Missing Witches Risa Dickens + Amy Torok

This week's prescription comes with a trigger warning: it's Cancer.

And while astrologically Cancer season is almost upon us, we're talking about the other kind. Risa has been diagnosed with Stage 3 Breast Cancer and the idea of 'prescription' has taken on a whole new meaning.

We believe in science, and we believe in magic. We believe that Risa will be okay.

A year ago, we prescribed the legendary Tig Notaro set where she processes a series of brutal blows - a cancer diagnosis, c.difficile, the death of her mother - while she is right in the middle of it all. There's no ironic distance, no time to put the tragedies in focus, she is IN it. And friend, so are we. All the time. The present is a wall of fire around us. Tig manages to witness it and laugh at its absurdities while right in the fucking mess of it, and it's a spell for remembering that we do have that power: to be radiantly alive, observers and co-creators of our worlds, and to laugh AT and WITH all this as a practice of survival.
We're both revisiting Tig's brave, bold comedy to remind us and You: Laughter amid tears is a magic that we rely on to get us through.

Amy also brings The Byrds, Nothing Was Delivered, with its chorus of:
Take care of your health and get plenty of rest.

This prescription goes for all of us, and double for Risa: take care of your health and get plenty of rest. And while we're doing our best, there may be things that slip through cracks of exhaustion and preoccupation. This is a Love Coven, so we know you'll all be understanding and patient as we navigate these choppy waters.

All the women in me are tired - Nayyirah Waheed

Take care of your health and get plenty of rest. We love you.

www.missingwitches.com/rx-take-care-of-your-health-and-get-plenty-of-rest

Coven, our annual Reparations Fundraiser is complete for 2024 and we're thrilled to share that we beat last year's tally and have officially returned over THIRTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS to indigenous-led organizations and non-profits that support survivors of domestic violence and violently displaced people around the world. $3490 of that went directly to the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal.
Amy's prescription is Redbone's Come And Get Your Love.
Because you deserve it, we all do, and it's here for you!
We did it. We came together. It's beautiful. It's been such an amazing thing to witness because we know you don't have tons of extra money lying around, it's so beautiful to see the sacrifices you are willing to make in the name of reparations, in the name of this coming together.
We especially want to shout out some of our top donors: Claire, Julie, Sarah, Karen, and especially Brienne who has been our top donor for the past two years.
We love you so much. We're so grateful you've chosen to be part of this coven.

Please keep the spirit of this action going throughout the year - follow indigenous leadership, artists and authors, learn about the First Nations people of your native land, educate yourself and others on the landback movement, consider how to make reparations in any way you can: donate, celebrate, protest, support!! Or just give your neighbours a helping hand...

The Rx. episode takes a sharp left turn at this point, as Risa brings a request for a prescription she recently received from a friend. We unpack it together to see what we can offer a young Witch and her mom as they navigate how to live with and/or dispose of an object weighted with darkness and heartbreak.
We talk about the weird psychology of freezer spells and the power of making our own rituals in times of pain or transition. Amy offers the perfect prescription song for our querent and for all of us, it's Argent's Dance In The Smoke.
We will light a giant burning fire tonight
We will burn it and dance in the smoke
Every brand we'll tie somebody's worries to it
We will burn it and dance in the smoke

We are all striving for connection and care. As we draw close to the end of the 2024 Missing Witches Reparations Fundraiser, we're joined by BLACKBIRD MEDICINES and Indigenous Death Doula Collective founder Chrystal Toop, aka Story Healing Thunderbird. Together we talk about Facilitating Safe Space, Fostering Hope, Grief and Grieving, Feasting, Celebration, and Radicalized Healing. Chrystal says, "Gathering in community is really the best action."
Chrystal is an Indigenous storyteller, author, and community educator. She is the founder of multiple collectives, a public speaker, and grassroots organizer sought out for her lived expertise. Chrystal shares insights as an generational residential school survivor and registered social services worker.
BLACKBIRD MEDICINES is a plant and land-based spiritual and cultural wellness practice.

This week, we're waiting, dripping, and melting into lake-mind... and getting cute bangs anyway because we're alive, and it's another May beneath the Flower Moon.

It's the LAST WEEK of our annual Reparations Fundraiser! Risa's prescription this week is a song called Love and War by Thelma Plum: gentle, moving, croony pop with the rooted resilience of an ancestral storyline behind it from the longest continuous human culture on Earth. Thelma Plum is Gamilaraay; an award-winning singer-songwriter; and daughter of lore-man Paul Winanga-li Gii Spearim.

