037 – Sarah Jenks: Sacred Ceremonies for Women & Witches

Sarah Tacy [00:00:06]:

Hello. Welcome. I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together, we share our grief, laughter, love, and life saving tools. Join us. Welcome to Threshold Moments. Today I have with us my dear friend, Sarah Jenks.

Sarah Tacy [00:00:45]:

I'll read a little bit of a bio, but I feel like the best way for you to get a feel for her is just to listen to her brilliance, to her passion, to her ability to also get right to the point of things while including the heart and soul. So Sarah Jenks is an ordained priestess of a sacred feminine spiritual community dedicated to helping individuals establish their own direct connection with the divine through ritual, ceremony, and education. In a world where the sacred feminine has often been overshadowed, sarah is on a mission to reintegrate sacred feminine wisdom into everyday life, empowering women to lead more prosperous, beautiful, and meaningful lives by tapping into their inner wisdom and power. Her offerings include in person retreats, in large scale ceremonies, online courses, and a vibrant virtual community called holy women. Sarah is a devoted mother of three, which I hate to just go over any one point too fast, the big deal. And she shares with her husband Jonathan, who is a talented surgeon and also an emotional health expert for men. Together, they own a spiritual retreat center located in a serene traditional suburb just outside of Boston, Mass. Welcome.

Sarah Jenks [00:02:17]:

Thank you, Sarah. I'm really happy to be here.

Sarah Tacy [00:02:20]:

I'm so happy to have you. And just before we started the podcast, I was speaking to the beauty you bring to all things, the beauty that you call forth, even in myself. And I was like, you know, I'm really going to get myself, my body ready, my energy ready, I'm going to put a dress on. You bring that forth and that comes forth in all of your work. And I was specifically speaking about your website, which I'm kind of going to jump right in and just say it touches on I know you've probably had many thresholds, but it touches on the threshold when you had everything. And I just want to say I've felt this some moments in my life where it's like, I have the amazing husband, I have the kids, I have the home that I dreamed of and worked for, I have the business that I worked my butt off for, and having that moment of feeling dead inside.

Sarah Jenks [00:03:26]:

Yeah.

Sarah Tacy [00:03:27]:

I'm wondering if you would be willing to start us there because I think it will lead us into who you are.

Sarah Jenks [00:03:35]:

Yeah. So I grew up outside of Boston in a pretty traditional suburb. I had a really blessed and amazing childhood in so many ways and went through some hard stuff, as all kids do. And I was really good at the traditional path of success. I was a great student and I loved musical theater, and I did fine. I ended up at the number one liberal arts school in the country, and I was well on my way to be a quote unquote successful person. I had met a doctor who had fallen in love with me, and all was well. I was checking all the boxes and I continued on that path.

Sarah Jenks [00:04:29]:

I went into advertising and I did quickly learn that I was meant to be my own boss. And I started a health coaching practice, helping originally it was helping brides lose weight for their wedding. And then I got more into emotional eating and I quickly rose to have a pretty great following in that industry. And my husband was in residency. We were living in San Francisco. We had two babies. I was just check, check, check. And what was real was that I couldn't get out of bed in the morning and I was binge eating in secret, even though I had a weight loss company and I was barely keeping it together.

Sarah Jenks [00:05:17]:

And what I realized was happening was that I was building a life that everybody else wanted for me. And I never took a moment, like a long pause to ask myself, who am I really? And what do I really want? And I was really confused as to why I was feeling this way. It was a real blank spot for me. And around the same time, I walked into my therapist office for therapy. And she had had some backjacks on the floor and you could still smell incense in the air and there were paintings of goddesses on the walls. And all of a sudden, my entire body erupted in goosebumps. And I started to weep. And I just looked at her and I said, what is happening here? And she just sort of looked at me and she said, I'll tell you when you're ready.

Sarah Jenks [00:06:25]:

And then I was, like, hungry for the information. And I just kept grilling her. And what I realized what was happening was she was leading sacred feminine ceremony. And after a couple of months, she invited me to come to one. And I sat down in that ceremony and it was like remembering who I actually was for the first time. And through that process of meeting my soul that I came to identify it as I realized that there was actually nothing wrong with my external life. There was nothing. I wasn't married to the wrong man.

