Growing Up Witchy

When Your Soul Remembers Before You Do…

Have you ever felt drawn to something you could not explain?

Not because someone taught it to you. Not because it was fashionable. But because it felt like a forgotten part of yourself calling you home.

For me, that feeling began long before I ever knew the history of my family.

Growing up in Abilene, Texas, I spent countless hours in our backyard collecting little treasures from nature. The mesquite trees became my apothecary. Their long seed pods became the ingredients for magical brews I would stir together with complete seriousness, convinced I was creating something extraordinary. Rocks became crystals. Leaves became healing herbs. Sticks became wands. Mother Earth provided everything I thought I needed.

I didn’t know why I was so fascinated by it.

I only knew it felt… right.

Then Sunday would come.

I was raised going to church most every week, where I learned about faith, love, and living a good life. But I also heard that witchcraft was evil, dangerous, and sinful. The message was clear: magic belonged to darkness.

As a little girl, that created a quiet conflict inside me.

How could something that felt so beautiful, peaceful, and deeply familiar also be something I was told to fear?

I didn’t have the words for it then. I simply tucked those feelings away where no one else could see them.

Outwardly, I became the girl everyone expected me to be.

Secretly?

I still wished I could twitch my nose like Samantha Stephens.

I dreamed of being Tabitha.

Bewitched wasn’t just a television show to me—it was a glimpse into a world that somehow felt oddly familiar. A place where magic wasn’t frightening but woven into everyday life. Where intuition was natural, herbs had purpose, and extraordinary things quietly existed alongside ordinary ones.

As I grew older, life became busy. Careers, responsibilities, family, and all the things adulthood demands slowly pushed those childhood feelings into the background.

But they never disappeared.

They simply waited.

Years later, my mother became fascinated with genealogy and began researching our family’s ancestry. As branch after branch of our family tree unfolded, something unexpected happened.

Pieces of myself began to make sense.

I discovered ancestors from Scotland and Ireland—lands steeped in folklore, sacred wells, wise women, folk healing, seers, herbal traditions, and ancient spiritual practices that existed long before the word “witch” became something to fear. I learned about the old beliefs that honored the changing seasons, the land, the ancestors, and the unseen world.

Suddenly, that little girl in the backyard didn’t seem so unusual anymore.

It wasn’t that I had discovered I came from a long line of witches—history rarely gives us that kind of certainty. But I realized I came from people whose lives were shaped by cultures where nature, folklore, healing, and spirituality were deeply intertwined.

Maybe what I had always felt wasn’t something I had invented.

Maybe it was recognition.

Maybe some things are carried through stories.

Maybe some are carried through traditions.

And maybe…

…some are carried quietly in the soul.

Today, I don’t see my path as rejecting the faith I was raised with or trying to rewrite my childhood. Instead, I see it as understanding that my spiritual journey has been one of asking questions, exploring history, and honoring the parts of myself that have always existed.

The more I study the true history of witchcraft—not Hollywood’s version, but the history of folk magic, herbal healing, ancient religions, and the women and men who lived close to the land—the more I realize how much has been misunderstood, feared, and forgotten.

Perhaps that’s why I created Chronicles of Witchery.

Not to convince anyone what to believe.

But to explore where our stories began.

Because sometimes the things we feel most deeply aren’t random at all.

Sometimes they’re echoes.

Echoes of the people who came before us.

Echoes waiting patiently until we’re ready to listen.

I’d Love to Hear Your Story

Have you ever felt an unexplainable pull toward something long before you knew why?

Have you discovered something in your ancestry that suddenly made parts of your life make sense?

Or did you, like me, spend your childhood secretly dreaming of magic while trying to understand where those feelings came from?

I’d love to hear your story in the comments. Sometimes, by sharing our journeys, we help someone else recognize the echoes within their own.