunk drivers are such a menace to society that they are saving us by locking them in prison. Right? They are much easier and cheaper ways to deal with drunk driving, like having breathalyzers attached to every car, right? car doesn't start if you blow over, it's a very simple solution, we get rid of a big chunk of the prison population there. Folks also don't recognize that almost like half the prison population is in for either doing something that wouldn't have been legal or wouldn't have been illegal for either you or me. So they're on probation or parole. And they're told they can't be in a certain part of the city and they can't associate with a certain person or whatever. And then they have one bad day and things screw up and they end up on the bus with the person they weren't supposed to associate with. Well, now they're gonna go back to prison for that. Right? So that's like, those are the five like, almost the top five reasons why people are in prison is not because they're scary axe murderers, right drinking and driving, which is absolutely problem needs to be solved. And then people doing things because judges told them they couldn't do them. The percentage of the prison population that is genuinely violent and a threat to society is a very, very, very, very small and those people could easily we could keep one prison. There's probably 150 of them in this country may Be. But the rest. I mean, we know we've had prisons in Canada for 150 years. After 150 years, that's enough data to show us whether or not they're effective. So after 150 years of having prisons, we should have no more crime, right? Because prisons are meant to stop crime.
Unknown Speaker 20:22
Guess what, Alex?
Alexandra Hughes 20:23
They're not meant to stop crying. I don't think they were designed with that intention. I think there I hang over from a time where there was no intention. It was just about putting the baddies away.
Speaker 1 20:40
Sure, and the undesirables and the ones who could be dangerous, right? Like the witches, the ones who think differently, the ones who have revolutionary ideas, the ones who are not maybe so down with capitalism or colonialism, right? And what do we find? When we look at the prison population right now, Canada has just surpassed its darkest goal, or its darkest threshold yet in its carceral history. Over 50% of our women's prison population in Canada is indigenous, indigenous people make up 3% of the Canadian population, half of the women inside prison in Canada are indigenous. That right there should give every single person listening, a huge moment to pause and think very deeply about the relationship between inclusion and decolonization. Because Canada took a very deliberate decision to indigenize the prison. Right, so we now have these prisons that are called Healing lodges. And they're supposed to be ways for indigenous people to reclaim their last traditions, which absolutely also needs to happen. But the logic is backward, right? We are waiting for indigenous people to already be criminalized before we give them resources to support their reentry into their own cultural traditions. And we are spending billions of dollars creating these institutions of state violence, to allow the Canadian state the same state that did all this violence to them to now educate them about their own cultures. When we could have instead put resources into indigenous communities in the first place, education, health, clean water, adequate housing, employment opportunities, right. And if you take care of those basic needs, people don't commit crime. Right. So we would have right there a massive drop in the prison population. We would also have a massive push back against one of the most violent colonial institutions that we have, which is the prison, right? Because you're absolutely right. When you said to me earlier, prisons weren't designed to stop crime. You're right. They were designed to contain dangerous, quote unquote, dangerous populations. So in Canada that started with the Chinese who are no longer required after the railroads. So why did Canada have its first drug law? It was so that there could be a crime for which Chinese people could be convicted, so they could be thrown into prison because they were no longer wanted. Right? And then you follow the history through you see, the inclusion of cocaine and marijuana become criminalized, that's a great way to pick up all the black people. Right? And you go through history, and you see that the system just keeps expanding to catch more and more people who are a threat to the status quo. So when it comes to prison abolition, I ask people to think about three things. First, think about the cost. We spent $20 billion last year in our federal budget on prisons, and we spent 5 billion on health, that's after a global pandemic. Okay, 20 million, 20 billion on prisons, 5 billion on health. We spent 20 billion on prisons and 2 billion on education. We spend 20 billion on prisons, and we spend 3 billion on indigenous and Aboriginal infrastructure. So our resource allocation is seriously messed up. And if we simply moved the money around, then we would give people a fighting chance at living decent lives where they would not be criminalized because they're living in dignity, without you know, being in overcrowded, unsanitary living conditions. Because we have to remember to When we treat people like that, we're, we're saying to them, you're not valuable. Right? And when somebody feels invaluable what possible incentive? Do they have to go along with the rules of the society that's rejecting them and telling them they're trash? Right? If somebody tells me, I'm trash and I walk into their house, do I feel compelled to follow the rules of their house? No. I just want out of that house. And if I break rules along the way, fine. But I don't want to be in that house. Right? Indigenous people racialized folks in this country, they're in this house. And the rules of this house are set up to make it impossible for them to stay in the house without getting
