THE RETURN OF THE TOO MUCH WOMAN

October 13, 2026

(An invocation for the Witch who remembers herself)

The call was in my blood.
In my bones.
In my Soul.
Magick was a language
I knew before I could speak.
Before the world taught me
which words were dangerous.

Before I learned
that a Woman with a voice
could be called a problem
by everyone
who benefited from her silence.

Then Hekate called.
And I answered.
Not with a whisper.
Not with a pretty little prayer
folded neatly between my palms.
I answered in fire.
My Craft was fire.
My writing was fire.
My voice,
a blade dragged
against the throat
of everything I had been taught
to swallow.

I said the things
other people wouldn’t.

The things they knew
but dared not name.
The things that made polite company
shift in their chairs
and call me too much.

Too loud.
Too strange.
Too sharp around the edges.
Too unwilling to kneel
at the Altar of other people’s comfort.

I mistook their fear
for a warning.
And slowly,
so slowly
I almost didn’t notice,
I began to make a smaller Woman
out of myself.

I softened the language.
Rounded the teeth.
Put a leash on the lightning.

I learned the choreography
of being palatable.

How to enter a room
without disturbing its delicate lies.
How to swallow the sentence
that might make someone
think less of me.
How to fold my wildness
into something tidy enough
to be loved.

And for what?
Approval?
A place at a table
where I had to amputate
pieces of myself
to fit?

I stopped speaking so loudly.
And the world rushed in
to fill the silence.
It filled it with its rules.
Its expectations.
Its convenient little stories
about who a Woman should be
if she wants to be kept.

I drowned.
For years.
Not in water,
but in the slow suffocation
of becoming acceptable
to people who had never
been asked to become smaller
for me.

I drowned in the opinions
of people who did not know my Soul.
In the hunger to be liked.
In the exhaustion
of trying to make myself
understandable
to those determined
to misunderstand me.

I begged the mirror
to show me someone
the world could love.

Until one day
I looked into my own eyes
and could no longer recognize
the Woman doing the begging.

And something primal
inside me
bared its teeth, and growled:
Enough.

Not the polite enough.
Not the woman-at-the-end-of-her-rope
enough.

The primordial enough.
The serpent uncoiling.
The gate swinging open.
The black dog lifting its head
at the Crossroads.

Hekate had not abandoned me.
I had simply become
so busy asking the world
for permission
that I could no longer hear
the Goddess calling me home.

So here is what I know now:
Not everyone must like me.
Not everyone must understand me.
Not everyone gets a vote
on the Woman I am becoming.
There are Elders
whose wisdom I honor.
There are voices
I hold close because
they have earned their place
beside my fire.

But the crowd?
The chorus of strangers?
The endless tribunal
of other people’s expectations?

Let them talk.

I have a Soul to answer to.
And every night
when I stand before the mirror,
I will ask myself:

Did I betray my own knowing
to make someone else comfortable?
Did I abandon my voice
to avoid being misunderstood?
Did I live this day
as the Woman I am
or as the Woman
I thought would be easier to love?

If I can meet my own gaze
without turning away,
then let the world
keep its verdict.

I am not returning
to the Woman I was.

I have no desire
to crawl backward
into an old skin
just because it once fit.

I am the Alchemy
of every Woman I have been.
The girl who knew Magick
before she knew the names for it.
The Witch who spoke in lightning.
The Woman who drowned
trying to be loved.
The survivor
who found the bottom
and pushed herself
back toward the light.

I carry them all.

I am not choosing
between my fire
and my wisdom.
Between my fury
and my tenderness.
Between the Woman
who burned the world open
and the Woman
who learned what to do
with the ashes.

I am the tempering.

The marriage of flame and iron.
The blade that knows
when to cut
and when to become
a key.

I am becoming
something neither
my former self
nor my fear
could have imagined.

And I am doing it
without asking
to be forgiven
for the space I occupy.

I am returning
to my roots.
To the too-muchness
that was never a flaw
but a force
the world had no language for.

The too-much Woman.

