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Cozy Coven Chats with Jenny C. Bell
Cozy Coven Chats shares the witch's journey. Jenny C. Bell has been a witch for over three decades and believes it's an empowering path. Jenny seeks to reclaim the word witch as well as the power of the witch's story. Join Jenny in exploring all weird and wonderful of being a witch.
Cozy Coven Chats with Jenny C. Bell
Rewilding the Soul: One Witch's Path to Authenticity
In this heartfelt premiere episode of Cozy Coven Chats, host Jenny C. Bell invites listeners into her personal spiritual journey—a winding path from Catholic child to closeted witch to published author and coven founder.
Jenny shares the pivotal moment at age 10 when her CCD teacher's dismissal of animals having souls sparked her first spiritual crisis. This led to her discovery of witchcraft as a teenager, where she felt an immediate, profound connection that felt like coming home. Yet societal pressures and professional concerns as a teacher pushed her to hide this authentic part of herself for years.
Through health struggles, workplace toxicity, and personal challenges in 2018-2019, Jenny experienced what she calls a "spiritual awakening" that forced her to surrender and rebuild. This transformation included daily meditation, yoga practice, and eventually reclaiming her witchy identity publicly—a move that transformed not only her sense of self but also led to creating an online coven community and securing a book deal.
Jenny reflects on her journey as a spiral rather than a linear path, drawing parallels to Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey" where we must leave home to return transformed. She defines a witch today as "someone wild who has shaken off cultural norms to tap into their intuition," embodying the rewilding process she herself underwent.
Ready to share your own witch's journey? Connect with Jenny on social media or visit JennyCBell.com to possibly be featured on future episodes of Cozy Coven Chats.
Hey witches, welcome to the first ever episode of Cozy Coven Chats. I'm your host, Jenny C. Bell, and in our very first episode I wanted to keep it cozy, which is why this, the cozy, is in the title, right? It's not just the alliteration, which I do love as an English literature major, but it is also because I want this to be informal cozy, as if friends are just chatting to one another, right? So if you want to make yourself comfortable, pour yourself a cup of tea. I have some Earl Grey here. Light a candle, you know, if you can, if you're driving, make yourself maybe 5% more comfortable on the drive, right? So in today's first episode, I wanted to explain, you know, my why, why create yet another podcast on witches by witches? And I wanted to also introduce myself and my journey. Why, how did I become a witch? Why do I use that label? What does that mean to me? And my intention is this podcast is for anyone. So, whether you are a witch or just curious, I think we learn a lot about one another through story, and so that's part of why I wanted to create a podcast.
Jenny C. Bell:As I said earlier, I'm an English literature major and I actually spent 13 years in the classroom as an English teacher. Prior to that I was a tutor, I've been a camp counselor, I've worked a lot with children, I was a nanny and I learned through teaching that people of all ages and backgrounds and learning abilities learn best through story. As an English teacher, I really believed that and I saw that. And through writing we learn about ourselves through writing, we learn about others through story, and those are two things I really believe in and I've really seen for myself. I've taught seventh through 12th grade. I've taught independent study, I've taught special education, I've taught gifted and talented and everybody can learn through story and I was always very intentional with the stories. I chose because of that, because I wanted there to be a discussion of the meaning, right, every English teacher loves the meaning. The other thing about being an English teacher is I had a TA I'll call this person Alex and Alex used to always say, oh, the doctor is in when students would come up.
Jenny C. Bell:There's something about the role of an English teacher on a campus to be like the therapist, to be the teacher the queer kids come out to, to be the teacher that you come to for love, advice. And I've and I just developed an ear. I like I have a face where people want to tell me their life story. My family will often find me if they lose me in a grocery store talking to a stranger and that stranger just telling me their entire life story and us seeming like best friends in a matter of minutes. So I love to listen to people talk.
