You're Not Lazy... Your Feral Witch is Asleep

Let me say this clearly and without apology: you are not a lazy witch. I don't care how much you want to argue with me on that. You are not lazy. And the sooner you drop that word from your vocabulary entirely, the sooner you can get to what's actually going on.

The Word "Lazy" is the Problem

This episode was born from a moment of scrolling Instagram and landing on yet another "lazy witch tips" post. And I had a reaction. A strong one. So I did what I always tell people to do with their triggers: I followed it down.

Here's what I found at the bottom.

The word lazy is infused with conditioning that dates all the way back to Protestant work ethic, the idea that your worth is tied directly to your productivity. My friend Megan Winkler, host of The Glow Up Revolution podcast and author of Breaking Up with Burnout, puts it perfectly: lazy is someone else's definition of you taking the time you need to energize.

Read that again.

When someone calls you lazy, or when you call yourself lazy, what's actually being said is that you aren't living up to someone else's standard of productivity. That's it. It has nothing to do with who you are or what you're capable of.

So stop fighting to reclaim the word. Stop trying to reframe it. Just erase it. Replace it with something true. Are you resting? Say that. Are you low energy right now? Say that. Are you moving through an ebb? Say that. All of those are real, valid, and carry zero shame.

What's Actually Going On Underneath

When you strip away the word lazy and look at what's really happening, you usually find one of a few things.

You might be disconnected. When you're truly excited about something, you think about it constantly. You can't wait to get back to it. If your magick doesn't feel that way right now, you're not lazy; you're disconnected. That's a very different problem with a very different solution.

You might be low energy, and working against your own natural cycles instead of with them. Everyone has ebbs and flows, shaped by moon phases, seasons, astrological transits, even the time of month. I know mine. When I'm in a high energy period, I do high energy things. When I'm in an ebb, I do low energy things. That's not laziness. That's working with yourself instead of against yourself.

You might be judging yourself. Beating yourself up because you didn't do a full Ostara ritual, or you missed the exact moon phase, or you lit a candle instead of doing a two-hour ceremony. That shame spiral is not a sign that you're a bad witch. It's a sign your feral witch is asleep.

What is the Feral Witch?

About a year ago I started going down the path of feral witchcraft. What I found in the books about it didn't resonate with me at all, so I did what any feral witch would do: I forged my own path and defined it for myself.

For me, a feral witch is led by instinct and intuition. She's unapologetic. She understands her own mind, body, soul, and energetic cycles, and she works with them, not against them. She owns her power, her magick, and her shit, all of it, good and bad. She does what feels right despite what the books say, what social media tells her, or what the "rules" of witchcraft supposedly are.

The seed of this, for me, was dark divine feminine energy. Working with dark goddesses like Lilith, the word feral kept coming up, and I kept leaning into it. The more feral I became in my practice, the more feral I became in my life, and the happier, freer, and more aligned I felt. Doors opened. Opportunities came. I started feeling more like myself than I ever had.

Signs Your Feral Witch is Asleep

• You're overthinking your spells. Do I have the right herb? The right moon phase? The right candle color? If you're spending more time second-guessing than actually doing, she's asleep.
• You keep waiting until you have more knowledge, better tools, or the perfect timing before you practice. She's asleep.
• You don't trust your gut. You get an intuitive hit and you talk yourself out of it. She's asleep.
• You're consuming witchcraft content constantly but never actually doing magick. She's asleep.
• You're waiting for permission. She's definitely asleep, because the feral witch needs no one's permission.

Five Steps to Wake Her Up

Step 1: Stop forcing action at the wrong time. Learn your ebbs and flows. Perform magick and take action when your energy is genuinely aligned, not because you feel like you should.

Step 2: Follow a spark immediately. When an intuitive or instinctual hit comes in, act on it. Make it messy if you have to. Just do it.

Step 3: Start your day organically. Drink water when you wake up. Get sun on your face. Do not pick up your phone first. The minute you start scrolling for that dopamine hit, your device runs your day instead of your instincts. Put yourself first from the moment you wake up and watch how differently the rest of the day unfolds.

Step 4: Listen to your body. Drop out of your head and into your body. What does it actually need right now? Water? Movement? Rest? Your body is part of your magickal system. When you're not aligned with it, your magick falls flat.

Step 5: Do one thing this week that genuinely lights you up. Something out of the norm. Something you desire. Something that turns the light back on. That spark is your feral witch knocking.

The Bottom Line

You were born instinctual. You were born intuitive. You just learned how to shut it off. The conditioning, the shouldas and coulds and rules and "right ways" to practice, they piled up over time and something wild in you went quiet.

She's not gone. She's just asleep.

And the most powerful thing you can do for your magick, and your life, is wake her up.

 

This post is pulled from Episode 215 of Busy, Gritty, Inked, and Witchy. Want the full conversation including all the tangents, personal stories, and real talk on feral witchcraft? Watch or listen below. New episodes drop every Wednesday.