The Witch with ink beneath her nails
and a storm behind her teeth.
The Woman who wears her darkness
like a crown
and her tenderness
like a hidden blade.
The Woman who can love you
without making herself smaller.
The Woman who can tell the truth
without wrapping it
in sweetness for your consumption.
The Woman who has stopped
mistaking self-abandonment
for goodness.

I will be too loud.
I will be too original.
I will be too in your face.
I will be too strange
for your little boxes.
Too difficult
for your convenient narratives.
Too alive
for the grave you dug.
And if my voice makes the windows shake,
perhaps it is because
the house was built
to keep Women quiet.
If my words leave a mark,
perhaps it is because
the truth was never meant
to pass through the world
without touching anything.
If my fire makes you uncomfortable,
you are welcome
to step away from the flames.

But do not ask me
to put them out.

I was not born
to be a candle
in someone else’s window.

I am the Witchfire
at the Crossroads.
I am the key
turning in the lock.
I am the name
I buried beneath the need
to be chosen.
I am the voice
I traded for approval
and have come to reclaim.

And I am done
calling my power
a problem.

The world does not need
another Woman
who has mastered
the art of disappearing.

It needs the Woman
who enters the room
whole.

The Woman who speaks
before permission arrives.

The Woman who makes art
that cannot be mistaken
for anyone else’s.

The Woman who refuses
to confuse being liked
with being alive.

It needs the Witch.
The unruly daughter.
The difficult Woman.
The holy fucking nuisance.
The one who remembers.
The one who returns.
The one who stands
at the threshold
with a torch in her hand
and no intention
of handing it over.

Because the world
has had enough
of our silence.

Now it gets our voices.
Our visions.
Our rage.
Our unrepentant,
unrepeatable,
unmanageable selves.

Let them call us too much.
Let them choke
on the words.

We have spent centuries
being told to take up less space.

Let us become
impossible to contain.

The call was in my blood.
In my bones.
In my Soul.

And this time,
when the Goddess calls,
I will not make myself
smaller
before I answer.

I will reply with a roar.

Poem will be featured in the upcoming Anthology from Girl God Books, Hecate: Underworld Guide and Holy Hag

Pre-order here:

***https://www.thegirlgod.com/hecate.php***

The Women Are Angrier

October 8, 2026

Poem will be featured in the upcoming Anthology from Girl God Books, When Women Rage: Awakening the Dragon to Hasten the Fall of Patriarchy

Pre-order here:

https://www.thegirlgod.com/when_women_rage.php

The Names We Become

October 1, 2026

Hekate, Keeper of Keys and Guardian of the Crossroads,
open the gates.

Sekhmet, Lioness of Wrath,
let the old world tremble.

Kali, Mother of Beginning and End,
cut every chain that called our silence Holy.

Medusa, Serpent Queen,
turn their gaze to stone.

Nemesis, Goddess of Vengeance and Righteous Anger,
bring the scales.

Morrígan, Harbinger of Death,
gather the ravens.

Inanna, the One who descended,
we have walked through the dark
and returned carrying our own names.

Brigid, Exalted One,
set the forge alight.

Great Goddesses, I invoke your names,
stand beside every survivor
who was told to swallow the truth.

Let every buried voice
rise like wildfire.

Let every wound
become a witness.

Let every Jane Doe
remember,

You were never nameless.
You were never alone.

I am Justice coming to collect.

I am Jane Doe.

The Net Was Never Coming

September 6, 2026

Being without family
is like falling with no net.

Tightrope walking
with no safety beneath you,
no hands waiting
to catch you when you fall.

It’s terrifying.

Family estrangement
is a particular kind of grief

one without a funeral,
without a body to bury,
without the permission
to say:

I lost them.

Because sometimes
you didn’t lose your family.

You had to leave them.

There is a difference.

Sometimes blood
is not sanctuary.

Sometimes the people
who share your name
are the very people
you must survive.

And sometimes
the most loving thing
you can do for yourself
is walk away
from the Altar
where they keep sacrificing you.

I know what it is
to look behind me
and find no one.

No familiar hands.
No soft place to land.
No chorus of voices
calling me home.

Only the long road
and the sound of my own footsteps
becoming louder
the farther I walked.

And yes, sometimes it is lonely.

Gods, sometimes it is SO fucking lonely.