Alexandra Hughes 25:46
a feel like so much of this conversation is about trauma. Yeah. And instead of like peeling the layers off, gently holding space to heal, were like, adding layer after layer after layer. And and building the infrastructure to support which is the prison system. It's like, so backwards. I
Speaker 1 26:20
absolutely. And it's, but it's not just the prison system, right. It's all of these systems that we've developed, that for that, force us to rely on the state or strangers or professionals, because they they're designed to cut off our community ties, right. They're designed to cut off my ability to trust you, Alex, and your knowledge and wisdom to help me through a difficult period. Right? Even though I know you have the capabilities and the skill set to do that for a certain problem that might come up in my life, right? But I'm not supposed to call you I'm supposed to call telehealth, who will then direct me to a social worker who then may launch an investigation into my children and all the rest of it, which then also further alienates people or or, you know, if we're talking inclusion, it excludes more and more people, because many people fear the state because their interactions with the state have not been particularly positive. Right? And so really, what I see this as, as a call back to community care, right, it's a call back to like, can't we trust each other? Can't we find ways to mutually support each other, so that you're not calling me in the middle of the night telling me your kid just got arrested? Because something went horribly wrong. You know. So I think that, you know, as witches, like, we are so well positioned to call back together that community to call people back to each other, right, and to caring for each other. So that we don't have to rely on these institutions that not only failed, but are also extremely expensive, like they're wasting our resources. And they're not fixing anything. So maybe it's time for us to start fixing things and using those resources in much more productive ways.
Alexandra Hughes 28:38
Tell me about why you think witches are especially well, I mean, we've talked about, like, let's say the understanding or empathetic acts, right. But what else? Is it about witches that make them well positioned to do this work that you're more so than the average neighbor? That would mean that. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 29:08
Um,
Speaker 1 29:12
I mean, we're intuitive, aren't we? Right? And we're trained, like, not trained, but I mean, like, we just are intuitive. And so, you know, I think witches are beautifully positioned to do this kind of work because, you know, we've done enough of our own work to be able to sit in, you know, to sit quietly in a situation and really deeply understand or at least know how to go about asking questions to really understand what's happening. Right, to not make assumptions to not put our own stories into things right. But to you know, we all We talk often about letting the mystery unfold. Right and for me Sometimes that mystery is just like, sit back and let this person tell you their story. Like, yeah, they've got a file, you know, and a rap sheet and all this other stuff, all this noise around them. But like, you need to know who this person is, right? That noise needs to go away. This is a human connection. Right? And people who are in prison, are desperate for human connection. You know, you know, we all live through the pandemic and having so, so much limitation put on our ability to even touch each other. And then you amplify that by like, literally not being able to touch any other human being. Right, so I go to prison, and there's guys who will, they'll sit across the table from me, and they'll be like, I'm imagining you hugging me. It's not like a sex thing. It's just that you're not a violent or angry person. And I would just love to feel your arms around me right now. So like, I'm not trying to be weird, but I just want you to know, like, I'm just imagining right now. And, like, I'm in there trying to be a professional. But of course, my heart's like, Yeah, I'm hugging you back right now. Like,
Speaker 2 31:10
that is so sad. It's so sad.
Speaker 1 31:15
And, you know, and then we have to think like, okay, so if, if that's what we're doing to people, we're conditioning them to, like, survive without even the basic comfort of human touch. Then, like, We've really lost our way. Right? If, if this is how people are supposed to get better, and then, you know, and you said earlier, so astutely, like, it all comes down to trauma, right? And witches are healers, right? And this is where I'm gonna get a little annoyed with our community, because we spend a lot of time and I see a lot of energy putting being put into the healing arts, which is wonderful. What I don't see is a lot of energy, extending those arts to make them accessible to folks who are in need. Right. And this is a fight I, I had a sister, which who died just before the pandemic, and she was a naturopathic physician, and she and I had this fight for 20 years, right. But, you know, we need to take our healing skills to where to the shit, we need to take our healing skills to the shit. And I firmly believe that if witches could find themselves in those places of profound human suffering, that we could bring comfort and healing that would be unprecedented in those places. Because he bility to show people the beauty in their souls in a way that probably nobody else has been able to show them before. And they need to be reminded that they're beautiful creatures, too. Right? Because they are like, they might have done really shitty things. Some of them did. But it doesn't erase their humanity or their beauty.
