Spirituality Journey

I always used to joke about being a witch—which all started due to my obsession with the entire aesthetic of American Horror Story: Coven and subsequent long acrylic nails and raven black-dyed hair TBH—but I never meant anything serious by it at first. And though I’m not practicing Wiccan yet (it is an interesting topic to read about though), I have been collecting crystals for a few years now and within the last year, I’ve been manifesting, consulting my spirit guides and doing regular tarot card readings. So in a way, I guess my actions began to follow the image I was putting out into the world. But let’s take it back all the way to the beginning of my journey with spirituality...

During college was when I really started drifting away from the traditional Christian faith I grew up believing. Slowly I kept finding cracks in the belief foundation and realized Christianity didn’t resonate with the person I was becoming. Naturally you develop your own opinions and thoughts when you experience the world on your own for the first time. So I guess it’s to be somewhat expected that when I left the safety “bubble” of my small hometown and exposed myself to other cultures and world views, I became a raging intersectional feminist—Women & Gender Studies minor to be technical—who realized religion, particularly Christian religion, was a big cause of colonialism and capitalism. And therefore organized religion was in a large way responsible for basically all the other -isms that define systemic inequality. Now I won’t go into this side tangent too much, not because it would give my conservative grandfather a heart attack (as if he would ever even read this) but because I don’t want to get too off topic like I tend to do in my journal ramblings.

Anyways, the point is that my beliefs were starting to waver until they eventually faded out. At the time I still believed in a higher power and otherworldly beings, but the whole Old and New Testament didn’t mean anything to me anymore. Beyond the deeper rooted issues I had with religion, I didn’t like the way some people took the Bible literally and would use their religion as a weapon against others—for hatred, discrimination and moral superiority. It all didn’t feel right to me. And it still doesn’t. It’s sad because I grew up loving the community my parents created for us at church. I grew up in a super small town—like less than 1,000 people small—and the street corner I lived on had the high school that my dad taught at across the street and our church diagonally across the street. It was literally an extension of home because of the close proximity but also the people who essentially helped raise me. As a choir director, my dad also led the church choir and it was that group of about 15 people who I associated faith and religion with rather than any scripture or sermon. I didn’t realize it until recently as I’ve been reflecting more and more on my journey with spirituality, but that’s why I used to have such a positive outlook on religion. It’s like I just associated the love and community of my church family with Christianity rather than fully understanding the religion itself. And that’s not a bad thing. But it’s not universal. My parents and my childhood church instilled that faith and religion was about love and forgiveness, but as I got older, I saw so many people were using religion in opposition to love and forgiveness. As if the Bible gave them the excuse and the moral high ground to look down on those who didn’t believe in the same things. Instead of “love your neighbor” it became “being gay is a sin and you’ll burn in hell.” And that did not sit well with me at all. It only became worse as the divide in our country became stronger and views more polarized. In fact, I recently saw a Tik Tok that asked the brain bender “isn’t Jesus just the liberal son to a conservative dad (God)?” and you can’t tell me that doesn’t make sense! It’s spot on. Jesus preached all of this inclusivity and love while God was all about divine punishment and following outdated commandments. But I couldn’t associate myself with a religion that had its followers attacking my queer friends, limiting my personal choices when it comes to my body, and whitewashing its own history. There were so many cracks in the Bible’s “story” that started to show, and it eventually became too much for me to support.

Once I sort of denounced traditional Christianity, I thought that I was maybe just atheist—not believing or following in any sort of organized religion. But more recently, I’ve realized how many different paths of spirituality are out there, and I’ve finally found some that I do align my beliefs with. As I mentioned, I do believe in a higher power or multiple higher powers. There is no way that we are alone on this floating rock in the middle of infinite space. I could go into my various theories on how we are living in a simulation or that our dreams are sometimes a view into our past lifetimes, but the point is that we are so small in the scope of the universe. And we still don’t fully understand what is out there. So I understand why clinging to faith or a belief helps people deal with the uncertainty of life and the daunting end that is inevitable. Most people want to believe there is something waiting for them after death. Something that will put them at peace. And the pearly white gates of Heaven are much better to picture than a black hole of nothingness for eternity. So I do believe that there is something else out there. But it’s an ambiguous “something” for me. I don’t know what is waiting for me in the afterlife, but I don’t need to know what that is because of the spirituality I currently follow. Calling on my spirit guide or consulting my archangel cards helps calm my anxieties about the unknown future. Honestly, the first time I did it, I didn’t know what to expect. I wasn’t sure if I fully believed it would work. But I have always believed that ghosts and spirits are real, so I was hoping that it would work—that I could experience a little bit of that paranormal phenomenon. And I did. 

Introducing my family to the practice of calling out to spirit guides and reading archangel cards was an interesting turn of events in my life. One evening last fall, I got a FaceTime call from my mom asking me how her and her friend could reach out to their spirit guides. She was consulting me on spiritual practices and it took me by surprise. Here’s my Christian mother who sings in the church choir and volunteers at church functions asking me about contacting spirits. Like what is going on? And then, over Christmas, I did a demonstration to show my younger sister, younger brother and his girlfriend how reaching out to my spirit guide worked. I even talked my sister through the process herself during our late-night spirit guide session. I was over the moon to be able to share a piece of my newfound faith with my family members. There really is a comfort in the shared community of faith and spirituality. I guess the point of this blog post reflecting on how I got to this point in my spiritual journey is to somewhat explain why I chose The PR Witch as the name of this alter ego. At least it somewhat gives background to the “Witch” part since the “PR” part is pretty self-explanatory due to my day job as a publicist. I still don’t really consider myself a “witch” like other people out there, but I honestly can see myself moving in the direction as time goes on. I’m hoping that as I continue to learn and grow, my spiritual side will continue to evolve naturally. Xx