Hyssop + Laurel Magazine

Hyssop + Laurel Magazine holds a special place in my heart. Their mission is to “foster a community where artists and storytellers can process deconstruction and heal from religious trauma together”.

I was raised Christian, and left the religion in my early teenage years. I’m still unpacking all of the trauma from the church. As a neurodivergent, queer woman, there are many things the church taught me to repress about myself. And growing up in the US there is a lot of religion seeped into the culture despite the supposed separation between church and state.

I have since found witchcraft, and built my own independent spirituality separate from any god, church, or religion.

My poems ‘Prayer to the kitchen table’ and ‘Prayer to a box of hair-dye’ are a way for me to reclaim the concept of prayer. I was raised to believe that I could find comfort or advice by talking to a man in the sky. And while that ended up being untrue, I still find beauty in the concept of prayer as a poetic device. So instead of writing prayers to a god, I decided to write prayers to the objects in my life that hold meaning.

You can find my poems in the Spring 2023 issue of Hyssop + Laurel here.