Alexandra Hughes 33:06
Yeah, yeah. That is, I've never actually well, that's not true. I one of the reasons that I have grappled in my business is around pricing and accessibility and stuff. And that's not that's only like, between the person who can pay $100 versus $50, right? That's not like, to the prison system where nobody can pay anything, or to a community that's vulnerable, where no one can pay anything. So,
Speaker 1 33:38
you know, a women's shelter where women are fleeing violence, like where are the witches there? Where are the witches in the homeless shelters? Where are the witches in the long term care facilities? Right, because this is where the suffering is happening. And if we're not there for the suffering, then I'm not really sure what our point is. Right? Because we are such powerful beings. If we're not using our magic to alleviate the suffering from of others. Then, like, again, like we've lost, we've lost sight of what's important, we lost sight of the purpose, right? The purpose is to heal, it's, it's to change things. And there are parts of our world that are very, very sick that need our attention.
Alexandra Hughes 34:27
You know, as you've been speaking, there's this image that's been coming to me and it's like this are going to try and describe it. It's this image of, it's a metaphoric thing. So there's like a village and then around the village, there are these sort of scattered houses in the woods in the field where the witches live, like on the periphery, or where the unwanteds live, right? And I'm just a man mentioning the witches kind of gathering the others that are on the periphery. And I use that word others very intentionally, and bringing that bringing them through healing back into center along with themselves. You know?
Unknown Speaker 35:21
Make sure, yes, yeah,
Alexandra Hughes 35:23
I'm getting them to. But that's what I feel the call is, you know, go to are those that are also on the periphery? Yeah. made it a little bit more into the middle, because you've learned how to navigate the system is a which then go back out and then putting them on? And
Speaker 1 35:46
I mean, it's it's basic feminist empowerment. Right? You pull that hand pulls you up, and then you reach your hand down to pull the next one.
Unknown Speaker 35:58
Yeah, but, but it's also
Speaker 1 36:02
leading our communities to compassion. Right? Yeah. Then we take those others from the periphery and we bring them into the center, the center has to be ready to love them. And I don't think the center is and I don't blame people for that we've all been conditioned to fear and be anxious and suspicious. And, you know, don't you know, don't let that person near my kids. And I know who that you know, like, we've been conditioned to fear and I understand that, but we have to do our own work. And ask ourselves, like, Am I prepared to welcome in somebody who manifests everything I was taught to fear? Am I prepared to make space at my table? For somebody who looks, smells, smells, sounds everything, like that figure that I was taught was so dangerous, right? Because I have people saying to me, like you people have killed people, and they come and they have dinner at your house with your kids? And I'm like, Yeah, I do. Because you know what, those people aren't going to kill people, right? Like the terrible things happen in their lives to lead them to terrible circumstances. But they will still have a place at
Alexandra Hughes 37:27
my table.
Speaker 1 37:27
Right? Because that's not who they are today. And if they're your continued to be pushed out by everybody, then they're going to do things to survive at the periphery that are going to make it worse for everybody, including them. Right? Whereas if there's room for them to come in to community, and honestly, Alex, like every person I have worked with in prison. They just want to be seen. They want to be loved, and they want to be part of a community.
Unknown Speaker 38:04
I was just gonna say because they're
Speaker 1 38:05
human. Right? Exactly. Because they're humans, not monsters. Yeah. Not the Gorgon, the Gorgon is not in the prison.
Alexandra Hughes 38:15
No, let me so I want to ask you. What do you do? I mean, you know, awakening, or what could we say like, stepping out of the broom closet is a thing, right? It's not always an easy thing. And then there's staying out of the broom closet and honoring your craft and your identity and embracing your uniqueness. But also something about resilience, you know, and I think for the work that you do, like if the average which needs 75% of resilience to get by, you need like, 300, right? To ask you, what did he do to support yours? And then there's also like, you know, people who are better suited in terms of personality to be on the front line, and people who are better suited to do systemic analytics, right, like, so it's just a personality skills thing as well. But I'm curious to know, like,
Speaker 2 39:22
how do you? Well, first of all,
Alexandra Hughes 39:26
what helps you to or what helped you to embrace your uniqueness as a witch? And what do you do to support yourself? You know, to hold yourself and to hold the people you bring to your table?