Sarah Jenks [00:07:09]:

I was absolutely meant to be a mother, but who I was being on the inside of that life was completely wrong for the path that my soul actually came here to walk.

Sarah Tacy [00:07:26]:

So that brings me to the question an episode that just came out mid September is on changing from familiar to optimal and the internal shifts that can sometimes feel like withdrawal, but also the idea that, say, you're with the same man, and you now have unspoken contracts of who you are and how you relate. And that's true as a mother and that's true in business. So even if the things on the external are the things you want, what happens when you begin to shift the internal? Because I assume you then interact with the external differently.

Sarah Jenks [00:08:12]:

Oh, yeah, big time. Yeah. It created a lot of conflict and destruction because I was in unspoken agreements with Jonathan. I had applied for a specific job of what it meant to be a doctor's wife. And I had agreed to be the primary breadwinner and the primary parent while Jonathan was in residency. I had agreements around how I was meant to show up as a daughter and a friend. And it was all pretty wrong for me. And so what's tricky is that for other people, they have to really come to terms with, wait, is she pretending to be someone she's not? Has Sarah gone crazy? Why is this happening? This was actually really working for, you know, with Jonathan.

Sarah Jenks [00:09:13]:

It was a match for him also playing small and him also not being himself. And so when I came onto the scene as my true self, anyone who wasn't being their true self was getting confronted. And this is what happens with everybody. So with Jonathan, this looked like me raising my standards for how I was going to be treated inside of our marriage. What I deserved in my partnership, how we needed to create new agreements financially, create radically different agreements in our parenting, but also in our lovership. And what I wanted for our love making, and what I wanted for our communication and the big dreams and visions that we have, and all the fun, exciting stuff with life I didn't want to do by myself anymore. I didn't want to go off to an amazing retreat and have this life changing experience and come home to a grumpy husband. I wanted to be with someone who was alive and awake and going after life in his own way.

Sarah Jenks [00:10:27]:

So that was like a multi year process of figuring out how to do that dance together.

Sarah Tacy [00:10:36]:

Thank you for saying that. I was just going to say I was like, man, it sounds like an unweaving and then a conscious reweaving of every aspect. And that that couldn't be an overnight thing. But multi year and I imagine a lifetime. I imagine it's a lifetime.

Sarah Jenks [00:10:53]:

No, and now I think it is a lifetime. And that's the new paradigm that we're in now, is we're just up for being on the ride of each other's transformation in whatever way that's meant to shake up our lives. I just haven't seen it work. When one partner is rapidly growing and one partner is stagnant. But I don't necessarily believe that each partner needs to grow in the same ways or in the same direction. There's just something about growth and getting juiced up by the mystery of life together in whatever way that's woven. That just for me is what.

Sarah Tacy [00:11:44]:

Wanting to there's. I'm so wanting to dive deeper into this. And we talked about maybe having you and Jonathan on another time to work with. And then as you start moving into the calling of your soul, what did that look like? How did you tune in? Was it primarily through ceremony? I'm really interested in this transition from somebody who's working with emotional eating and brides and then moving towards full blown priestess running huge ceremonies. I mean, just a weekend or two ago, you had one of the most powerful, can I call it a ceremony.

Sarah Jenks [00:12:25]:

It was yes, ceremony with 150 women at my home. It was really powerful. Yeah, I did all of my work in Ceremony and that's really the reason why I lead it now. And I have done some incredible pattern shifting and behavioral work and healing in therapy. And when it came to deeply knowing my soul and what I came here to do and moving through the sacred removal of the wounds and also standing in my own initiation, that all happened in Ceremony for me. And the woman I've worked with is Elaine Khalila. Doughty and she's one of the head priestesses of the 13 Moon Mystery School. And she has taught me everything I know.