Jenny C. Bell:I like to tell stories myself and I thought to myself you know, there are a lot of podcasts out there on witchcraft by witches, but what I'm not hearing as much as I wanted to hear was other witches' stories. But what I'm not hearing as much as I wanted to hear was other witches' stories. I want to know how you came to be a witch, why you were drawn to witchcraft, what brought you to do what you do now, because everybody's practice is different. Right, there are as many ways to practice witchcraft as there are people who are witches, and I want to be clear that when I use the term witch, I use that as a gender neutral, neutral term, so anybody can be a witch. There are some, I know, men, some men are trying to reclaim the word warlock because it hasn't always been a good meaning, but I'm just going to use witches and that is for anybody, right, and anybody can be a witch, regardless of gender, of background, of how you practice, right? So I just want to make that clear. So, for me, I really thought about the journey of the witch and how we learn through story, and that's what I wanted. That's what I was looking for I realized when I was going through the different podcasts is I wanted to hear that Because I think, as a person you know listening to other people, reading memoirs, you know watching interviews we often walk away with something from that experience Like, oh you know, I never thought about this this way and and never, never, even if it wasn't meant to be educational, we often walk away with something. So that's my hope. My hope is that this will bring you stories that you will learn from and you'll walk away after each episode with something to think about, something new to try or something new to put into your practice. So that's my why, why we're starting this today.
Jenny C. Bell:Speaking of today, I am recording this on the full moon in March, which is under the blood moon, and it just I wanted to record this earlier. Mercury is going into retrograde and I thought I really want to get this done. It was really like early March. I thought to myself I really want to record the first episode, I want to get it out there in the world. And something this blood moon has really taught me is I need to surrender my own personal timeline and I need to just release that. You know, our timing, our scheduling, all that's an illusion, right, like we make plans and then they don't happen. Things happen, and so really, I've released that, I've surrendered that and I thought, you know, today is a great day to release the podcast, to surrender to things going wrong and maybe it's not a perfect recording and this and that, and just kind of let myself be human. Right, be a human for a moment. So it's that it snowed this morning. I live in Southern Oregon. It was just a wild day. I thought, you know, tonight's an eclipse, snowing. It's just the right day to put this out there. So that's where I'm at today.
Jenny C. Bell:I want to now share a little bit about myself and my story. So I'm going to start. I was born no, I'm going to start that with the fact that I was raised by my grandparents for my first five years, and my grandfather was Sicilian, italian, first generation American, my grandmother Polish, russian, first generation American, both Catholic, right, and so every Sunday they took me to church with them and I really loved going because we would go to church and then we would meet their friends at one of the local diners I lived in New Jersey there's diners everywhere and they would have breakfast and their friends would like. They loved me. I was the only child there so I was doted on. They bring me candy. I remember one of the couples went to Spain. They brought me a doll from Spain and I was doted on they'd bring me candy. I remember one of the couples went to Spain. They brought me a doll from Spain and it was just magical. So I grew up really like associate.
Jenny C. Bell:I associated with church, with being with my grandparents, with family time, with joy, with happiness, feeling close, feeling community, kind of all of those things. And I as a little, as a little kid, I wanted to be a priest. Then I found out women couldn't be priests, so I said, okay, I'll be a nun and I really held on to that for a long time. I, you know, I grew up with the big picture of the guardian angel crossing the children on the bridge right next to my bed. I grew up saying my Hail Marys and my Our Fathers every night and praying. Sometimes I would lay in bed and pray for like hours, just pray for each one of my family members and being. You know, my grandparents had five children. There was a lot of people to pray for in my family and I just really liked talking to God and praying and just really felt safe.
Jenny C. Bell:And I grew up, I shall say too, like without a dad, and so I think there was something about the father, the holy father, all of that that really resonated with a child who didn't have a father. Right, it felt like I had a spiritual father at least. So it didn't feel imbalanced to me because I didn't have a father. So spiritual father made sense. And then fast forward to doing my classes, my CCD classes for my Holy Communion, and my black cat during that time had gone missing and then we discovered he was run over which is why I have indoor cats now and I was devastated.
