10/27/2025
Good morning, beloved witches and ash-covered risers...
It's Friday, and we need to talk about what rebirth actually costs.
They love the story of the phoenix.
The rising. The glory.
The flawless creature emerging, golden and new.
But they always skip the part where she 𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗻𝘀.
Where everything she was
turns to smoke and drifting cinder.
Where the heat is unbearable.
Where she doesn't rise gracefully...
she claws her way up, choking, smoking,
raw and barely recognizable.
Alas, transformation is not gentle.
You don't become new
by carefully rearranging your old self.
You become new by letting the old self die.
The job that drained you.
The relationship that kept you small.
The version of yourself that said yes
when every cell screamed no.
It had to burn.
And maybe you're still in the flames.
Maybe you're still ash and char,
wondering if you'll ever feel whole again.
Know this: You will.
But not by going back.
Not by trying to salvage what's already gone.
Ah, the phoenix does not mourn her old feathers
because she understands: this is the price of becoming.
So if you are in the fire right now:
if you're losing things, shedding things,
if it hurts more than you thought it possibly could...
You are not falling apart.
You are burning away what you are not.
And what rises from these ashes?
That will be wholly, fiercely yours.
🕯️
With soot on my skin and fire in my future,
Blessed Friday, witches.
~Baba