The line from Thelma Plum that spoke up like a mantra this week is:

There's writing on the walls, but they can't read it
There's writing on the walls, but they can't read it

Hold up your chin.

Lichen are writing stories on the rocks around us, there's a story being told by the trees, the water, the rain, and by our own ruffled movements. Not everything is being told by the largely white men who dominate the news cycle.

A great deal is happening on many, many, many interconnected layers of systems. And we might only hear these loud, angry war stories. But there are love stories too all around us, all over the walls.

So hold up your chin, it's there even if they can't read it. Hold up your chin. We're gonna move through this part together.

This week also marks the anniversary of Tina Turner's death, and she was and is such a force. (Here is the Rx. from the week she died ❤️‍🩹.) To honour her life and her passing, Amy prescribes the "so poignant, and so funky" Working Together:

Unless we get together, the world would never survive
And the hopes of the world will surely, surely die
People like you and me to speak up for what is right
Only then will the world see the light

Working together, we can make a change
Working together, we can help better things
So let us put our hate aside and let us let love be our guide

I say let's try little love for a change

Let's try a little love! Listen while you read through the list of orgs our coven has made Reparations Donations to so far! (at the bottom of this page! They are SO INCREDIBLE.)

Listen while you scrounge up your $10 and make your own reparation donation to the org of your choice! Feel the ritual sacrifice and the song lift the weight of your burdens: we are working together!!

If you don't have the $ this month to donate, please listen to the song and imagine us all, with all our different abilities, wrapping you in love and easing the path in front of you.

Imagine us covering the path ahead of you in petals even, why not?
It's the Flower Moon, let's BLOOM.

www.missingwitches.com/rx52/

https://www.missingwitches.com/reparations-fundraiser-2024/

This week brings Spring to the mountains for real, and we remember about the urgency, the massive, mysterious force of buds bursting into bloom. We're calling in the strength behind that bursting, we're insisting upon awe for the signs we've seen in the sky, and Risa's prescription brings pure Indigenous Girl Joy in the song Sisters by The Halluci Nation.
Amy brings a song that's become a powerful incantation for her in dark times: Darkness Bring the Light by Elisapie.
Darkness bring the light.
Darkness bring the light.
Darkness bring the light.
This week we invite you to help bring the light, and to join the joyful wave of Missing Witches Reparations!

Consider donating to World Central Kitchen, who responded to the murder of their colleagues by opening a THIRD Gaza Field Kitchen.
OR, search to see if there's a Native-run non-profit near you that you can send 10$. Let that seeking and small reparation begin to plant a seed in your life. Remember: seeds are small and enormous with potential on the inside, just like each of us!
OR, join us in being good fairies from afar, sending donations to the Native Women's Shelter of Montreal, an organization that does so much good in our community, including the launch of Miyoskamin - 23 second stage housing units dedicated to providing a space for health care and support to help Indigenous families stay together. And the Iskweu project, that aims to respond to an immediate need for assistance expressed by families and loved ones in the case of an Indigenous woman or girl (trans, two -spirit) goes missing.
We love SO MUCH to hear about the organizations you are supporting, so don't forget to send your donation receipt into missingwitches@gmail.com with the subject line Reparations. We'll enter you into our draw at the end of the month for delicious magical prizes as part of our annual Reparations Fundraiser. We're halfway through! Help make this wave of love!

https://www.missingwitches.com/reparations-fundraiser-2024/

Together with Asha Frost, Christopher Marmolejo, AND Granddaughter Crow we discuss the cultivation and embodiment of Radical Hope, Liberation, Self-Determination and Collective Healing, and acknowledge that it's good to fail at empire. We spin the wool of connection and weave a multi-coloured tapestry of possibility, and in doing so, this conversation becomes a blanket of comfort and protection over the seven generations ahead and behind.

Asha Frost is a mentor and mama, a Medicine Woman who believes that we can all heal ourselves. She is the author of You Are The Medicine and creator of Sacred Medicine oracle deck, and the upcoming Animal Elders oracle deck (Dec 2024).

Christopher Marmolejo s a Brown, queer, and trans writer, diviner, educator, prophetess and authoress of Red Tarot. They use divination and astrology to promote a literacy of liberation.

Granddaughter Crow (Dr. Joy Gray) holds a doctorate in leadership. Internationally recognized as a medicine woman, she comes from a long line of spiritual leaders as a member of the Navajo Nation. Her books include The Journey of the Soul, Wisdom of the Natural World, and Belief, Being, & Beyond.