Jenny C. Bell:I've always been an animal person. I remember around five or six learning what a vegetarian was and telling my mom I want to be one. She said absolutely not till you can cook. So at 12, I could kind of cook, and there I went. So I went to my teacher and I was really sad. I was at church and I said my cat died and I just want to pray for him and go to heaven. She said, well, that's pointless, because animals don't have a soul, they don't go to heaven.
Jenny C. Bell:There, at 10 years old, began my existential crisis. I was just wait what? I just could not. I thought, well, I don't know if I can do this. Then I went ahead and made my communion, but I was not feeling it. After that I thought, well, there's other things out there, and so I started exploring. I was getting books on religions, learning about yoga and Buddhism and Judaism and all kinds of things you know, whatever I can get my hands on in a small rural town in Southern California in the desert, and then just kept doing that. It didn't. It's like I want to go to church, but I just felt like it was fake.
Jenny C. Bell:At that point I didn't feel like it was real for me. I felt felt really almost kind of abandoned, and I had always liked animals. I'd always liked being outside. There was. It was a lot of confusion for me. So fast forward to eighth grade. It was a lot of confusion for me. So, fast forward to eighth grade and this, I met this new friend and this friend's reading this book and I'm like, what is he reading? And it was like a book on witchcraft. I'm like, oh, what, what is that? Like you know. She's like, oh, I'm a witch and my whole world's honestly shattered. And I said to her, I said, wait, they're real. Like witches are real. It was like this earth shattering moment is the best way to describe it, because prior to that my favorite movie had always been the Wizard of Oz. I had been either a black cat or a witch for most of my Halloweens. I just loved witchy things and skeletons and Halloween's my favorite holiday and I just was like, wait, what Kind of a moment right Now.
Jenny C. Bell:I didn't grow up completely ignorant to occultism. My mom did numerology charts for people. I grew up knowing my son's sign. We had Linda Goodman's son's signs book. We had a fortune telling book. We had definitely there was some influence. There's some metaphysical influence, I would say, but not witchcraft. And so I asked that friend. I said, well, can I? You know, I want to know more. And she's like, yeah, you can come with me, I'm going to go to Borders in the mall and go look at books together. And I got like many people I think in the 90s when we started out we were either getting Silver Ravenwolf, which my friend had, or Scott Cunningham. Those were two of the bigger ones, I think, for a lot of us. So I grabbed Scott Cunningham's Guide to the Solitary Practitioner and I remember reading that and a full moon came up during the reading. I remember looking at the moon and talking to it for the talking to her for the first time and envisioning the goddess within and I just felt this immediate connection and I just kind of went from there. I really at first I identified as a Wiccan witch. My friend who said she was a witch originally became a pagan.
Jenny C. Bell:I then moved back to New Jersey that was in California. We moved back to New Jersey, met another friend who was a witch, amanda, and we really hit it off and we had some witchy adventures together, ghost hunting and all the kinds of things, and I just really was thirsty for knowledge. You know this is pre-internet. There was internet but I was not wealthy, so I didn't get a computer until my junior or senior year of high school and it didn't have internet. It was really just for typing and so I just didn't have that. You know, we had like there was a database like the witch's voice, but it's spelled like V-O-X, and my friend would use that as kind of early internet, but really just kind of relied on books and not having a lot of money, it was like we swapped books. I think it was like really common we all read the same books, we buy different. I'll buy this one, you buy this one, I'll read it, we'll switch. And it was a lot of outside in nature, a lot of exploring.