There are moments
I would give anything
for the kind of family
I should have had.

For a door
I could open without fear.
For love
that did not come with conditions.
For arms
that did not become cages.
For home
that did not require
the surrender of myself.

But I have learned something
on this road:

loneliness is not the same as captivity.

And solitude
is not the same as abandonment.

I would rather walk alone
than be surrounded
by people determined
to make me disappear.

I would rather sleep beneath
an unfamiliar sky
than live beneath a roof
where my existence
requires permission.

I would rather carry
the ache of absence
than carry
the burden of becoming
someone I am not
just to remain loved.

So I cut the cord.

Not because I was heartless.
Because I was alive.
Not because I didn’t love them.
Because I finally learned
that loving someone
does not require
the destruction of myself.

There are some doors
we do not close
out of hatred.

We close them
because there is fire
on the other side.

And sometimes
survival looks like
turning your back
on the people
who taught you
that leaving
would kill you.

Then discovering,
you breathe better
without them.

I walk alone now.

But look at me.

I am walking.
No net.
No safety line.
No one holding
the other end of the rope.

And still
I do not fall.
Because somewhere
between the breaking
and the becoming,
I became my own ground.

My own shelter.
My own witness.
My own home.

They told me
family was everything.

Perhaps.

But I have learned
that self-abandonment
is too high a price
to pay for belonging.

So let them call it estrangement.
Let them call it selfishness.
Let them tell whatever story
allows them to sleep at night.

I know the truth.
I did not abandon my family.
I stopped abandoning myself.

And there is a strange kind of holiness
in that.
A sovereignty
that cannot be inherited
or bestowed.
A freedom
no bloodline can revoke.

I am no longer
waiting for someone
to throw me a rope.

I have become
the Woman
who learned to walk
without one.

And if I must cross
this wilderness alone,
then alone I will go.
Barefoot.
Bloody.
Unbowed.
Free.
Sovereign.

And finally,

mine.

Jaclyn Cherie

What They Taught Her to Believe

September 3, 2026

Patriarchy poisoned her.

Not all at once.
Not with a blade,
but with a thousand quiet lessons
slipped beneath the tongue
until the poison tasted
like truth.

Imagine being so detached from yourself,
from your Womanhood,
that you would turn on her,
she, you.

Me.

Imagine being taught
to look into the mirror
and see yourself as lesser.

To believe a man carries
more intelligence,
more power,
more authority,
more everything
simply because he is a man.

More,
more,
more,

as though maleness itself
were a crown
the rest of us were born
kneeling before.

And so my brilliance
goes unacknowledged.

The brilliance of my brain
measured against
a generalized, imaginary he.

An invisible man
who has never met me,
never sat inside my skin,
never carried the weight
of my becoming

and still somehow
stands taller.

Not because he earned it.

Because he was born
with the right anatomy.

“Power of the P*nis”, she calls it.

What a f*cking spell.
What a vicious piece of Magick
they taught our Mothers
to cast against themselves.

They taught her
that the voice of a man
must carry further.

That his knowing
must be deeper.

That his authority
must be unquestioned.

And she learned it so well
she began handing the lesson
down to me.

Mother to daughter.
Wound to wound.

Generation after generation
of Women taught to sharpen
the knife against their own reflection.

But I..
I will not inherit
the Altar of my own diminishment.

I will not bow
before an imaginary he
just because the world
taught my Mother to.

I will not make myself smaller
so someone else’s masculinity
can feel enormous.

I will not apologize
for the architecture of my mind.

For the fire in it.
For the strange, beautiful machinery
of my knowing.
For the things I understand
that he does not.

For the things she was never allowed
to believe about herself.

Because perhaps this
is the generational curse of all generational curses,

Not simply that men were placed
above Women,
but that Women were taught
to enforce the hierarchy
with their own hands.

So here I stand,
not with hatred for my Mother,
but with a torch.

Because I know now
that some curses
do not break with forgiveness alone.

Some must be named.

Dragged into the light.
Stripped of their Sacred disguise.
And burned at the Crossroads.

I will not become
the Woman patriarchy made her.

I will become
the Woman it could not.

And if I must walk backward
through the bloodline
to find the place
where they first taught a Woman
that she was less,
then so be it.