Speaker 1 39:45
Yeah, great question. So before I answer that question, I do want to say like, for folks who are thinking, like, Man, I gotta get working on this. I got to spark some social change. It just what you said Alex is so important for people to know, right? Like social work, social justice work is not just does not just take the form of the kind of work I do, and it's suited to me. Because I'm an action oriented person, I like to be in the thick of things, right. But it's equally important to be the one who's doing the organizing of the meetings behind the computer, or like writing the letters to lobby the politicians or like, you know, setting up I don't know, an observation visit to, to a facility or whatever. So I don't want people to feel like, you know, they have to kind of take on a glad, I guess, I want to demystify the idea that activism is only one thing. And to to, to just remind people that there's many ways that you can bring your healing and your magic into turning this ship around. And all those ways are needed. In terms of me what I mean, my gosh, like, if it wasn't for witch school, and my community of witches, I don't know what I would do. You know, we have just a little online chat. And we all have and just an agreement in a in our own circle, you know, that if something's going down for one of us, we can just send out, we call it the witch signal, right? I'm casting my broomstick into the sky needed need help needed. And, you know, we'll all kind of swoop in online, even if it's just like a quick like, you know, spell for peace or just sending you love or swarm of bees to protect you, whatever it is, right. And so some just knowing that those folks are there, even though a lot of them live quite far from me, but just knowing that they're there energetically, always with me is huge. And then I have gotten very good at developing my own very specific practice. So every morning, I have an altar in my bedroom. Every morning, I pull a card to give me some guidance from my tarot deck, and then I pull a goddess card to see who's kind of coming along for the journey today. And I light a candle for myself for self protection and self care. Because that's crucial in any kind of social justice work, especially when you're working with marginalized people. So I tend to myself first and I really want to like, say, I tend to myself first because a lot of people also risk burnout doing this kind of work, because they don't take the time to do they tend to themselves. So it's me first at the altar, and then it's okay, what's the work for today? Do I need sometimes God pulled another card and need a little guidance on that whatever. I have little things that I bring with me like when I'm at, when I'm going into heavy meetings, or demonstrations, or I know I'm going to have a difficult conversation with somebody, I have what I call my magical first aid kit. And it's a little bit of cedar from my garden, which is also one of my kids, magic medicines. And a little poem that I wrote to myself about inner strength and resilience and a little rose quartz. And I just like I just keep those with me and so if the meetings getting intense, like I can stick it in my pocket in my hand in my pocket, and I just feel the cedar I'm like, Oh, back to that. Okay, right. Who are you you're a witch straighten your crown, which you got to wear a job to do here you cannot be overtaken by emotion. This is you know, this is this moment, right? And I find that like, the craft has brought me so many tools, not only of inner strength, but also to remind me of my inner strength. And so creating these little teeny tiny rituals, they take me 20 seconds, but throughout the day, so that I know I've got a little boost if I need it. I know I got a little protection if I need it. I know I've got a little place to cry safely if I need to, because my tears aren't for the general public. They're just you know, me alone right now. And that has helped me a lot.
Speaker 2 44:53
And Taro Taro is so helpful in doing social justice.
Speaker 1 44:59
So I I've been using Tarot a lot to give, and the guides that come with it to give advice and direction and help answer tricky questions and stuff. Yeah.
Alexandra Hughes 45:10
I love I love you know, you actually added another few elements to the why witches are good for this kind of work. And the first thing that you said just now is the sisterhood piece. Right, like, the community piece. And I think that's, I'm not gonna say it's relative. Well, I guess maybe relatively new. I mean, I think a lot of people have been solo practitioners are unawares of, of why they do what they do, until they've kind of figured out that there are other people out there that do witchy things too. And oh, you know, but the other piece that I really want to thank you for saying is the fill your cup first piece? Yeah, witches need to fill their cup first.
