That Fruit Never Was Forbidden

Eve was kicked out of the garden and found a garden. So can you.

Before anything else, know this: you belong to yourself.

And you can reclaim your body, mind, spirit, and entire life after high-control religion.

Reclamation isn’t rebellion.

It’s restoration: back to the heirloom variety, back to the juiciest, most delicious version of yourself.

Reclamation takes practice, because indoctrination systematically separated you from your entire self, especially your body.

Reclamation takes learning to tolerate living in a body you were raised to believe was bad. And it takes even more care and tending to learn to enjoy that life.

Reclamation means coming back to what Mary Oliver called the "soft animal" of your body. The body is the site of the wound and it is the location of healing. What is life, if not the experience of being alive just for the sake of being alive? And how do we experience being alive? Our bodies. We’re here. May as well learn to enjoy it.

Most importantly, reclamation takes learning to inhabit your beautiful, terrifying, wondrous human body as it exists right now, today. In fact, your body is where all the abuse and oppression you experienced in high-control religion got tucked away so you could survive long enough to get out.

This victorious reclamation takes work. You can take the person out of the church, but you can't easily take the church out of the person: it's built into our neural pathways, it seeps into our bones, and our nervous systems still respond to the old programming.

I say “our” because I grew up that way too.

And now your life is yours to live. It is yours to plant, cultivate, and harvest any way you choose.

Your body needs to experience safety, kindness, and lavishly tender affection so it can rest, heal, and restore your precious and fierce life force that was systematically stolen from you when you were too young to know it was yours in the first place.

Let me show you how.

Here's my personal testimony, so you know how my walk is going.

(Winky face times one thousand! Did your body just flinch at those words? That's what I'm talking about when I say it's in our bodies.)

I was born into an Evangelical family: homeschooled, Rush Limbaugh-listening, Jesus-loving, and guilty mostly for existing. I went to college to become a pastor, accidentally and miraculously deconstructed, and have spent nearly two decades healing, learning to live inside my body, and creating my own meaning. Along the way, I rebaptized myself into my own divinity on a chilly spring day in Oregon and realized: oh! I'm a witch.

Meet Sarai

Hi! I'm Sarai Johnson, a somatic sexologist & anarchist witch. My life purpose (in this body) is to find what's rotten in the systems we inherited and transform it into something that can actually feed us. The main system I'm here to compost is the Evangelical Church. (Can I get an a-women?)

So yes, I'm a little magickal. I'm also a lot practical, with certifications in sexology and relationship coaching, Reiki, CBT group facilitation, and yoga, and years of systems transformation work in nonprofits and government. I’m a lifelong (and occasionally professional) gardener and everything I know about tending and cultivation comes from growing vegetables, flowers, and herbs season after season.

[Link] Read my whole story → About

I also host Cauldron Her Daddy, a podcast about sex, magick, and other things you were told were evil. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts!

Sovereignty and Pragmagick

I believe we are born sovereign.

I help you learn what sovereignty feels like, what it means to be sovereign, and how to claim authority over your own life, your own body, your own mind, and your own meaning.

Your body itself is a garden, in its own wild way. That fruit was never forbidden. The garden was always yours. Now you get to learn how to tend to it and revel in its beautiful aliveness.

I'm a witch who won't tell you what you should believe. But I will help you discover it within yourself.

I practice what I like to call pragmagick, the magick that works in everyday, real life.

I think ordination happens when we attune to the ordinary.

I think the mundane is sacred and beautiful.

I think we get to not only be in the world, but of it.

Come Create Your Own Garden with Me