Sarah Jenks [00:13:24]:

And when you go into this type of sacred ceremony, it's held in such a frequency that you're not self and personality and then your true essence and soul get split and you can so clearly feel the difference between the two in a way that I was finally able to identify what was not me. And that's how I started. But then I'm an intellect, so I then wanted to prove it. And that's when I started really understanding like digging into conditioning and epigenetics and how it's tied with the history of the sacred feminine and the erasure of the sacred feminine. Because I'm sitting in Ceremony hearing about all of these sacred feminine deities and these tools and being immersed in this glow of unconditional love and wondering why is there not a church dedicated to this on every single corner in New England? What happened? Why is it that I've been taught that witches are evil or that I should be ashamed of going and why am I keeping this from my partner and my parents and my friends? Why am I hiding my altar under my bed? And so I really wanted to dig into the why of how this all got shut down and quieted in the first place because I was really feeling the power of it.

Sarah Tacy [00:15:01]:

I think the educational piece can help to take away what would feel weird for a lot of people, right? Like, this is weird, this isn't real. And when you start to educate yourself, you start to understand this isn't weird. This is what people were doing for thousands of years to help ground individuals, to help bring them back to theirselves, to get your soul into your body, to be aligned, to be in community. It's not weird, it's necessary. I was at a gathering a year and a half ago, and there were all these women at a table and I didn't know any of them particularly well, maybe one or two of them. And I went over and sat with them and a woman goes, what do you do for work? And I said, excuse me. And she said, well, my daughter says that you're a witch. I was like, that's amazing.

Sarah Tacy [00:15:59]:

I said that's true. And they all looked at me and I was like, well, for years I helped people who had uncurable pain or anxiety. And we worked together and we listened to their body wisdom and tools I had, and what divine would come through intuition and things would shift and change. And I said, I'm a mom who tries to see her daughter. I kind of like brought in all these things. And I said, and I guess that's kind of witchy. And I said, But I also think any woman who, whether it's through herbs or cooking or deep care or deep listening, like all of those things play into the element of a witch. But also what would make a woman, especially if they were back in the day, more in charge of the medical type care, so powerful, right? Would you be able to tell us a bit of the history? So this podcast is going to come out right around October 31, so I would love, yeah, love to go into the history of how these things have been erased and how we can call them back and then we could talk about the threshold of this particular point in the year.

Sarah Jenks [00:17:19]:

Yes, beautiful.

Sarah Tacy [00:17:20]:

I would love that.

Sarah Jenks [00:17:21]:

So it's important to understand that the way we have understood the world now is very much through the lens of the sacred masculine at its best, where Christianity has been the predominant religion. And I know for me, when I go to church, even if we're not Christian, the impact of Christianity has happened to all of us. And most of the world religions only center men as the deities or the Messiahs. And we have just taken this as normal. And so I just want everyone to take a minute to think about is that really normal? And what's so important to understand is that it's only been like this for the past 1500 years, where if you think about the expanse of humanity, that is like a hairline on the timeline of our existence. And so for hundreds of thousands of years, source has been depicted as a woman. And we know this because if you go back and you look at art from the Neolithic era, the first pieces of art that humans ever made were these fakund crone goddesses. The first places of worship that were ever built looked like wombs with the vaginal opening pointing towards the sun at spring equinox, so that when the sun would rise at the spring equinox, it would shine right through the womb up to the crown.

Sarah Jenks [00:19:07]:

And anana and ISIS were the primary gods in ancient sumeria and in egypt, and they were sensual and mothers and held the cycles of life and death. And just imagine waking up in the morning and going into the kitchen, and there's a picture of Inanna there, right? Or a picture of so it does something to you when the feminine is revered. And what happened this is an oversimplification, and I take a long time to talk about this more in my holy woman course, but one important turning point was in the year 400, constantine decided to use the characters of christianity, I believe, not the actual people, and create a tool that would condition people to listen to power. So he wrote a version of the bible that was very much focused on control. And he used that word along with violence in order to inflict terror into people, to only be christian. And this had been happening in many waves, but the crusades were one of the largest parts of this inquisition. And one of the things that happened because of this inquisition was the burning times. And so between the years of 1300 to 1600, they're now saying that they believe that there were 9 million people brutally murdered for not being christian.