Jenny C. Bell:And then during that time the movie the Craft came out and I was amazed. You know, the first part of that movie isn't like a horror movie. You're watching it and going, yes, this is my dream. I want these sisters, I want to go out in nature, I want to do all the things they're doing, I want to visit that witchy shop. It was the dream for a young witch in the 90s, and even the way they dressed and everything. And then it turns not so great and I think that really that part of the movie is more about people's fear of powerful teenage girls more than anything else. But we can talk about that in another podcast and so that movie was really important to me because I saw you know that I saw myself in the screen right. I saw that this being mirrored back and it was really exciting. This is like something that you can talk about.
Jenny C. Bell:So I started wearing my pentacle like at school and it was big. It wasn't like subtle at all and really kind of more in your face about it big, it wasn't like subtle at all and really kind of more in your face about it. And I eventually found like a pagan meetup group. I found a coven that I ended up not joining but learning from. We ended up having a couple witchy stores open in town. I took a crystal class. I think I was 19,. I took my crystal class Meanwhile. Also, I was geology club treasurer at my college, so I had the both worlds of rocks both sides and I didn't get my first tarot deck until I was 18. Prior to that, I tried runes and I also tried cartomancy, which is just using playing cards, because there was an old superstition at the witchy shop I shopped at. They basically encouraged superstition that you have to be gifted your first deck and you also have to be an adult. So I showed my mom, I want the universal weight, which is done by Pamela Coleman Smith, but prettier colors. I want this and I want this box. And that was what I got for my 18th birthday.
Jenny C. Bell:And so my fortune telling journey began. Prior to that, I was ghost hunting, I was seeing ghosts, I was connecting with different things. I had so many undeniable moments, I would say as a witch, where I just felt like, yeah, this is the right thing, this is the right thing, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, this is the right thing, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And then I went to college to be a teacher in a small rural town and I had never came out of the broom, closet to my family and my grandparents, and I just thought, wow, like I don't think I can have, I can be out as a witch openly in this small town and receive tenure as a teacher. I remember teaching books like Bless Me, ultima, and I was very fearful. If people knew that I was actually a witch, they wouldn't want me reading this book with their kids. They already didn't want me reading that book with their children. And I just remember being fearful and then realizing my husband being in education and then eventually having children. I just I remembered the prejudice of being a teenager. I have this.
Jenny C. Bell:When I worked, I worked in a store called New Jersey Pets and I would wear my. It wasn't even a pentacle, it didn't even have a circle, it's just a star. I would wear that with some other jewelry. When I was a cashier and I remember this police officer. It's like, oh, are you a witch? And I said maybe I didn't really want to commit. And he was saying he's like it may seem all great now, but eventually they're going to have you sacrificing animals and murdering people. He just went off on me Meanwhile like I don't know, he's playing like crickets or something I don't even know, and I was just so taken aback and so, wow, this is like I didn't argue because I was 16. I was just more afraid than anything else. And I just remember thinking like this is probably how a lot of people feel or perceive a teenage girl, right, I think of Nancy in the Craft. That's how so many people perceive a witch. They perceive her as drunk on power, as vindictive, dark, controlling, murderous, right, all of those, all of those things. And so I sort of tucked that part of myself away for a long time. For a long time I didn't even have like an obvious altar. I wasn't always reading my cards.
Jenny C. Bell:I took world religions in college and I started exploring other things. I explored Buddhism I went to a really great Buddhist temple many times with my family actually Explored Hinduism I went to the Lake Shrine Temple beautiful place in California. Explored all kinds of things and I read a lot of Thich Nhat Hanh Just really was open to learning about other aspects of spirituality, but nothing really clicked or felt as easy as witchcraft. There was something about that path that always felt like I was in my skin, like I wasn't wearing any masks, I wasn't pretending, I was just completely myself and I wasn't having to try to not that I couldn't, didn't have to try to learn things but it felt intuitive and it felt correct, right. So tried all those different things and then fast forward to 2018, end of 2018, 2019, my whole life just kind of blew up. I was reading.
