Witch, its been rough

Hey there, witches.

It’s been a minute—long enough for the moon to change moods a few times and for me to stare at a blank page like it personally offended me. I haven’t quite known what truth I was ready to unwrap next. But tonight felt… loud. So here we are, lighting the candle and opening the door I’ve quietly avoided.

I’ve spoken about my mom before. A lot.

But my dad?

Ah yes, the chapter I’ve kept tucked away like a cursed book on a high shelf.

My parents divorced when I was two, which means my memories of “family” were always a little fractured, a little warped, like an old mirror that never quite reflected what you hoped to see. I visited him every other weekend, technically. Emotionally? I was more of a live-in babysitter while he and my stepmom went off to bars, parties, and whatever adventures didn’t include me.

And listen—when you’re a kid, you don’t have the language for abandonment. You just know it hurts.

You show up hoping for connection and end up feeling like background noise.

Eventually, I got tired of auditioning for a role I was never going to get. So I stopped going. I poured myself into sports and band instead—because apparently I decided if I couldn’t be emotionally fulfilled, I might as well be impressively overachieving. Band geek athlete? Rare species. Thriving. Slightly unhinged. Loved it.

As I got older, we tried to rebuild something resembling a relationship. I tried explaining how I felt, translating years of silence into words he might finally hear. Until one day I told him:

“If you’re not ready to listen, I need space.”

And isn’t it funny how the moment you ask for space is when people suddenly discover your phone number?

I didn’t talk to him for a year.

And I’m not telling this story to villainize him. Life is messy. People are complicated. Some of my subscribers know the girl behind the witchy persona, not just Sage with her crystals and sarcasm. But the truth is, I mostly heard from him when he’d been drinking or needed something. When I called, he rarely answered.

The day my mom died, I needed him.

He didn’t answer.

I had to call someone else to call him so he would call me.

If heartbreak had a sound, it would’ve been that dial tone.

Maybe he thought I was strong enough to not need him.

Maybe independence looks like invincibility from the outside.

Maybe he assumed I’d be fine.

And I was.

But “fine” is just another word for learning how to survive disappointment gracefully.

I learned not to rely on him.

Not to expect too much.

Not to believe promises without receipts.

You get used to it, eventually.

Not healed—just… numb. Like frost settling over something that once wanted warmth.

Recently, though, we finally had the conversation. The real one.

He listened. Actually listened.

I told him how he made me feel, without sugarcoating or shrinking myself. And for the first time, it felt like something shifted. Not fixed. Not magically healed. But maybe… less shattered.

Not a broken relationship anymore.

Just a splinter.

And here’s the spell I’ve learned to cast over every relationship in my life—romantic, familial, platonic, cosmic, whatever realm you’re operating in:

If you want to repair something, you have to speak your truth.

If they’re willing to hear you, to sit with your honesty instead of running from it—try.

But if you open your heart and they label your pain as “toxic,” like a certain friendship I once buried under emotional soil…

Let it go.

Not everything is meant to be mended.

Some things are meant to be released, burned, and turned into wisdom.

Because witches don’t beg for connection.

We conjure it where it’s earned.