Blood Remembers

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 Woman Who Broke The Spell

Some wounds are generational.

They connect us
through unspoken bonds
of blood,
bone,
and memory.

They are inherited
like old recipes,
family heirlooms,
and names carved into weathered gravestones.

Except no one speaks
of these inheritances.

Only the silence.

Only the tightening jaw.

Only the little girl
who learns to apologize
before she knows
what she has done wrong.

Only the mother
who loved
the best she could
with hands that were never taught
how to hold themselves.

I used to believe
the mother wound
was born
inside one Woman.

I know better now.

It is older than her.

Older than her mother.

Older than the grandmother
whose laughter
was swallowed
by survival.

It travels.
From womb to womb.

From daughter to daughter.

A ghost
wearing
different faces.

We inherit
the unfinished grief
of Women
who were told
their hunger
was dangerous.

Their anger
unbecoming.

Their voices
too loud.

Their bodies
belonged
to everyone
but themselves.

Until one Woman…

says:

No.

Not because she hates
the Women who came before.

Because she loves
the Women
who will come after.

Do you know
what it costs
to break a generational curse?

Everything.

You become
the family disappointment.

The difficult one.

The Woman
who asks forbidden questions.

Who names
what everyone else
has learned
to survive by denying.

You mourn
people
who are still alive.

You bury
versions of yourself
that were built
only to keep
the peace.

You become
the fire alarm
inside a house
that has grown comfortable
with smoke.

And no one
thanks the alarm.

Not at first.

Breaking the curse
is not beautiful.

It is ugly.

It is blistered hands
pulling roots
that have wrapped themselves
around your spine.

It is learning
that forgiveness
does not always
mean reconciliation.

It is discovering
that compassion
does not require
your continued sacrifice.

It is standing
at the edge
of your bloodline
and saying:

It ends here.

Not because
I am stronger
than my mothers.

But because
their prayers
finally found
a body
willing
to answer them.

Perhaps
I was never born
to carry
this pain forever.

Perhaps
I was born
to become
the threshold.

The Woman
who looked
an Ancient wound
in the eyes
and refused
to pass it
to the next generation.

This is how
the spell is broken.

Not with perfect love.

Not without grief.

But with one battered hand
reaching backward
to bless the Women
who could not escape
while the other
reaches forward
to children,
to daughters,
to sons,
to every future soul
I will never meet,
unburdened.

Because I chose
to carry the wound
only long enough
to teach it
how to become
an ending.

Jaclyn Cherie

All Rights Reserved.

To The Woman Who Survived

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

Lessons in Magick: When Giants Fall

Death does not occur one, singular time in our lives.

Sure. There is a death that is a finale, there is no coming back from.

None of us can escape that physical, biological ending.

Well, I mean, you know what I mean.

Reincarnation beliefs and such aside.

There are multiple tiny deaths we experience throughout life.

And, sadly, no, I am not referring to la petite mort.

Though I am a loud supporter that the more of THOSE you experience, the better your overall life will be.

I digress.

These tiny deaths I am referring to are not tiny at all; they are sometimes butterfly effects in our microcosm.

Other times, they are foundation cracking.

Making us reassess who we are and our values.

Then there are some minor annoyances.

Ah, one of the things in life besides death and taxes that can be guaranteed is change.

The world moves with or without you.

That’s a harsh reality, an ego death, we all must accept and go through.

You are either an active participant, or you are a passive bystander.

I prefer to be an active participant but sometimes we must, we must be bystanders.

If you are familiar with The Nap Bishop, Tricia Hersey, and her revolutionary work and book, Rest is Resistance then you might know what I am referring to.

Not only is rest an inherent right, but it is also an act of resistance.

An act of defiance in a hustle culture that judges you and defines you by how much you can produce, create, and freely give for “them” to take.

You have worth far beyond what you can give.

You have value far greater than you know.

Rest is a birthright.

“Those are nuanced statements! They’re privileged, too!”

Are they, though?

Make yourself extremely uncomfortable and ask, are they?

Read Tricia’s work and then circle back to me.

https://thenapministry.wordpress.com/

The last sense of normalcy, and I use the word loosely, that I experienced, along with many others, was in 2019.

I was at the height of my success. I was in the process of a book deal. I had everything I had ever wanted and dreamed right at my fingertips.

Then, 2020 hit and the world changed.

The world as we knew it had, was forever changed.

 In my opinion, that was one of the larger butterfly effects in recent memory.

It altered all our lives whether we recognize the changes or not.

I have fought for nearly six years against nature, the Universe, and their Laws:

I have refused to die.

I have refused to allow certain parts of myself, my path, and my brand that no longer align with who I am and where I am at, go.

Resistance when embodied can seep into our everyday lives.

When we fight against a system, not a person but a system, dare I say an entity that wants everything from you, and we do not bend, flow, change quickly, then we will suffer a fate worse than metaphorical death –

Stagnancy.

Like a ghost, we become stuck in purgatory, unable to move on, but some parts of us know we must.

We remain in chrysalis instead of going through the process of metamorphosis to gain our wings.

We keep ourselves trapped, our world small, all for the sake of comfort.

The illusion of safety.

We refuse to perform one of the most essential forms of personal Alchemy.

In that, we are denying our birthright.

We are denying our power.

We are denying our Magick.

When we resist change, we resist death.

Both are natural parts of the cycle of life.

Both are natural parts of the cycle of our lives.

I experienced burnout and I am actively trying to heal that while finding temperance in my life.

I have found it a bit ironic that in my time away (years) from the more public facing aspects of my brand that the pendulum has swung back and folks are reading blogs again, and even vlogging.

My millennial heart is here for that comeback.

I believe we are better humans when we share our stories.

I didn’t know if I was going to return to this space, or in what capacity, but it is a part of me and my path.

I created this blog nearly 14 years ago as a space free of judgment and one of radical acceptance.

Though it was quiet for a bit while I went through my trial by fire for resisting change, I am grateful I kept the flame going, if only an ember.

As a Torchbearer, I can work with an ember. It means there is still life, still something to create with, still stories to be told.

I plan on doing book reviews and focusing on tackling some of the wild disinformation I see on platforms like TikTok. I am all for Witches sharing history and knowledge but not when it’s knowledge saying Belladonna is illegal.

Yes, a creator really said that ten toes down.

Like the name of my brand + business suggests, I am a Giant, and even Giants fall.

But we also rise.

It is in our rise that we find our greatest strengths.  

I hope to reconnect with my audience in this space and on Facebook again.

I do hope you’re still out there.

If not, my fire will lead you home to the Crossroads as it once did.

Lux in Tenebris Lucet