Speaker 1 45:56
Yeah, you know, I didn't realize it until I was at a demonstration around one of the wars this fall. And I was getting really upset by some of the signs that I was seeing, like, upset, like, I have a particular kind of pain that I call Mama heart pain, because I've got kids, right. And it was just like, an in that pain hurts, right? Like, that's where the ugly tears come from. Like, it's a deep pain. And I was looking at these signs and feeling mama pain, you know. But I thought like, Don, you are surrounded by people who are being directly affected by this war, you cannot be the white woman who, you know, collapses into her fragility right now, right? It's not, this is not the place for it. So out came the magical first aid kit, pull yourself together, straighten your crown again, and go find a corner that you can cry in. But take your suffering away from these other people, because they're the ones who need your strength, not your suffering, right. And so that ability to like, be self aware, but also to like, take care of ourselves so that we don't inadvertently put the burden of caring for us onto those who need even more care if that makes sense. Or who need our care. So we're not taking up space that doesn't actually belong to us, right? And if we're not taking care of ourselves, and I realized this like so many people reaching out to me in the fall burnt out by going to demonstrations and protests and doing solidarity work, and realize the Self Care piece was missing. So we've actually devised a whole workshop now on radical ally ship or mystery magical ally ship and activism that is really a workshop on how to take care of yourself in political struggle.
Speaker 2 47:52
Yeah, crucial. So important right
Alexandra Hughes 47:57
now, so many, it's like the, you know, the frontline workers in in any anything and in the hospitals during the pandemic, like, you know, that kind of, it's fundamental, because those are the people, you are the people, right, that need that need to be well,
Speaker 1 48:17
yeah. And so this is another huge thing that witches can do, right is to provide that self care or those like to show people how to take care of themselves. Yeah, because of all these wonderful tools of care. And so we have the ability to teach others so that you know, and I think like I can only I only see self care as actually I draw on this quote from Audrey Lord, where I won't get it right because it's Audrey Lord, so I'm sorry. And goddess, amazing Audrey, that she has a beautiful quote where she says, self care is not an act of indulgence. It is an act of political warfare. And for that, I will never apologize. And that to me is like I'm sure Audrey Lorde was manifesting her best witch self when she said that and to me like that is the mantra for witches in the political struggle is like, self care is my warfare. Right? Because you will not you did not burn us, then you will not burn us now. Right? Because we are so resilient and so strong and so good at taking care of ourselves, that we will rise up over this. We will care for all those on the outside and the inside because we have the capacity to do it. Because we know how to take care of ourselves first. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that like an amazing revolutionary vision? Right like strong, healthy, fierce witches? are being the ones who are able to circle everybody in and really do that care. Yeah,
Alexandra Hughes 50:05
yeah. There's so there's so I'm just getting excited. I mean, I'm getting excited because you've said twice now you've straightened your crown, you know, and I want to, I want to talk to that in a minute. And I want to. And again, it's the metaphor, bringing people in like my arms again, doing the thing, right, bringing people in to the center. And I also want to bring in the Listening piece, the quieting and beat them the capacity to listen, I remember it was just yesterday, I was watching a parenting real load in Seattle. She said, she's a friend of mine and a parenting coach. She's originally Brazilian, but now living in Connecticut, maybe Anyway, she's great. And she was talking about how we're always down on our kids for not listening. But actually parents are the worst listeners ever. Right? It just like I raised my hand here. I've got three kids totally guilty. And now you know, my youngest is 13. I'm learning Oh, yeah, listening is really. If we want to create a generation of listeners, then we have to learn to listen ourselves. But anyway, so many things about like how witches can listen. And it's I think it's not only about as putting out or straightening our crowns as we do this work. But I think it's also about I almost said teaching, it's not teaching but illuminating or helping the people that are coming into the center with us see that they have crowns too. And I think it's interesting, this whole crowds thing because the visual, the visual of a which is not wearing a crowd. In fact, it's the very opposite, right? So there's something about going from the this journey of going from the periphery, navigate navigating our way, or maybe even recreating what that center looks like. From a place of, of, of from a throne with a crown on and like kind of journeying into that version of ourselves as we do it, and supporting the others on the periphery to do the same thing. This is what happens to me like when people talk I create images come up. Having like A Beautiful Mind moment, it's all coming together. It's perfect. All over the place.