I will go there.
I will find her.
I will take her face
between my hands
and whisper:

You were never less.
You were never meant
to kneel.
You were taught to.

And I..

I am here
to end the lesson.

LESSONS IN MAGICK: Mirror of Consequence Ritual

August 12, 2026

On the Dark Moon, or on a night when your anger burns clean and bright, place a black candle upon your Altar. Set a mirror behind it (clear or black) and a glass bowl of clean water before it.

Light the black candle and stand before the flame.

Place both hands over your heart and say:

“Ancient Ones,
Guardians of the Crossroads,
Spirits of Justice and Right Order,
Bear witness.
I stand before you not as victim,
but as one who survived.
I stand before you not in weakness,
but in Sovereignty.”

Take a breath and gaze into the mirror.

Then speak:

“The harm was theirs.
The choice was theirs.
The consequence is theirs.
I refuse to carry another’s debt upon my back.”

Pass your hands over your body from head to foot as though gathering and collecting unseen burdens.

Cast them toward the mirror.

Then say:

“I return the shame.
I return the guilt.
I return the silence.
I return the weight that was never mine to bear.
As the river returns to the sea,
as smoke returns to the sky,
so too shall every deed return unto its source.”

Raise your hands and continue:

“I call upon the Powers that govern balance.
I call upon the Spirits who witness truth.
I call upon the Ancient Laws that bind deed to consequence.
May what is hidden be revealed.
May what is false be unveiled.
May every mask crack beneath the weight of truth.
May every action find its rightful harvest.
Not through my hand,
but through the turning of the Wheel.
Through Fate.
Through Conscience.
Through the ancient law of return.”

Touch the surface of the water.

See the ripples.

See your reflection there.

Then say:

“I release the burden of vengeance.
I claim the power of justice.
I release the burden of carrying their darkness.
I claim the power of carrying my own light.
I release their fate to the Gods,
to the Spirits,
to the Ancestors,
and to the turning Wheel.”

Sprinkle a few drops of water upon your brow, heart, and hands.

Anoint thyself.

Then speak these final words:

“What was sent returns.
What was hidden is revealed.
What was broken is restored.
I call my power home.
I call my Spirit home.
I call my life home.
So it is spoken.
So it is woven.
So it is.
So it was.
So it shall be.”

Allow the candle to burn for a time, then extinguish it.

Cover the mirror until dawn, or until you feel is appropriate. When you uncover it, a new light will shine.

Walk away knowing that justice no longer rests upon your shoulders alone.

You are supported.

You are free.

Lux in Tenebris Lucet

LESSONS IN MAGICK: Guard Your Flame

August 3, 2026

There has been a lot happening in the Witch and greater Occult communities.

Even beyond these spaces, if I’m being honest.

There are so many intersections, adjacent communities, overlapping conversations, and places where all of this bleeds into one another.

I digress.

This isn’t about one particular event.

And it certainly isn’t about any particular person.

It’s simply a friendly reminder of a few things I think some folks have lost sight of:

1. Protection Magick is necessary Magick.

Make sure you have a solid plan.

Offensive. Defensive. Preventative.

Know the difference.
Know what you’re doing.
Know why you’re doing it.

And for the love of all things Holy and Unholy, don’t wait until you’re already in the fire to figure out how you’re going to protect yourself from it.

2. Mental health is Spiritual health.

Maintain proper Spiritual hygiene.

Take care of your mind.
Take care of your psyche.

Hydrate.
Eat well.
Move your body.

Take your medications.
Take your supplements.
Meditate.
Go to therapy.
Rest.
Get outside.

Do the mundane things that keep your vessel functioning.

Your mind is part of your temple, too.

You cannot continually neglect the human being while trying to tend the Spirit.

3. Flow like water through a stream, but stand like stone beneath the current.

Create your own opinions.

Build a foundation beneath them strong enough that nothing, and no one, can simply shake you from it.

But remain willing to change.

Be willing to listen.
Be willing to encounter an opposing idea without immediately treating it as an attack.

There is an extraordinary amount of rage bait, manipulation, misinformation, disinformation, Spiritual projection, and psychological noise circulating right now.