Jenny C. Bell:Prior to that, I was meditating every day, right, and I was doing yoga every day and I say this because I think it's important to the story. I consider myself a spiritual witch and I was meditating every day. I was doing yoga every day. Those two things do what right? They open you up to listen, they heal and open your chakras. They if you believe in kundalini energy, right, they help to raise the kundalini energy, to make you more open, receptive. Meanwhile, the same that's all going on. I'm doing these things. I dedicated myself because I felt unhappy, I was unhealthy. I realized now I think I had something that isn't really talked about or studied much, but I've heard in another podcast and it really resonated Matriessence depletion.
Jenny C. Bell:I went into. I had three. I had two preemies, right, three pregnancies I miscarried in between my children and I think my body was not really that healthy. To begin with I was a very sickly child. I was hospitalized several times for pneumonia. I had really horrible asthma. I was constantly on antibiotics. I had horrible menstruation. I was put on birth control at 16 to try just to get me to school with like heavy doses of ibuprofen. It was a lot on a young body. A lot of chemicals, a lot of medicine and then not really knowing. You know, growing up not wealthy, right, growing up sometimes really putting whatever we can together that was cheap, not getting the nutrients I needed, and then having children, kind of giving them. My all left me at that time with what my health coach said were early markers of an autoimmune disorder like Hashimoto's, and I was. I took I remember taking this like food sensitivity allergy test. I was allergic to everything and that was a sign that my gut biome was all messed up.
Jenny C. Bell:And I'm not a wellness influencer and you can be like, well, that doesn't make any sense, right, and I'm not here to talk about that or argue about that. But I know that my body, I know that my body wasn't right. I was exhausted, I was cold. I always run hot, I was cold, I was tired, I was just physically done. And much later, just recently, I had this really great astrology reading my birth chart and this astrologer was like, well, no wonder why you couldn't teach forever. You have such a sensitive nervous system. You were bound to just burn out. And I did so.
Jenny C. Bell:I had that going on, had all this physical stuff going on I had. I was not in a good job anymore. I was at a school with a lot of toxic personalities and a boss that was not good for me, to toxic to me. I'm not going to say anything bad about these people, but for me it was. It was not a good workplace. I was not. It was not like mentally healthy for me, so I was physically unhealthy, I was not in a good place mentally.
Jenny C. Bell:And then I had some family things happen and prior to all of that, I kept saying to praying every day to the creator it was what I call whatever you want to call God, the goddess, whatever creator. I know that I'm not supposed to be doing this anymore, like I knew that I was not supposed to be teaching anymore. I know there's a better, there's something else calling me. I surrender, show me what it is you need me to do. I was saying that every day, meditating every day, doing yoga every day, and, sure enough, my whole life blew apart. Something. Some crazy stuff happened at work, some crazy stuff happened in my personal life and I ended up being on disability and at home and then eventually resigning from teaching and taking that time to get myself well mentally, emotionally, physically and meanwhile writing, writing and starting a blog and writing.
Jenny C. Bell:But I wasn't writing about witchcraft or being a witch or my full truth, and it was obvious and it was. I was definitely holding back, Looking back. I was holding back because of fear of that fear of persecution, of that fear of people judging, of my fear of really showing who I really am and people being like, no, I don't like that. You know, if you only show 75% and that 75% gets rejected, it's easier to deal with. But when you give your 100%, you really are yourself fully, that gets rejected. That's a lot harder to deal with. And I started reading in 2019 A Course in Miracles every day in 2019, a course in miracles every day by 2020,.
Jenny C. Bell:I had enrolled in an angel team, which was a year long course with Kyle Gray, the angel whisperer, and I started exploring new age spirituality, which is something I had always had such a like. I didn't like it. You go to these new age witchy shops. You get the witches and then you get the new agey people with their angel cards and I just thought they were airy fairy and I was not interested at all in that. It wasn't as it was like I drew a line like, no, that's no, I'm not that kind of a witch, right, but I just started exploring, I just was open. I learned about Akashic Records, I learned about angels, I learned about all the things, all the current topics of New Age spirituality and I brought with it my background in very grounded in witchcraft, paganism and Wicca, which I don't ascribe to anymore, I think Wicca if you're a Wiccan witch, I don't mean any offense, but it's just not for me personally.
