For a long time, I thought I had “outgrown” my old interests. The books on witchcraft. The obsession with psychology and neuroscience. The quiet rituals that helped me regulate my nervous system before I had language for what that even meant. Somewhere along the way, curiosity got labeled as impractical, intuition as silly, and rest as laziness. So I packed those parts of myself away and told myself I was being responsible. But healing has a funny way of circling back. It doesn’t always look like becoming someone new—sometimes it looks like remembering the girl who trusted both her gut and the data, who believed magic and science were never opposites, just two languages describing the same truth.

I’ve said it before but I’m working on my second masters degree. I call it my spite masters. I’m getting it because I hate how the woman at my school does her job and I feel like she knows nothing. So at the end of the year happy hour last year my teammate and I concocted a plan (after 1 too many Frosès) that I would get my masters and take her job. What any sane person does. Especially one who has two small boys and a failing marriage. But here’s the thing I love research. I love reading textbooks and learning new things. I love science articles. I love data.

On the flip side- I love crystals. I love tarot cards, frankly I’m damn good at reading them too. And I would even say I’m pretty spiritually intuitive.

These two things throw people for a loop. Or if you’re my current husband you hate everything about all of it, but I digress.

These last few months have been a wild healing journey that I didn’t expect to go on. I started therapy, again, but with a goal in mind. I started just working on myself and decided to stop putting so much energy into fixing a marriage that wasn’t fixable. I was fixable. I wasn’t broken, I was buried.

I decided to start doing all the things I used to love. Baking, cooking, writing, crafting… then came the witchy shit. At first I thought it was nostalgia wishing for the “younger me.” But no this is reclaiming a woman who was lost in a sea of bullshit.

Tonight I went down to my office once my husband was home. I wanted to finish wrapping presents for the boys… but I also wanted to release some old habits I have developed over the last 9 years as a self preservation tactic. I wrote them down and lit them on fire. I burned some sage and drew a Tarot card. It was great.

Here’s my list:

So no, I’m not “going back” to old interests because I’m lost or nostalgic. I’m returning because they were always mine. Because the things that once made me feel curious, regulated, and alive were never distractions—they were early forms of self-trust. Healing, for me, has looked less like fixing what was broken and more like unlearning what told me I had to abandon myself to be taken seriously. I still love science. I still crave information. And I still believe in a kind of magic that lives in pattern recognition, nervous systems, and paying attention. This isn’t a reinvention. It’s a remembering.