The Trinity Wounds: The Witch Wound
“Every strong woman is a witch and she is always hunted.” — Missing Witches
Well, we made it! We’ve arrived at the last leg of the Trinity Wound triangle. The Witch Wound. This is a big one, guys. Huge. One of the reasons I waited to go into depth on this particular wound is because the Mother Wound and Sister Wound dovetail into the Witch Wound so deeply, it’s impossible to separate them. Yes, this wound is different, but it’s also a manifestation (in my humble opinion) of the other two wounds. So let’s get right into it.
What is the Witch Wound?
I want to paint a rather grotesque (yet accurate) picture for you so that you can truly understand the depths of this wound. I’m going to take you through an extremely condensed, paraphrased version of an activation I experienced relating to this wound. It is intense so if you’re not in a headspace to read this, I encourage you to skip below the italics. Ready?
First, I want you to imagine that you’re going about your day, minding your own business, doing your own things. Maybe you’ve just finished your morning ritual. Maybe you’ve just finished a yoga session and you’re reflecting. You hear a knock at your door.
When you open the door, big, intimidating men are standing on your front porch with scowls. Behind them, you see a group of people has gathered. Mostly men, but plenty of women are there too.
The men grab you and drag you out of your home.
They drag you to the center of a courtyard where more people have gathered.
Maybe you are so confused you’ve gone into freeze mode. Maybe you’re so pissed off, you’re kicking and screaming at them to let you go. Either way, you’re ignored.
They hoist you onto a platform where there’s a large stake coming up from the ground. They line you up with the stake, tie your hands behind your back, and when you finally look up, you see the faces of your neighbors. Your friends. People you don’t know.
One of the men begins to speak. “This is the persecution of {your name}, a witch. We will not tolerate witchery, abominations, trickery in this village.”
As you struggle on the stake, your wrists burn from the friction against the rope you’ve been tied up with. You can’t believe this is happening. Who is going to stop this craziness? When you look out at the crowd, you see the faces of a few women who have been standoffish to you. Who have avoided you because they thought you were “different.” They are smiling. They’re enjoying seeing you like this.
The men speak to the crowd more intensely now but you aren’t listening to the words. You’re completely engulfed in the realization that you’re being hunted. Persecuted. That you’re going to die.
No matter how hard you struggle against the binds, you are stuck. There’s no way out.
It feels like hours but instead, it’s minutes and before you can think about any other way out of this situation, one of the men lights a gas-soaked rag and it erupts in a fiery blaze.
He walks over to you and even though you can feel the heat lick at your flesh, your thoughts turn to the future. If no one stops this now, who will do so in the future? What will happen to my children? What about my friend/sister/mother/aunt who is also “different?”
The man sets the flame to the bottom of the stake and it only takes a few seconds for it to wind its way up to your feet.
You smell burning flesh. You feel pain so intense, you believe dying is better than having to feel it.
And the flame grows higher and hotter.
It engulfs you until there is nothing left of you but your soul.
This, sadly, is part of the Witch Wound.
The Witch Wound is the intergenerational trauma that has been passed down through our ancestors or pain that we hold of a past life where we, ourselves, were persecuted and hunted for being what people perceive as “witches.” Like the Mother and Sister Wounds — this is not just an individual wound, it’s a collective wound.
And it’s so pervasive, even today, that we actively ignore or avoid talking about it. Because to talk about it means we would have to address all the deeply rooted beliefs that come with it. But that’s part of how it stays intact. And I’m not going to be part of the problem.
I’m going to be part of the solution.
But to be part of the solution, we have to understand how it shows up in our lives today.
How the Witch Wound shows up:
Being labeled as “separate” 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
This is, of course, not an exhaustive list, but as you can see, there’s still plenty of ways in which this wound rears its ugly head. By the way, notice how much of these attributes of the Witch Wound dovetail with the Mother and Sister Wound as well as with systemic racism and oppression? That’s not a coincidence.
I was talking to a friend about this wound and she asked a really good question that I’d like to address here. She asked, “if the burning times are no longer, why then is this wound so prevalent?”
She’s right! Most of us in well-developed countries are no longer in danger of being burned at the stake, but that doesn’t mean the wounds from those who were burned at the stake or felt the fear of being burned at the stake just goes away. Instead, they become internalized as unhealthy coping mechanisms and survival strategies. Those are then passed down from generation to generation to continue the cycle. Let’s use my activation from above as an example.
Woman A:
Woman A is a relative of yours who witnesses the atrocities that happened to you. Living in fear, she does what she needs to in order to survive — she hides her abilities. She keeps her head down. She steps away from her power and becomes submissive and compliant. She isolates herself in the case that someone “finds” her out. She dampens her power to blend in. She refuses to talk about the trauma for fear of being “wrong” and having the same fate. She rejects her lineage and practices to avoid being “othered.”
Woman B:
Woman B is in the crowd of people who watches you burn at the stake. This woman is confused as to what she believes, but there is one thing she knows to be true: She doesn’t want to die like you. The fear is so strong that she decides then and there to “out” others who have a higher chance of being “bad” than she does. She dutifully reports to her community leaders about the “other” woman she knows. She believes that by “outing” others, she is protecting herself and her family from the trauma she’s witnessed. Even though some of the women have been or are her friends, she can’t dare slip up in her beliefs because then it could happen to her, right?
In both of these scenarios, the women have internalized the fear of being burned at the stake. Both women have had to readjust their belief systems, readjust their actions to survive. They have children and pass along those beliefs to them. Their children have children to whom they pass on their beliefs.
So do you see where I’m going with this? How ONE individual experience or situation can alter the lives of generations to come. Now imagine that on the grand scale of the Burning Times.
This is exactly why it’s so prevalent because we live in a constant state of fear. Real or imagined. It’s literally been embedded in our DNA to protect ourselves against persecution.
So this leads me to the next question…
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. First, the awareness that this is a wound we need to give attention to. Awareness that it’s a collective, global, and pervasive wound. Awareness that we don’t have to subscribe to the narrative we’ve been born into and that the world reinforces. Awareness that in the past, our ancestors have had to use these coping mechanisms to survive but that we are no longer in a time where those threats are viable.
After awareness and acceptance, we move into the “action” phase. This is the hardest part of the process, in my opinion. Because you can’t “un-know” what you know. And when you know better, the way forward is to do better.
What does this really look like though?
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
“Individual healing from trauma helps set a piece of the pattern of the universe into a new (ancient) rhythm of resounding care.” — Missing Witches
Personally, I believe healing the Witch Wound is the hardest, most complex of the three to heal because while the other two wounds are also intergenerational trauma wounds passed down, it’s much easier to step into ourselves as a daughter, as a sister, as a friend than it is to step into ourselves as a powerful woman who is inherently worthy of her power and gifts. Healing the Witch Wound means reclaiming ALL of who you are. It means stepping up and saying, “No, I refuse to be hunted, persecuted, and shamed for being a powerful and independent woman.” It means reclaiming the word “witch” in a positive light rather than a negative one.
There is a collective, global shift happening in our world right now. There are so many voices telling us different stories about why that is or what is causing it. To be honest, I don’t really listen to those voices… rather, I’m starting to listen to the voice that’s embedded deep within myself. A voice that says, “you can no longer sit on the sidelines and watch. You must be an active participant now.”
For me, part of my power has always resided within my words. It’s where I feel the strongest sense of self and autonomy. Words and stories have always held the deepest source of inherent power for me and that’s exactly how I plan to heal this wound inside of myself. I will continue to do my part by writing about it. Talking about it. Working through it with others.
Now, let me ask you… how do you plan to step into your own power?
