Atlas held me. We said nothing, this stunning Oak tree and I, not after asking her if I could lean against her like I have before. Everything had become too much; the constant consumption of social media and opinions from people who tell me they know how to solve the issues in my life better than I do. Every insecurity I have and doubt I had pondered for days had pushed me to a point of annoying myself. Atlas rooted me and let me watch her fragment of the sky. Laying against my dear friend, I allowed the noise to fall away and just be here, with her.
I hadn’t gone to the trees for some time, but they are with me every day when I go to my altar; every time I light the candle in their honour and invite them into my life, witchcraft, and space. I don’t need to tell them; they know every time I return. There are many things I love about my tree friends and they change all the time, but something that will never cease to amaze me is the way these giant marvels make space for me. Atlas allowed me to become one with her for the moments I stayed, to stare upwards and root my feet with hers, to lay my back against her body so I could forget about the weight of my own. It reminded me that Atlas and I, we are one and that we need each other in this life, we are mutuals and can hold different spaces for each other.
The contact with Atlas left me clearer, not instantly, I had tears to shed and release to honour before I was able to make space for the quiet guidance. As a neurodivergent person, there are many things and sayings I have never really understood or taken a different perspective of. Recently, upon embarking on a new healing journey of body image and self, I came across the old adage ‘Your Body is a Temple’. I used to believe this was just something ‘gym junkies’ said, a statement of superiority and holiness. In the thirteen years of chronic illness, the statement changed for me further and I felt even more distance as my body was a building, but not one of reverence, of entrapment. Now, time has done its job and given me the lessons and experiences to shift my perspective once more; to allow me the space to practice curiosity and reframe. After years of punishment, self-abandonment, and self-sabotage, I see my body; it has always been a sacred place —an altar not a temple.
As a non-traditional witch, my altar is my own — it contains all that I am, a sacred space of authenticity and acknowledges all the aspects of ‘me’. I treat my altar with my own intentions, it belongs to no one else but me, and it is only I who has say as to how I decorate it or show up at it. Until recent times, I wasn’t doing this for my body. I didn’t see it as a place that required devotion, love, respect, honour, or even commitment to consistency. In the last three years, I have learned a lot from my ways of witchcraft, but nothing rings truer than this; your intentions and thoughts carry vast power. It is what makes the difference in everything I do; if there is no belief and intention, if there is doubt in the mind, then I am not tapping into my truest self or power; if it is not in alignment it will not come toward me.
In my last year of intense shadow work, I have realised just how important it is to feel safety in your body; if you don’t feel safe your body will keep you in a mode of survival. I’ve opened my eyes to just how unsafe the world tries to keep us, especially women. I am flooded each time I open social media with adverts that tell me my body is something that needs to be fixed, that I can’t love it without making these fixes, and that it needs to fit in. I wasn’t born to fit in, and I wasn’t born to sit at an altar that looks like everyone else’s — in either case.
I take pictures of all my tree friends, I have many in frames in my writing space so in moments of distraction, I can ground myself with them. I often look at my pictures of beautiful Atlas; a large moss-covered rock rests atop of roots she has extended outwards. She stands proud, strong, and graceful, she has the curves of a woman and the presence of a warrior. I have only ever photographed my feet or hands when I visit them. The fragmentation of self that the world wants me to carry, like Atlas’ rock, holds me back from seeing my own bark as beautiful, and it tries to always extinguish the flame within.
My tree friends have lost parts of them to storms over the years I’ve known them; my most connected tree friend Shyla fell in 2024 and I now sit on her fallen trunk at every sabbath. They too have carried the grief of pain, of change, and yet they never hide — they are open, and full themselves whether in full Summer bloom or in cycle with the darkness of Winter. I take Shyla flowers every time I visit, to thank her for all she gives me even after her falling, and for letting me sit with her at all my thresholds. I am a child of the threshold, born to sit in all, the darkness, the light, and in the nothing. I am a daughter of Mother Hecate, who guides me at my altar, who — like my tree friends — wants only honesty, authenticity, and presence. They bring me a connection that is sacred and in doing so, they have shown me that I must cultivate the same divine connection within myself. Like the protection of Mother Hecate, my body has only ever tried to keep me safe because it has always recognised the worth of the soul it carries; now it is my time to do the same.
Yesterday, I leaned into my altar and lit two candles tied together — one for me and one for the decades of versions of self that no longer serve me. Mother Hecate guided me as tears fell, the flame burning it all away slowly, severing the cord that has kept the two bound together. To feel, to release, to be in your underworld are underrated gifts that the liminal gives us. I will return to the trees again soon, and as I journey into this next part of my shadow self, I know I am held.
In the wild and in-between,
Rochelle x