Whether you call it psyops, propaganda, Spiritual warfare, algorithms, or simply the internet doing what the internet does best, be mindful.

Be mindful of what you consume.
Be mindful of what you amplify.
Be mindful of what you allow into your psyche.

Because energy is power.

So ask yourself:

Are you giving yours away freely?

4. Discernment in all things.

This one should speak for itself. I say it often enough.

Question everything.

Seek until you find an answer.
Then seek some more.

And more.
And more.

Use your intuition.
Use logic.
Use facts.
Use evidence.
Use your lived experience.

And yes,
use Spirit.

But don’t abandon one form of knowing simply because another feels more comfortable.

Intuition without discernment can become projection.

Logic without intuition can become rigidity.

Faith without questioning can become dogma.

You need all of your faculties.

Use them.

5. To thine own self be true.

This might be the most important one.

We live in a world of (as aforementioned) algorithms, echo chambers, outrage cycles, manufactured consensus, and endless noise.

Everyone has an opinion.

Everyone has a platform.

Everyone has an answer.

And somewhere underneath all of that noise is your own voice.

You must learn how to hear it.

Because for many of the things we question, we already know the answer.

We’ve simply forgotten how to listen.

More importantly, we must become brave enough to trust ourselves.

To take the leap.

Even when it doesn’t make sense.

Especially when it doesn’t make sense.

Follow your path.
Follow your beat.
Follow your flame.

You do not need permission to become who you are.

You do not need consensus to know what you know.

You do not need the crowd to validate the path beneath your feet.

For you are the fire.

Lux in Tenebris Lucet

The Fire Beaneath the Bones

July 27, 2026

Suffering
is not
a requirement
for life.

Nor is it
the price
of Spiritual evolution.

It is simply

one destination

along a road

few would choose,
yet many
will someday
walk.

The Plutonian Healer
does not seek
the Underworld.

She simply knows
what to do
once she arrives.

She descends.

Again.
And again.

Not because
she is broken.

Not because
Spirit delights
in suffering.

But because
there are medicines
that only grow
beneath the earth.

The world teaches us
to fear
the darkness.

The Plutonian
knows better.

She enters
the belly
of the Underworld
with empty hands
and returns
carrying fire.

She learns
that grief
isn’t punishment.

Rage
isn’t failure.

Loss
isn’t the end.

They are Crossroads.

Every death
asks a question.

Every ending
demands
another name.

The Plutonian Healer
does not emerge
without scars.

She emerges
speaking
the language
of those
still trapped
below.

She remembers
the pathways.

The hidden doors.

The monsters
that were never monsters —
only abandoned
pieces
of herself
waiting
to be loved
without illusion.

This is why
people find her
when life
falls apart.

She does not
flinch
at ruin.

She recognizes it.

She has built
Altars
from ash.

Gardens
from graves.

She has learned
that compost
and resurrection
have always shared
the same soil.

Do not mistake
her tenderness
for innocence.

She has dined
with Death.

Sat beside
Grief.

Held hands
with Madness.
Walked home
with Shadow.

And still,
she chose
Life.

Not the polished,
performative version.

The wild one.

The blood-soaked,
root-bound,
earth-scented
miracle
of becoming.

Because the Plutonian Healer
knows
what few Healers ever will.

The Underworld
was never
her prison.

It was
her apprenticeship.

Lux in Tenebris

Jaclyn Cherie

The Forgotten Daughter

July 23, 2026

Left behind.

Never chosen.

Parentified
and infantilized
in the same breath.

Too young
to have a voice.

Old enough
to carry everyone’s pain.

Tell me
how does a child
become both
the family therapist
and still be treated
as though
she knows nothing?

How do you become
the one
everyone leans on,
yet no one
thinks to hold?

I learned early
that love
could be earned.

That usefulness
was safer
than need.

That if I became
indispensable enough,
perhaps…

someone
would finally
choose me.

So I became
the bridge.

The peacemaker.

The keeper
of impossible silences.

The daughter
who swallowed storms
so no one else
had to taste
the rain.

No one noticed
that every flood
left me drowning.

The forgotten daughter
doesn’t scream.