Sarah Jenks [00:21:11]:

And it's important to understand that these people, mostly women, were witches, and they were herbalists, and they worshipped the goddess, and they worshipped the old ways, and they believed that the earth was a deity. And they also had different systems of living off the land and supporting each other, and they had ways that they were using herbalism and sensuality and magic to empower people. And so it's important to also understand that this wave wasn't really about being christian. It was about control and really leading up to the industrial revolution, because what the people in power really wanted was a workforce that wasn't going to question them. So how do you have a good workforce? You have men that are undistracted by beautiful women, and you have women whose only job is to churn out the next generation of the workforce. And so what was happening is that women who were targeted as witches were often the women who weren't married or weren't mothers or they were the crohn's that held the wisdom. And this specific piece was really important for me, because when I became a mom, I noticed that I wanted to cut off all parts of myself besides the mother part. So I was going through a micro chasm of the burning times, where I was having a moment of, now that I'm a mother, I can no longer be a businesswoman, I can no longer be sensual, I can no longer be free.

Sarah Jenks [00:23:08]:

This is my job period. And if we think about it from the point of view of not only epigenetics, but just our sacred or spiritual encoding, then that conditioning and that terror really worked because that was the only way a woman was safe. It was the only way she could own property, and it was the only way she wasn't going to get killed.

Sarah Tacy [00:23:34]:

Recently saw something where it was like, not till the 1970s could women have their own credit cards.

Sarah Jenks [00:23:39]:

No. 1974.

Sarah Tacy [00:23:42]:

That's so wild.

Sarah Jenks [00:23:43]:

Really recent. No, it's really wild. And we have completely normalized it. And the thing that I want to say is that this happened in many different ways, in different lineages all over the world. So Enslavement in Africa was happening during the same time. Enslavement in South America was happening during the same time. And this crusade, this campaign was going to all corners of the earth. This is not the only story of women's magic being used against them as a tool for control.

Sarah Tacy [00:24:22]:

I was in a conversation with a man once who said, when you speak your truth, it's on behalf of the betterment of every man and woman, even if it makes the man uncomfortable. And I sat there and I said, I hear you. And in my bones, I remember that it's really unsafe. Yeah. I had eleven of my relatives who were part of the witch trials. Wow. But I don't know that anyone has to have it like direct line all around that to step out or to make someone in power feel uncomfortable or to threaten someone's ego, that there are consequences. And I still think that that holds true in many ways, and there are more and more people rising up and waking up.

Sarah Jenks [00:25:28]:

Yeah. And what I always say to my clients is that there's a difference between being unsafe and being uncomfortable. And what we have coded in our bodies is that it is actually physically dangerous to be our fullest expression or be ourselves, or be magical, or be witchy, or for me, it was about actually being a priestess, which was a leap for me. Right. But I had to remember, it's not 1573, it's 2023. And I'm not actually in danger for being myself, I'm just brutally uncomfortable. And the work that I now do with women is helping them move through that discomfort and helping them create environments in their home, with their partner, with their girlfriends, in their spiritual communities, where they get to be comfortable and practice being themselves in these smaller inner circles. Until we create a world that really is safe for all of us to be who we are and completely comfortable, I will say, to be who we are.

Sarah Tacy [00:26:56]:

Yeah. So beautiful. And that work that you do with your clients is that largely inside of holy woman?

Sarah Jenks [00:27:03]:

Inside of holy woman, and we have this amazing year long container called the deepening.

Sarah Tacy [00:27:09]:

What's the difference between holy woman and the deepening?

Sarah Jenks [00:27:12]:

So Holy Woman is like our church. It's like our Sacred Feminine Church. We come in for ceremony. We have a really digestible course that helps us understand what the Sacred Feminine is. But the Deepening is taking each area of our life and going through a complete sacred transformation. So we have a program all about the body, a program about marriage, a program about motherhood, and a program about our soul's work. And then it's all held in a deep community with me as your spiritual advisor. So it's like taking the work we're doing in our ceremonies and Holy Woman and really deepening down into every area of our life.