Jenny C. Bell:And so I got to this point where I was talking more about spirituality and this and that, and I actually have a friend who is also a writer and at one point she said you know, I she was just really being upfront and I really appreciated it. She just said that she thought I wasn't myself online and that's why I wasn't being successful. And she was right, obviously. And I decided at one point a couple people encouraged me and get on TikTok. And I said you know what? I'm going to get on there and I'm just going to be. I'm gonna talk about witchcraft and the rest is history, as they say. Right, finally got a book deal. Finally got started. Our coven finally created a social media that had a following.
Jenny C. Bell:It was like night and day because I had decided to claim that word and reclaim my place as a witch, and so my witchy journey took a lot of detours. Right, I really resonated at the age of 13. I dedicated myself, I really got into Italian witchcraft, especially it was by Raven Gramasi. I really resonated with that. And then I hid that all away, you know, I went back into the broom closet and I hid it so much I hid it from my own self and I had to be sort of cracked back open. I had to surrender and open back up in a new way to find it again. And that's why I often will tell other people that the witch's journey, the spiritual journey, is a spiral. We are constantly going around and around, but each time we're going in deeper, right.
Jenny C. Bell:So my first beginning time with witchcraft it was very surface level. Being a teenager I wasn't digging deep. I was afraid in a lot of ways of digging deep. I was afraid of the power that you could get seeing the craft of digging deep. I was afraid of the power that you could get seeing the craft. It was a cautionary tale in a lot of ways, but also I had just this fear growing up Catholic. You know you can say it's, it's.
Jenny C. Bell:It seems easy just to be like I'm a witch and but it's not. You have to really let go of so much of society's belief in witchcraft. You have to release so much from your own cultural upbringing. There's a lot in the way, there's a lot in the way, of saying that you're a witch and standing in power as a witch. And so what I did is I spent a lot of time what I would call rewilding. And so what I did is I spent a lot of time what I would call rewilding or deconstructing social norms. And so what did that look like? That looked like a lot of sitting in quiet contemplation, meditation. That looked like a lot of shadow work. It was a lot of journaling. It was getting myself reignited with the witchy community and what's being out there. So you have to think about I learned in the 90s, early 2000s, hit pause and then I didn't start reading books by witches again until 2020. So there's a huge gap and a lot changed right With the internet and with more diverse voices coming in. There was a lot of things brought to light about Wicca, about paganism there was. So it was wild for me.
Jenny C. Bell:It was wild for me to go from the 90s to hit this huge pause and go there, because even a lot of the books I like to collect are from the 1970s. That's my I like, just I collect all the cults and metaphysical books. And so I started reading these newer books, getting into the conversation. I'd never heard of the witch wound before, I just. And then there were so many different types of witches, which is blowing my mind. It's like on social media. It's like what's a star witch, what's a this witch? And I still, I don't ascribe to any of that, I just like to be. I think witch is enough. It's all encompassing and then it allows me to do what I want without labeling myself.
Jenny C. Bell:But it was just a wild ride. I had to find myself again. It was just a wild ride. I had to find myself again. And it was difficult in a lot of ways because when I was first a witch, I was a maiden. I was a fierce young warrior maiden. I was without children. I was a different person. So, looking back at my book of shadows and what I was looking for and the spells I was doing was not anything I was going to use. Now, as a woman, transitioning into the wise woman stage, right from mother and between mother and crone, is wise woman, and that's where I think I am. I'm not saying I'm wise, I'm saying I'm ascribing to be wise. And so I got to this part in my journey and it was like full circle, but not because it's like, well, I need different things now.