She studies.
She adapts.
She watches every room
like prey
studying predators.

She learns
which version
of herself
will keep
everyone comfortable.

Until one day
she wakes
unable to remember
which version
was ever
her own.

People mistake
the forgotten daughter
for resilient.

As though survival
wasn’t simply
the only language
she was ever taught.

They praise
her strength.

Never asking
who she had to become
to deserve
those words.

But forgotten
does not mean
unworthy.

It means
someone else
failed
to remember.

I was never
too much.

Too sensitive.
Too difficult.
Too intense.

I was simply
growing
inside a home
that had forgotten
how to see me.

Perhaps they never knew how.

There comes a moment
when forgotten daughters
stop waiting
to be found.

We descend

Not into despair

into ourselves.

Into the dark places
where abandoned children
become Wise Women.

Where grief
is no longer
a prison,
but a forge.

The world calls us
forgotten.

Spirit
calls us
initiated.

Because those
who are never chosen
learn
the oldest lesson
of all.

To choose themselves.

Again.
And again.
And again.

Until the echo
of abandonment

becomes

a declaration.

I was never forgotten.

I was hidden.

Hidden
where no one else
could name me

until I remembered
my own.

They called me

the forgotten daughter.

As though forgetting
was ever
my name.

I crossed
the threshold.

I entered
the fire.

I buried

the child

who begged

to be chosen.

And the Woman
who emerged

did not ask

to be remembered.

She remembered

her own name.

Jaclyn Cherie

Blood Remembers

July 21, 2026

Her presence triggers me.

It cuts deep.

Memories flooding
that old ache
I keep convincing myself
has finally gone quiet.

Then she walks into the room

and suddenly
I am every age
I have ever been.

She is my home.

My safe place.

My refuge from the storm.

She is also
the storm itself.

She is both

curse

and cure.

Burn

and balm.

How can one Woman
be the place
I run toward
and the place
I have spent
my life
trying to outrun?

This is the inheritance
of Mothers and Daughters.

We are stitched together
long before
either of us
learns
how to speak.

Bound
by blood.
By bone.
By memory.

By the unspoken language
of Women
who carry one another’s
grief
inside their own bodies.

I see her.

Not just
the Mother.

The little girl
she buried
to become one.

I see
the fear
she swallowed.

The dreams
she folded away.

The love
she never learned
how to give
without it first
passing through
her own wounds.

And because I see her
I ache.

Not because
it excuses
what hurt me.

That she hurt me.

But because
love becomes
far more complicated
when you can trace
the wound
back through
the Women
who carried it
before either of you
were born.

People want
simple stories.

A villain.
A victim.
Someone to blame.

But life
rarely offers us
that simplicity.

Sometimes
the Woman
who broke you
is also
the Woman
who held you
when the rest
of the world did not.

Sometimes
the safest place
you’ve ever known
is also
where your deepest wounds
were first named.

This is the impossible
geometry
of Mothers
and Daughters.

The centuries-old question:

Who hurt whom more?
Mother?
Or child?

Perhaps
that is the wrong question.

Perhaps
the better one is:

Who was hurting first?

Who carried
a grief
so Ancient
it forgot
which generation
it belonged to?

I do not know
where she ends
and I begin.

Perhaps
that is the tragedy.

Perhaps
that is also
the miracle.

Because even
when I rage,
even
when I retreat,
even
when her presence
awakens every scar
I have fought
to heal
I still know
she is bound to me.

And I to her.

Not by obligation.

Not by guilt.

But by something
older than language.

Older than memory.

A cord
neither of us tied.

A love
neither of us
has always known
how to carry.

So I will not ask
who wounded whom more.

I will ask instead

How do we become
the first Women
in our bloodline
to love each other
without bleeding
quite so much?

The Nephilim Rising

Posts by Jaclyn Cherie

THE RETURN OF THE TOO MUCH WOMAN

The Women Are Angrier

The Names We Become

The Net Was Never Coming

What They Taught Her to Believe

LESSONS IN MAGICK: Mirror of Consequence Ritual

LESSONS IN MAGICK: Guard Your Flame

The Fire Beaneath the Bones

The Forgotten Daughter

Blood Remembers