A Story for the Curious Wanderer**

Every now and then, a visitor at my Cabin door asks,
“How did you become you?”
Not the books, not the blog, not the magic —
but the woman behind it all.

And I smile, because the answer is simple and complicated in equal measure:

I did not choose the Crone’s path.
It grew under my feet while I was busy surviving.

But since you’ve wandered this far into my woods,
come sit by the fire, and I will tell you a piece of the truth.

🌲 I Was Born a Seeker, Not a Believer

I grew up inside strict religion — the kind that offers answers before you’re even old enough to form questions.

But questions have always been my gift.
Sharp as pine needles.
Persistent as roots.

By the time I reached my early twenties, I realized something few young people get the chance (or courage) to see:

I hadn’t lost faith —
I had lost the version of God handed to me.

“If this is God,” I thought,
“then I cannot believe…
but perhaps God is not this.”

And so I went wandering.

I stepped out of certainty and into the wilderness,
and there — in the open, in between —
something ancient woke up in me.

🔥 The Atheist Who Became the Priest’s Translator

This next part still makes me laugh in that witchy, knowing way.

In my early twenties, when I thought I had no use for religion,
I took a job at a Catholic parish — just temporary office work, nothing glorious.

But the universe has a sense of humor:

They had a new priest from Mexico who’d spent 30 years in Germany,
and he spoke in a shimmering braid of English, Spanish, and German —
slipping unconsciously between them.

No one could follow him.

Except me.

Not fluently — not perfectly —
but something in me understood the intention behind the words,
the emotional thread, the meaning pulsing underneath.

The next thing I knew,
this ex-Mormon “atheist” was writing sermons for a Catholic priest…
in Latin.

I corresponded .
I exchanged emails with the Pope’s assistant.
I played pinochle on retreat weekends with the Archbishop
and debated theology with priests, nuns, alcolytes and lay ministers who became dear friends.

Not to convert —
but to refine.

And in that refining, I discovered something important:

Faith is bigger than its containers.
God is bigger than His translators.
And truth lives in many tongues.

🐺 The Years That Carved Me

Life didn’t shape me gently.
It carved me like an raging river carves mountains.

Trauma.
Abuse.

Broken bones in a body that wouldn’t give up.
Escape.
Raising children in the shadow of storms.
Choosing safety over comfort.
Choosing survival over ease.
Choosing truth, even when it cost me everything.

Some people grow in gardens.
I grew in wildfires. One after another, some literal.

I do not romanticize it.
But I honor it.

Because those years taught me:

• How to see danger before it arrives
   
• How to listen to silence
   
• How to rebuild after ruin
   
• How to carry my children through flames
   
• How to forgive the parts of myself that broke
   
• How to rise without bitterness
   
• How to survive what should have ended me
   

And that is the first ingredient of a Crone:

A woman who has walked through hell
and still has room in her heart for compassion.

🌿 The Quiet Gifts That Followed Me

I have never been just one thing.

I am a spoon when tenderness is needed.
A knife when boundaries must be drawn.
A fork when I must bridge worlds, translate meanings,
or hold multiple truths in the same hand.

Some gifts came from study.
Some from instinct.
Some from ancestry.
And some from pain.

• I see patterns others miss
   
• I understand language beneath language
   
• I recognize blessings disguised as burdens
   
• I know when timing is not coincidence
   
• I sense emotional weather before the storm hits
   
• I can speak to the deeply wounded
   
• And I carry a strange ability to translate people to themselves
   

Not because I’m special —
but because life demanded it.

These are the gifts that turned the girl into the Crone.

🌙 How Witchcraft Found Me

I did not go looking for magic.
Magic found me.

Through herbs, intuition, ritual,
kitchen witchery,
ancestral threads,
Slavic folklore breathing through my bones,
and the forest whispering in the dark corners of my healing.

Spirituality stopped being a structure
and became a conversation.

A living thing.

A relationship with the world.

And slowly, without ceremony,
I became the woman others came to for wisdom.
For clarity.
For comfort.
For truth.

Not because I knew more —
but because I saw more.

Seeing is the Crone’s calling.

🌲 And So… The Cabin Was Born

Every experience in my life —
the religion, the rebellion, the trauma, the survival, the questioning,he languages, the priesthood, the healing, the parenting, the science, the magic, the agape love, the folklore —

—all of it braided together
into this Cabin you now sit inside.

This place where:

• faith and folklore meet
   
• psychology and spirituality share a table
   
• the wounded and the wise are treated as the same person
   
• magic is practical
   
• healing is communal
   
• stories save lives
   

This Cabin is not fiction.
It is my path, my scars, my studies, my offerings,
and the wisdom grown from the ashes of my old life.

This is how I became the Crone.

Not through age,
but through experience.

Not through isolation,
but through connection.

Not through certainty,
but through relentless honesty.

🔥 The Crone’s Whisper

“Child of the wandering path…
do not fear the fires that forged you.
Wisdom is not granted —
it is grown.
And when your own storms settle,
you too will sit at the hearth
and realize you have become
the guide you once needed.”