Jenny C. Bell:I'd never had devoted myself to a goddess or a deity In my early days. I would just quote work with, with, with different ones, right, it's like, well, this spells a love spell. I'm going to call on Venus. It was very that's how it was back in the day, right? No cautionary tales there. I'm going to pray for my cats. I'm going to call in Bast. You know, it's just, that's just how we did things. And if you do things like that now, that's fine. I'm not, I'm not at all judging, but there was no real devotion to one deity, and not that you need to do that. It took me till I was in my 40s to say you know, I really want to work with this goddess for a long time I'm going to go ahead and devote myself and yeah, it's been.
Jenny C. Bell:It's been quite a journey and one of the things I've always had on this journey is a friend to talk to. So it started with that friend in middle school who's like I'm a witch, and I said, okay, I want to do that too. Then in New Jersey, I had another friend who was super smart and she taught me so many things and we did a lot of cool things together. Then I came back to California and I went to college and I found a pagan meetup group and I met another really great friend and he and I would go ghost hunting and go to these pagan festivals and we started taking classes together. It was like this whole thing. And then when I decided, when I had the spiritual awakening and I went and joined the angel team, I met a friend there who's still my friend Shout out to Myra and I was able to have her to talk to, and that's part of why I've talked about this in the past.
Jenny C. Bell:But part of why I created our coven is because I've always had other people to say, hey, I had this crazy dream, or I had this vision, or what herb would you use? Hey, what are you doing for the full moon. I've always had that person and other people didn't have that and I wanted to create that off of regular social media. I wanted to be private and I wanted it to be cozy, and so I got this idea to create this online coven and didn't even didn't know at the time that a lot of other people did that, but I was being really unique and original, and so that's what happens when you're isolated from the witchy community for so long, and so I decided just to set it all up with, like no following. This was before my TikTok really took off, and it's by takeoff. It's not like I have 100,000 followers, right, it's still in for other people. It's like you don't have a following, right. And I just decided to create it anyway. It was one of those things like I'm just gonna build it and then figure it out, and I'm really glad I did, because we have a good amount of members now. It's really grown organically and I put a lot of love into it and it really shows. But it was just so funny that I just started. That was part of the change, too, of I really try to honor my intuition. My intuition was like no, you got to start this now. And my logical brain said, no, it doesn't make any sense now. But my intuition kept pushing for it and so no regrets on that.
Jenny C. Bell:And since I was a child, I wanted to be a writer. My schools did these like young author things where they publish your books, and my first one was in second grade my second grade teacher really thought I was very gifted and talented in writing poetry and so I always wrote. I wrote until college. So I had a horrid creative writing teacher that at the end of my review said to me you know, it doesn't really matter how I critique you or what I say, because you're never going to be published. And I actually stopped writing creatively until my daughter was born, I was 28. So from that age of 19, all the way till then, I only wrote essays and I won. I won awards for my essay writing and stuff. But that did not soothe that wound. That told me well, you're never gonna be published anyway. Because my original dream was like, I'm gonna be like Stephen King, I'm gonna teach English by day, I'm gonna write books by night. And that all got squashed and originally I wanted to write fiction. And then, when I was doing meditation every day and doing yoga every day, I started writing a parenting book. And then I soon learned that people actually don't really want to read parenting books and that they're not interested. But it got me writing and I had written several other books or started several other books and had ideas, but this one I actually finished and it didn't ever sell or anything, but doesn't matter, because I actually finished it. And then I decided I'm going to.
Jenny C. Bell:I kept writing a lot of poetry because I was, when I was going through this spiritual awakening, the spiritual healing, coming back to find myself as a witch and rewilding all of those things. I was writing poetry the whole time and I but my poems are more like prayers. They were very spiritual, very personal. And I had this really amazing experience through zoom because of COVID. But I got to sit and listen to my all time favorite poet, joy Harjo, talk about her new books her new book at the time and read to us and talk to my all-time favorite poet, joy Harjo, talk about her new books her new book at the time and read to us and talk to us. And she answered my question and my question was is there a difference between poetry and prayer? And she laughed and she said depends on who you ask. But I don't think so. And she went on to have a beautiful answer. But it was what I needed to hear and I self published a book of poems. Just you know why not, I think.