Sarah Jenks [00:27:52]:

And it's for women who are just done with thinking they're going to get to it later. It's really a body of work that I've been working on for 14 years, since I started this. And it feels really good to have it all together in one container.

Sarah Tacy [00:28:12]:

Yeah. Congratulations. And also, yay for all of us, any of us who are ready to dive in. I want to highlight something else. Maybe I'll say a little bit more of how I know you and how.

Sarah Jenks [00:28:24]:

I've seen some of I love that we're just getting to it. I know generally where I start the podcast is like, this is how we.

Sarah Tacy [00:28:31]:

Know each other, this is how we met. And then we get into the questions. But I just switching it up today.

Sarah Jenks [00:28:35]:

It's good. I love it.

Sarah Tacy [00:28:37]:

I think it was you who was calling in a Mastermind, and I had talked to Kate Northrop earlier that year, like, I'd love to join in with a group of women as I re upped this part of my and so when you asked her, she asked me. And then we had Eliza Reynolds and Jennifer Rasiope and such a good group. It was such a good group.

Sarah Jenks [00:29:00]:

Magic.

Sarah Tacy [00:29:01]:

It was so good. And the first one was at your house. And I remember when Kate was like, yeah, we'll go to Sarah's house, and it was two and a half hours away. And back then I thought that was like a big drive for a Mastermind, which now I realize it's nothing. Yeah. And I walked in to your temple, and everything that you touch has a sense of purpose, divinity. In the realm that I work in, we often talk about the field, which you probably do as well, which means that there's an intentional space that's created that if someone were to walk into it without having any words spoken to them, that the energy and the intention of the field would begin to create shifts in their body, in their soul. And what comes up for them? And I feel like every time you create a space, whether it's your home, whether it's for ceremony, whether it's a birthday party, whether it's a solstice party, there is such an intentionality about it that just makes it impossible not to have some sort of transformation or shift.

Sarah Tacy [00:30:23]:

And then at your last solstice party, when you had us all in the room, and we did some ceremony, and then we did an eye gaze at the person across from us, and you said, notice if you see anything else, like, do color shift too. And I started to see the whole room felt like it started filling with steam. Like, everything got a little blurry, and the steam started, and I was like, oh, my eyes must be like, something's going on. And I kind of, like, blinked my eyes, and I was like, okay, there's my person again. And then I'd start to see it again, and I was like, Something must be going on with my vision. And then throughout the night, in separate conversations, whether I was overhearing other people or I had a conversation with somebody else, so many people had that experience, and it wasn't influenced because I heard someone say, I see golden white fog or smoke. And I said that to you, and I was like, what's going on? You're like Sarah. It's ceremony.

Sarah Tacy [00:31:26]:

That was on purpose. Like, oh, as much as I know it to be true, I also still don't believe it. I know had magic move through my hands, and I still don't believe it. It's still in me where it is hard to not think that everything might just be a fun idea, and I might get a million examples over my life to show how the world is working with magic, and it's still hard for me to really believe it.

Sarah Jenks [00:31:57]:

That is really common and a really big part of my journey. And I think it's one of the biggest pieces of conditioning that we've received from the oppressive system. Because women can manipulate energy. I believe men can too, but I think we are really adept at it. And guess what? The people in power don't want us manipulating energy. They don't want us remembering our power. I have experienced thousands and thousands of times women who come into the specific type of ceremony that I lead. It unlocks dormant talents in them that they didn't even know were there, that come on fully cooked.

Sarah Jenks [00:32:48]:

It's unbelievable what happens, and the more you sit in ceremony. And this is why I really want to create holy Woman, because we're in ceremony once a month, every new moon. And I believe that the repetition is really helpful. And to just lean on that more than we lean on, quote, unquote, real life. And the more we're devoted to it, the more we believe it. It's wild. I remember the first time I was in a ceremony, and I started seeing things differently, and I wasn't like one of those children that was just like seeing people's dead grandmothers behind their shoulders. I was pretty normal.

Sarah Jenks [00:33:26]:

And so when that happened to me, I was like, there's rainbow, and you're a fish, and I don't even know what's going on, but it's so fun. And that ceremony was so powerful because we had the men in it. We had all the women in an inner circle and the men in an outer circle. And there was something that happened in that room that was really magnificent.