Speaker 1 52:42
But it's like literally for those who can't see it just like it's so visual. It's beautiful right now, like literally doing that beautiful mind thing where she's like pulling all of the symbols reassembling them into this fantastic revolutionary blueprint. I love it. Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's all of those things and, and inspiring people to care.
Alexandra Hughes 53:09
inspiring people to care and and to recreate, like, we need a new paradigm, right? So that's what I'm Karen compassion needs to be at the center of that. I want there's so many more things that I want to talk to you about. But I'm also aware of time.
Speaker 1 53:28
There's two children who are going to come bursting did and we're in a minute they will be loud and inconsiderate, but they will hopefully only interrupt us.
Alexandra Hughes 53:39
That's okay. Oh,
Speaker 1 53:41
you're on a witch podcast. Couple of kids running in isn't gonna disturb too much. But just warning you that that's imminent.
Alexandra Hughes 53:51
I do want to ask you though, like so I say and I'm looking right now at your bio. I say this is so old school. LGBTQ
Unknown Speaker 54:02
plus, you in
Alexandra Hughes 54:05
your bio have l HBTQI. A to S plus. So. Okay, so this is I'm gonna give this a go. Okay.
Speaker 1 54:16
Let me just make it a little bit easier. The H H is the typo. Oh, good
Unknown Speaker 54:28
to see what you did with that. We don't know each other well enough for that. Yeah. Well. The H is a G LGB. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so,
Alexandra Hughes 54:40
right. So so that I've got right so lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans queer. I A and then two spirits. Tell me Tell me about the IEA
Speaker 1 54:52
intersex, asexual.
Unknown Speaker 54:56
Okay
Speaker 1 54:59
and then We usually put the plus sign on the end, because the beautiful thing about sexuality is it is infinite. And I love about it. And so for me, I typically just use the short form of queer. It's easier. And I think most people these days, accept the term queer as kind of a catch all. But, you know, it is both beautiful and cumbersome that we have this exceedingly long accurate term now, but I'm going to celebrate the beauty of the diversity that that represents for sure.
Alexandra Hughes 55:35
Yeah, and, and I think it's really important that we love that we have the plus but that we do celebrate the diversity of it all and the expansion of it, all right, and the exploration of it all. But just to give the listeners a bit of context, I jumped right into the acronym in addition to doing your work with the prisons, you also and I haven't we haven't even talked about gender based violence. But you also do work focusing on children and youth in the I'm just gonna say queer community, so I can you like maybe just in a couple of lines? Talk a little bit about that. And, and and what she knows, and then I have the money, I have a good big, juicy question for you.
Speaker 1 56:27
Um, so yeah, I mean, I was one of the early on, one of the key people involved in the 10 oaks project, which is a summer camp program for children and youth in the LGBTQ plus plus slash queer community. So you know, about 10, or 12 years ago, you would have found me, you know, doing lice checks in shopping mall, parking lots, putting kids onto a bus to camp, to this magical camp experience, which now my kids are having. So anybody out there who's got kids who are either children of or are themselves queer, or non binary, or questioning, or trans, please check out the 10 oaks project, it is the most beautiful, safe, magical, and I do mean magical place that you could put your kid for a week in the summer, so strongly recommend that. And then now I live rurally. And there's not a lot in the country for queer kids. So but you know, more queers are migrating out to the woods. So there happens to be a little community of us out here that's rapidly growing, actually, we've got another one who's about to join us any day now. We're waiting on the birth announcement, right? So we, we realized that if there was a critical mass of adults, there's also a critical mass of kids. So we started what we call the queer Breakfast Club, the kids don't get the joke, we do whatever, it's amusing to me. Um, and it's an affinity group for youth in our community. We do not run on credentials, this is not a therapy group, it is really to bring you together so that they can work on building community themselves. So they can learn, you know, they can talk through some of the hard things about queer being queer, but also like, we really want to bring the joy of being queer to them. So I have, you can't see it. But sitting very near me is a giant black garbage bag with gay T shirts in it. And on Monday, I am taking a giant garbage bag of gay T shirts to a giant group of youth, and we're going to cut up T shirts and play with them and make them our own as a way of like, expressing their own queerness. So we're really trying to create a safe space for the youth to both like, talk about the hard stuff, and have those moments of joy. And the witchcraft in it. I mean, my co facilitators also quite witchy. So