Jenny C. Bell:For me, I had to prove to myself that I could let other people read my book work. It wasn't about I'm going to sell millions of copies and be this famous poet. It was more about I need to prove to myself that it's safe to have my words out there, to have my truth out there. And so I did that. And then I started writing a book on witchcraft. But, as I said, I was pretty out of touch with what was out there.
Jenny C. Bell:Meanwhile I started reading and updating myself and kind of realized, you know, maybe this book isn't the right book for this time. And that was the message I got from very many publishers. So you know, this is not really something we'd publish. And it was not. It was not great, it was, it needed a lot of love, it was needed to be updated. But then Llewellyn the, my publisher of my Spirit Crystals book, said well, what else do you have? One of the editors there very kindly said you, you are a good writer, just don't want to publish this book. Give me what else do you have. And I pitched the idea for spirit crystals and got an agent at the same time, around the same time, and got a, got a book deal and that book is coming out in July.
Jenny C. Bell:And it's crazy to me because I had to go through so much. You know there's this whole Joseph Campbell. If you've never read Joseph Campbell, I love Joseph Campbell's work. I've would watch these video series of his lectures. I just think he's amazing.
Jenny C. Bell:But he talked about the hero's journey and that's what George Lucas based Star Wars off of was understanding, like the hero's journey and how the hero is. The stories are pretty much the same and the story is always of the hero has to leave to come home again, to come home as a different person. Right, we think about Dorothy. Dorothy has to go through this fever dream to find her way home, and the key was always with Dorothy. She always had the shoes on, but she needed to go through all the stuff and then realize, oh wait, I've always been able to do this. And that's the story of so many heroes, right, you can look at all kinds of movies and books. The hero has to leave and go on a journey. That's usually spiritual, not always, but it's some journey that helps them grow as a character and then they bring all of that knowledge, wisdom back home.
Jenny C. Bell:I had to be closeted, I had to teach, I had to do all these other things to come home to who I was when I was 18 years old. Right, a witch, a writer. That's how I would have described myself to you at 18 years old. I'm a witch, I'm a writer, I'm an aspiring writer, I'm a fortune teller, I'm a tarot reader. That's how I would have described you myself. But I had to put on the other hats. I had to be a teacher, I had to be a mom, which I'm still a mom. I had to be a wife I'm still a wife. I had to be you know all these things the yogi, the meditation teacher, all of these. I had to just do all these other things to bring it all back home again. So my journey has been very cyclical and currently where I'm at on the journey is continuing to write, continuing to work in our coven and starting this lovely podcast, and I feel, now more than ever, like I really embody the word witch.
Jenny C. Bell:And to me, a witch is someone who is wild, someone who is wild who has shaken off some societal stuff, some cultural norms, to tap into their intuition, to be empowered in their intuition, to step into the power of intuition. And that's wild to me. And I mean wild in the sense of wild nature, untamed nature. Right, I had to put on all the labels and all the masks and all the shoulds and coulds and woulds and just to be able to shake them off and come back to myself. I would not have been able to be in the powerful place that I am now to say I'm a witch to the world if I didn't go on that journey to bring me back home.
Jenny C. Bell:So that's my story and thank you for listening. Please, please, comment or wherever wherever you find me on social media and let's have a conversation. If this sparked some questions for you or sparked some interest for you, I would love to talk more and if you would like to be a guest on the show, please let me know through again through social media. You can also find me at JennyCBellcom. I am currently looking for people who just want to share their witch's story. You don't have to be a priestess or an author or you know anybody like that. Just want to share your story. That's what I'm interested in. So thank you for listening and blessed to be.