Sarah Tacy [00:33:50]:

Yeah, it made me think because you also asked a question that night for us to think about over the next six months. And after I realized that everyone saw the steam and that there might actually be a real portal, I was like, I should have taken that question more seriously.

Sarah Jenks [00:34:08]:

I know it's really true.

Sarah Tacy [00:34:10]:

I want one more before I go into the portal of Sauen Is. I want to just briefly touch on the power of your questions. So I have like I think you should all who are listening go on to Sarah's website and read it, because the way that she writes is so powerful and so to the point and touches my heart and touches my soul and pulls out the parts that I didn't even know needed to be heard or seen. And then my experience with Sarah is that the questions that she asks are so pivotal to the moment. So I'm going to give an example. I was super pregnant with Sienna, who is my last child, and I was still every month going to teach teacher trainings for anatomy. And I spoke about how much tension there is between Steve and I when I go to teach and how everything just like, yeah, my anxiety gets a little bit more. I have more things to do.

Sarah Tacy [00:35:25]:

And I just wish that he would understand. I should be allowed to have stress. I should also be able to be a person who has some stress. And you posed a different question, and it wasn't for the sake of Steve. I want to say that first, it was for my benefit. You said, what would your day have to be like in order to come home and want to have sex? And it was such a good question, and it made my following trainings so much better. I then laid down with another dear friend, Laura Thompson Brady, who is a shaman in her own right.

Sarah Jenks [00:36:06]:

She's amazing.

Sarah Tacy [00:36:07]:

She's amazing. And she was drumming, and we were doing it to your question. And I started to see these trainings. I had started to be like, oh, I'm going to be in these beautiful flowing dresses, even though I'm teaching, like, yoga, anatomy and super pregnant, and I'm going to have flowers. My own trainings I would have. But to go into other people, I'm still going to bring the flowers. I'm going to have the altar. There's going to be some dancing, there's going to be less information, there's going to be some yoga nidra to relax the nervous system so things can land.

Sarah Tacy [00:36:41]:

It's going to be slower. There was so much more dimension that was added and so much more beauty. And the trainings. Felt so much more fun and delicious and relaxing and fulfilling. And then for the students too, they benefit from that because if that is the field I'm creating, then they get to be in a field of relaxation while getting new information, which is like such a beautiful place to be. And so it all stemmed from your question and it made a huge impact on the way I approached the next few months before having Sienna and continuing to do my work. So that's just one example of many great questions you've asked me and the women that I've been around when you were around as well.

Sarah Jenks [00:37:36]:

Thanks, Sarah. I want to point out the importance of that because our patriarchal conditioning has taught women to work so hard and to be stressed and anxious all the time. And our brainwashing has normalized that for ourselves. And not only is it normalized, but it's celebrated for being exhausted. At the end of the day, it's a badge of honor. And that was created because when women are relaxed, when we are receptive, that's when we hear our soul. And that's when our soul is going to say, hey, this thing is fucked up. I don't like that and I don't like that.

Sarah Jenks [00:38:29]:

And that's not in alignment. And I have this other idea and why doesn't the world work like this? When we create space and we slow down and we tend to our sensuality and sacred beauty and rest, that's the environment that the soul needs to come forward. But when a woman's soul comes forward, she often is shaking the status quo and so it's deeply threatening to the oppressive patriarchy.

Sarah Tacy [00:38:59]:

In this moment, I'm hearing for the first time how funny it would be that I would say, you get to be stressed all the time. I should be able to be stressed too, versus like, go ahead and be stressed. I'm going to stay sensual.

Sarah Jenks [00:39:16]:

Yeah.

Sarah Tacy [00:39:16]:

To actually have my desire be that I want to feel good and to honor that. Some things in life are stressful, but to ask the question that you asked is such a different question than I was asking. Totally. The thing that I was like, rooting for, I want to be stressed too.

Sarah Jenks [00:39:33]:

You get to be stressed all the time.

Sarah Tacy [00:39:35]:

I want to be stressed about my work. Give me a break.