it is really about again, bending, shaping, sparking, finding those moments of, of intuitive connection of intuitive like, oh, I can see this kid is like that questions about coming? And so how can I midwife it so that they can actually like ask the thing that's so crucial for them to ask, but they just don't quite have the guts, you know? And so it's those little moments like that, where I think the magic really comes through. And I think the youth feel it too, right? And it rubs off on them. And they've, you know, some of them, you know, have even started asking us like, are there things that we can do to like ground ourselves and so if we're like, yes, let's do a grounding exercise branches up roots down, let's go right. So you know what We're it's a queer affinity group, but we're again teaching them self care, right and getting them back to the basics to so that when they get into the fight, because they're gonna get into it as well, they'll have that foundation that we didn't have. Right. And they'll have that safe place to land that we didn't have. So that they'll know that when the world out there gets scary, and they come out of whatever closets they're in, they know that we've created this magical little space here where there will be safety and love always for them. Right? And so that, you know, and that's my joy, right? Because there's nothing more joyful than bringing the joy of like, free self expression to young people really like what could be better. So yeah,
Alexandra Hughes 1:00:51
that's, that's really beaut that's really, really beautiful. I was just thinking as you were speaking about, you know, you knowing what you needed, and creating it for the future generation. And and a few actually, I think it aired at the time of let me just think I think it aired last week. Where are we now we are in beginning of February, a woman called Jessa, committeeman, she created something called the first moon manual. And she created it because she didn't want her daughter to go through what she went through. When she first got her period. And I love stories like this where we see shit, that was hard. Okay, what am I going to do about this? Right, which really is activism
Speaker 1 1:01:47
100%, like, undoing the violence that was done to us. So we don't repeat it on our children. Like, can you imagine if every single one of us had the capacity to do that? How much gain we would take out of the world out there. And
Alexandra Hughes 1:02:04
it's not only undoing the violence it's creating, it's also creating the safe spaces. That for people to be able to navigate whatever remaining violent, like to hold people so that they have what they need to navigate. You replace the shit out there, right? Yeah.
Speaker 1 1:02:23
The violence with acceptance and love. Yeah, yeah.
Unknown Speaker 1:02:27
I know if
Speaker 1 1:02:29
we could do that. Wow. Well, you're doing it. Well, so are you. Gonna get more? We need more. Yeah,
Alexandra Hughes 1:02:39
it's happening. It's happening. Okay, I need to ask you this is the last question what? How would you define magic?
Speaker 1 1:02:47
Magic? Magic?
Unknown Speaker 1:02:51
Is
Speaker 1 1:02:57
having enough trust in what you cannot see that you stop questioning whether or not what's actually happening is actually happening, which sounds like a really obscure definition. What do I mean by that? I mean, magic is trusting that when the tower card comes up, things are about to get hard. And that when you know I can't remember which card is the six of wands come up that you know the party is going to start right. And it's just suspending that need for rational belief enough that the veil gets thin enough that you get to see how much you just do not know or understand.
Alexandra Hughes 1:03:54
I love that the mystery.
Speaker 1 1:03:58
You know, like for me, I have struggled with anxiety my whole life. And so this idea of like, there being a mystery is so comforting to me. Because it's like I don't have to strive after that. That can just be a mystery. I can just trust that can go wherever it goes. But I know that I've got good and well insane guides I know that so mystery can't possibly take me anywhere that I can't cope with being that's for me incredibly comforting. Far more comforting than the teachings I received from an entirely different tradition when I was younger. Which offered me no comfort whatsoever but the idea of mystery is so comforting to me.
Alexandra Hughes 1:04:48
I love that and I you know, everybody in their cat is struggling with anxiety right now. It is such a beautiful message to close off with thank you so much Stein.
Speaker 1 1:05:00
Oh Alex, thank you I've so enjoyed this conversation and thank you for your interest in the work that I'm doing and thank you for helping me to signal boosted a bit which is belong in the fight. So get up your broomsticks and let's go.
Alexandra Hughes 1:05:17
Absolutely absolutely I'm so delighted so delighted to have you here and I can't wait to air this. Thanks Don.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:26
Thanks Alex.
Unknown Speaker 1:05:27
Take care you too.
Alexandra Hughes 1:05:29
Bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
