Hi friends, happy new moon, and welcome to the Wild Rose Witch Substack. I see this space as somewhere between a newsletter, a journal, and a conversation. I’ll post updates on events, what I’m cooking up in the apothecary, and I promise to keep it witchy as ever. More than anything, I hope this becomes a place where I can share what my practice actually looks like. Sometimes that will mean herbs or recipes from the apothecary. Sometimes it will be stories like this one.
Here we are in Cancer season. The garden is so alive and wild. We get daily visits from cats, raccoons, squirrels, foxes, along with the occasional visit from a skunk. The local birds are very active here as well, many robins, cardinals, blue jays, grackles, finches, and many others. I love building relationships with these creatures and watching them throughout the seasons.
A big thread running through my life this season is learning to live in flow with the natural world around me. I do not want to see myself as separate from plants and animals. I see myself as one of the many beings living on this earth.
This past week, a robin that I created a bond with passed. The other robins in the area gathered outside my window to alert me that something was wrong, so I went outside. I sat with this wonderfully silly bird until he passed on. It was incredibly painful and sad. I’m still feeling the grief of this creature no longer being with us.
The grief surprised me. I named him Flip. He is not the first bird that I have cried over when finding it dead in my garden. But the pain of this loss has been much more intense than expected. I am finding it hard to connect with the other birds in my garden now. I know the pain will pass with time. But for now, it’s here, and it’s raw.
As I sat with Flip as he took his last breaths, I did what felt right for a being passing on. I wondered aloud about what the afterlife might be like for a bird. Would life as a bird be as magical as I think it would be? There are stressors, watching out for predators and you are constantly looking for food, but you can fly. How wonderfully freeing. I sang. I told him about the things that he did that made me laugh. I admitted to him that I didn’t know if all the memories I had of Flip were actually him, or if there were other robins that I had lumped into his memory.
I put him in a box, covered it with a blanket, and weighed the edges down with bricks to protect his body in the night. As I was setting this up, I looked up to find six owls watching me. If you’ve ever made eye contact with an owl, you know what the energy feels like. It was as if time stood still. The owls sat with me, flitting from fence to tree and back again, watching me. After about fifteen minutes they flew away.
I am not sure what all of this means. The owls visiting to witness the bond, the grief and the passing of another creature. The grief will fade eventually. Every day when I enter the magical back garden, I hear the bees buzzing, the birds singing their songs, and the occasional loud vehicle roaring down the busy road, blocks away.
Cancer season asks us to soften. To tend to home. To care for what we love, even knowing nothing stays forever. This month, my practice has looked less like spells and more like sitting beside a dying robin, singing him home.
Maybe that is magic, too.