Sarah Jenks [00:39:38]:

But I think what you were wanting was for someone to take care of you. You didn't actually want to be stressed, it was just what you thought was the only way you were going to get taken care of, which would then help you relax. Right, but we get to have both. We get to feel relaxed and be taken care of in our relaxation.

Sarah Tacy [00:40:01]:

Would you be able to take us through then this season? So why is this one of the biggest thresholds of the year? I know in Pagan, and I'm also guessing, so this is me being less educated than you in the world of the divine feminine. Is this also considered one of the biggest thresholds?

Sarah Jenks [00:40:25]:

Yeah.

Sarah Tacy [00:40:25]:

Tell me about the season of the witch.

Sarah Jenks [00:40:27]:

Yeah, I mean, this season is really exciting. So I really believe that what's happening right now is impacting everybody because November 1 is Samuel, and Samuel is the halfway point between the fall equinox and the winter solstice. So we call this a cross quarter holiday. So we have the quarter holidays, which is the summer solstice and the winter solstice and the fall equinox and the spring equinox. So during the solstices, they're like, completely unbalanced. Winter solstice, shortest day, longest night, summer solstice, longest day, shortest night. And then at spring and fall, they are equal, which is why it's called equinox. We sort of look at those as the more masculine celebrations because they're very defined.

Sarah Jenks [00:41:22]:

This is what's know, that's sort of the energy that it has. And then on these cross quarter holidays, so we have Llamas and Sauen and Imbulk and Beltane and on know, even if you live in New England, especially like we do, you look outside, the Earth is dying, and death is such a potent energy. But on the winter solstice, we're dead. We're already dead. So the process of dying is really important because we're in this invitation to let go and surrender. And that process of releasing the grip on the things that we are attached to that we hold as our roles or our identities, the things that feel familiar. It is like jumping out of an airplane. And sacred feminine practitioners believe.

Sarah Jenks [00:42:35]:

And I believe if you slow down and you're really paying attention, you can feel the thinning of the veils. During this time of year. It's like, why do you think we have I mean, Halloween does take traditions from the traditional Samhain, because what people believed was it was the night that the veils were so thin between this world and the spirit world that you could feel all of our ancestors and you could feel the spirits on the other side. And so what people would do is they would dress up as spirits and ancestors in order to ward off the actual spirits and ancestors. So they wouldn't come into the house or they'd leave candy outside their door or they'd carve little faces and rudabagas and be like, sorry, there are already spirits here. Don't come mess with my house. Right. So we can see how we get a lot of these Halloween traditions.

Sarah Jenks [00:43:32]:

But what I love during Halloween is people are doing deep shadow work. They are letting the parts of themselves that they never feel like they can express come out in some sort of crazy costume. And that's why I just love that women are just like, sexy this and sexy that and DA DA DA, because it just shows how repressed our sexuality is as women. So go do it, get it out. But also maybe think about how to integrate it more in your everyday life. But you can also take time during this time of the year to think about what is dying in my life, what do I need to release? What do I need to surrender so that I can be reborn in this next season and really come into the growing light part of the year, which happens after winter solstice.

Sarah Tacy [00:44:28]:

You were saying that I was thinking about all of my costumes from childhood on. So all through childhood, I was a witch every year. And then yeah, thinking about going into high school and college, how much more sexual I would dress up that night. And I'm thinking about how I dressed for your solstice party and your birthday party. I went into a store in Portland that I wouldn't generally go into, and I'm like, this is the theme and address me from head to toe, and it's so good fun, and I feel so alive, and it doesn't match my closet. But as you're saying that, it's like, oh, maybe more of that, please.

Sarah Jenks [00:45:09]:

I also definitely more of that.

Sarah Tacy [00:45:12]:

A little bit more flowy, grounded down to earth vibe that I do love. But the sparkles and the gold that you have pulled forth in me, I kind of love it.

