To The Woman Who Survived

July 16, 2026

Beloved,

I know there are days when the ghosts return.

Days when memory arrives uninvited,
dragging shadows behind it.

Days when your body remembers
what your mind had long since tucked away
inside Sacred vaults of survival.

And on those days,
I hope you remember this:
You were never the violence.

Not then.
Not now.
Not ever.

What happened to you
passed through your life like a storm,
but it did not become your Soul.

There are those who would measure you
by what was taken.

I measure you
by what remained.

And what remained
was extraordinary.

Is extraordinary.

You remained.

The heart still beating.
The lungs still drawing breath.
The Spirit still refusing to surrender its song.

You do not need to earn your healing.
You do not need to justify your grief.
You do not need to explain why some wounds ache louder than others.

You are allowed to be tender.
You are allowed to be angry.
You are allowed to be both in the same holy breath.

The world may call your scars damage.

I call them evidence.

Evidence that you walked through fire
and somehow carried the flame home.
Evidence that darkness met you
and failed to make you its own.
Evidence that even shattered things
can become Sacred.

So when the memories come,
when sorrow presses its hand against your chest,
when the old ache whispers its familiar lies,
place your hand over your heart.

Feel the rhythm beneath your palm.

Thump, thump
Thump, thump

That is not weakness.
That is not brokenness.
That is your life.

Still choosing itself.
Still choosing itself.
Still choosing itself.

Thump, thump
Thump, thump

And that,
dear Woman,
is a miracle.

You are a miracle.

Jaclyn Cherie

The Nephilim Rising
Girl God Books

All Rights Reserved.

My poem from the upcoming release, Spells for Survivors: Returning to the Holy Her

Pre-order at:

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

WAR CRY OF THE SURVIVOR

July 16, 2026

They told me to heal quietly.
To make my pain palatable.
To speak in soft tones and careful language.
To forgive before the wound had stopped bleeding.

To be gracious.
To be grateful.
To be anything but angry.

But anger was the first honest thing I had felt.
It arrived like a wildfire through dead timber.
Like a Goddess with blood on Her hands and justice in Her eyes.
Like a howl clawing its way from the deepest part of me.

You called me victim.
I became witness.
You called me broken.
I became weapon.
You called me ruined.
I became revelation.

What happened to me was real.
The terror was real.
The violation was real.
The grief was real.

And so is my rage.

My rage is not a flaw.
It is the part of me that knows I deserved better.

The part that refused to die.
The part that stood guard over the ashes and
whispered:

“No more.”

No more silence.
No more shrinking.
No more carrying shame that was never mine.

I return every ounce of it.
Every lie.
Every burden.
Every poisoned seed.

Take it back.
It belongs to you.

I am done carrying the weight of another’s violence.
I am done apologizing for surviving.
I am done making myself smaller so others can remain comfortable.

I am not what was done to me.

I am what survived.
I am the fire that remained.
The blade that did not break.

The voice that rose from the wreckage.

And when I speak now,

it is not with trembling.

It is with thunder.

Jaclyn Cherie

The Nephilim Rising
Girl God Books

All Rights Reserved.

My second poem from the upcoming release, Spells for Survivors: Returning to the Holy Her

Pre-order at:

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

Do Not Give Them Your Fear

July 16, 2026

I have a million other things to be doing right now.

Yet Spirit has reached into the quiet,
wrapped its unseen hand around my wrist,
and whispered…

Write, child.

Because someone is forgetting.

Someone is standing at the Crossroads,
convinced that fear is the only language left.

It is not.

So hear me.

Not as a Prophet.
Not as a Saint.
Not as someone untouched by darkness.

Hear me as one who has walked through it.

Who has swallowed ash and breathed fire.
Who has slept beside grief.
Who has learned that monsters are not always found in forests, dark corners or beneath the bed
sometimes they wear familiar faces,
sometimes they echo inside our own minds.

Hear me as one who knows that Shadow
is not the enemy.

Fear wants you to kneel.

Despair wants you to forget your own name.
Silence wants you to mistake survival
for surrender.

Do. Not.

Do not give them your fear.

Do not feed the machine with your Spirit.
Do not offer your terror as tribute.
Do not become the architect of your own cage.

Your fear is Sacred fire.

Guard it.
Transform it.
Temper it until it becomes resolve.

To every Witch who has ever hidden their Altar.
To every Soul whose existence has been treated as an inconvenience.
To every Seeker.
Every exile.
Every strange child who learned too early that the world does not always welcome those who refuse to fit neatly inside its smallest boxes.

I see you.
I have always seen you.

The road beneath your feet has never been easy.

It was never meant to be.

We descend because wisdom waits below.
We speak with ghosts because they remember what Empires forgot.

We carry bones, herbs, Cards, prayers, scars, and stories because every generation leaves breadcrumbs for the next.

We are not born from comfort.
We are born from remembering.

Remember who you are.

Remember those who stood before you when the fires burned hotter than they do today.

Remember those who whispered prayers beneath their breath when speaking aloud carried consequences.

Remember those who buried their books,
hid their symbols,
passed Sacred names from trembling lips to willing ears,
believing someone,
someday,
would continue the work.

You are that someone.
And so am I.

Darkness has always existed.

So have we.

The night has never belonged solely to those who wield power.

It belongs to the owl.
The wolf.
The Ancestors.
The dreamers.
The Witches who know that every seed first breaks open beneath the Earth before it ever reaches the light.

We are children of thresholds.
Liminal Spaces.
Students of endings, and beginnings.
Keepers of impossible hope. Not the fragile kind that pretends suffering isn’t real, but the fierce kind that looks directly into the Abyss and refuses to become it. We study it.

No one is coming to save us.

Perhaps that has always been our greatest strength.
Because we remember how to gather.

How to tend the Flame.
How to bind one another’s wounds.
How to laugh in the face of uncertainty.
How to sing while surrounded by ruins.

That is Magick.
That is Alchemy.
Not escaping the darkness.
But becoming so familiar with it
that it no longer tells you who you are.
You are united as One.

So let them have their fear.

Let them build kingdoms from it if they must.
We will build something older.
Something that cannot be legislated away.
Something that cannot be silenced.
Something rooted in memory,
in courage,
in Spirit,
and in the wild, untamable heart that still beats beneath every scar we carry.

Stand.
Breathe.
Remember.
Then walk forward.
Not because you are unafraid.
But because fear was never meant to be your Master.

Do not give them your fear.

Not today.
Not tomorrow.
Not ever.

Remember who you are.