Magic has always been with me.

I’m four, and climbing the cushions of our couch in order to stand on the top, eyes peering down toward our carpet. I breathe once, twice, and then it happens. I smile. The tingle rushes through my hands like electrical currents and I close my eyes before taking the leap.

I’m seven, and at the dentist. My mom works as a hygienist assistant, and I’m spending the day with her at work. I’m in the waiting room, reading the stack of books I brought with me to pass the time. I stand up to grab the next paperback when my vision blurs and my breath catches. My chest feels like it’s expanding ten times her size before the energy courses through my limbs and I blink back into focus. In that moment I know: I will find love. I feel him like I feel my own blood, pulsing in my veins. For a brief moment, the veil lifted and I saw everything. He will be my air, and he will be my roots, and loving him will feel like Truth.

I lost the feel of her for a while. From the time I was about eight until just a few years ago, the whispers would appear out of nowhere but nothing like the memories of when I was younger. The heat in my hands, the way my very being would vibrate with knowing — she would brush up against me only to have me blink before she disappeared, leaving me wondering where she went. But she never went anywhere, I was just spellbound.

Magic has always been with me.

Twenty years later I’m driving home from work and I hear something that serves as a key to my psyche. The door unlocks and she drops into my chest, the Truth knocking me sideways. She takes my hand and leads me into a cave.

Further up and further in, she whispers. And I know the descent will take me deeper into my own awareness — my own gifts. I grab a lantern and open the door, and then take a step down. My initiation has begun.

Meggan Watterson says that magic is a rebellion. This much is known, given the historical context of the word and the way hackles raise when it’s mentioned. But she also says that so often we rely on the mundane because what we aren’t told about our magic is that it’s a direct reflection of our power and that’s a lot to process when we’ve been fed the lie that our power is in our own weakness and submission.

Awakening the dormant power lying within feels a lot like rebellion to those of us who relied on others to tell us what to do and how to be good. When all along, that Voice has been inside of us. All along, she’s been there waiting for us to climb the mountain of our comfort and smile, waiting for her reveal before we take the leap.

Magic has always been with me.

I feel her in the way my breath quickens when I’m about to speak a truth. I feel her in the way the fire lands in my hands when a message is coming up and out before I can even censor the words. I feel her in the whisper of intuition that happens in conversation. I feel her now, in the way my chest constricts before expanding out out out into the ether of knowing. I blink, and she stays. I breathe, and she deepens. The fire in my hands and the Truth on my tongue — she has landed in between my ribs, settling in to her home.