Sarah Jenks [00:45:23]:

I'm so glad. Well, I just really believe that anything can be medicine, and women are meant to have range. We're not meant to be the same every day. Women are a reflection of the moon, and if you go out and try to track the moon, it rises and sets at a different time every day. It changes zodiac signs every two days. You cannot pin that bitch down. So that's how we are. I have days where I'm in a burlap sack and then days that I'm in full glam because my soul gets to express herself in all these different ways in the way I dress and in the way I host a party or in the way that I parent my children or in the way I decorate my house.

Sarah Jenks [00:46:13]:

It's all medicine if we use it as expression and a magnifying glass for who we actually are instead of as a disguise to hide who we are.

Sarah Tacy [00:46:26]:

Thank you. Aware of time here, and so I want to say to the listeners, I feel like I've gotten so many interactions with Sarah, and I'm sitting here like, wow, I feel like I just learned a whole like, I just felt you in a different way. Like, same same, but different. I've never heard the moon described quite like that before. I've never felt how I don't know.

Sarah Jenks [00:46:49]:

If I'd said it like that before. To pin that bitch down.

Sarah Tacy [00:46:52]:

Yeah, that's a keeper.

Sarah Jenks [00:46:56]:

Oh, my God.

Sarah Tacy [00:46:57]:

And, yeah, I want to say following her on social is awesome. The beauty that you bring to everything you do as you were talking about how we have range and how you raise your kids and being in a burlap sack and then being not that you raise your kids in a burlap sack. Those are the range. It made me think I just get drawn to these visuals that you've made and I've also been there for which is the way you might prepare a dinner that everything. When you do it, I don't want to say everything, I don't want to put that pressure on you, but oftentimes.

Sarah Jenks [00:47:31]:

When you do, at least half of.

Sarah Tacy [00:47:34]:

The time there's ritual involved and there is the purpose of medicine. And just a day or two ago you had on Instagram like a few rituals for cutting your hair. And I just love the idea that we can add more magic, we can add more ritual on purpose when it feels good to us and that you have so many resources available for that.

Sarah Jenks [00:47:58]:

I want to say, Sarah, if anybody wants that ritual guide, they can DM me the word ritual. And I have like ten rituals, like haircuts, birthday parties, getting the kids on the bus. Oh my God, it's really fun. Yeah. So just DM me the word ritual.

Sarah Tacy [00:48:15]:

This is the other part, is how practical your magic is. Getting the kids on the school bus amazing. It's so good. So I pulled three cards before this and the first one was just keep it simple. This was a deck you actually gave me once.

Sarah Jenks [00:48:36]:

Oh yeah, that's Julie Ray's deck. Yep.

Sarah Tacy [00:48:39]:

And then Kate gave me another deck that's super simple, which was Cheryl Richardson's. And I asked what would be supportive for me in this conversation and it was ritual. And so I did what I generally do with my lighting the candles, pulling the cards, taking a moment of silence. And I said, what would be supportive for Sarah? And it was passion.

Sarah Jenks [00:49:03]:

I don't know.

Sarah Tacy [00:49:05]:

But I was like, that's so perfect. And it again reminds me when I see you on Instagram and you once were saying I was having a hard time at the cabin, was feeling super overwhelmed and you pulled cards. And then it reminded me to pull cards, which was an episode mid August where I talk about seeing you do that and then doing it for myself to help walk myself through the threshold of Sophia's 8th birthday and the feelings of being a mother and coming home to myself after kind of losing myself early parenthood. So again, thank you for being you. You've had such a beautiful impact on my life and I'm so excited that my listeners get to hear from you and I feel like they will be following you, most likely, and downloading your rituals because it's so life giving.

Sarah Jenks [00:49:54]:

Thank you, Sarah. Well, we have the most incredible reciprocal friendship. I feel really grateful to be here with your community and just to be with you.

Sarah Tacy [00:50:03]:

Love you so much.

Sarah Jenks [00:50:04]:

I love you so much. Bye everyone.

Sarah Tacy [00:50:11]:

And thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy. It's very helpful. You can find it@saratasey.com. And if you love this episode, please subscribe.

Sarah Tacy [00:50:40]:

And, like, apparently, it's wildly useful. So we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom subscribe rate, maybe say thing or two. If you're not feeling it, don't do it. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much. You close.