The Raven Chronicles Part 2 of 5
I want to tell you something I have never said this cleanly before.
I used to be several women at once. Not in the powerful, multidimensional way I carry now... in the exhausting way. The way where every room you walk into requires a different costume. A different volume. A different version of your face.
The church had one version of me. Soft-spoken. Modest. Careful about what I said and how I said it and whether it would bring shame to my family name or my grandparents' ministry.
The men in my life had another version. Accommodating. Patient past the point of reason. Willing to compress myself into whatever shape the relationship required because somewhere deep down I had absorbed the idea that my fullness was too much.
The hospital had another version. Competent. Professional. Nurse Raven in scrubs, saving lives and going home empty.
And somewhere underneath all of those versions was the real one. The one who knew herbs. The one who heard things in silence that other people missed. The one who had been a rootworker since before she had language for it. The one who had a name, Raven, and had not yet fully claimed it.
The shedding did not happen all at once. That is what nobody tells you about transformation. It is not a single dramatic moment. It is a series of quiet deaths. Small removals. The slow realization that the skin you are wearing was never actually yours.
THE GIRL THE CHURCH MADE
I love God. I want to be clear about that because what I am about to say is not about faith. It is about the institution that sometimes wraps itself around faith and squeezes.
I was raised in the church. Pastors. Ministers. Deacons. Deaconess. My grandparents were not just churchgoers; they were the church. And there is a particular kind of girl that environment produces. Obedient. Quiet about the things that do not fit the narrative. Trained to perform goodness rather than live it.
I was that girl for a long time.
And here is the complicated truth: that girl kept me safe. She navigated spaces that could have swallowed me whole. She learned how to be palatable in rooms that would have rejected the fuller version of me. She served a purpose.
But she was not all of me. She was never all of me.
There was always this other knowing running underneath. The way I noticed energy before I noticed words. The way certain herbs would call to me before I understood why. The way my hands knew things my mind had not caught up to yet. That part was always there, quiet and patient, waiting for me to stop performing and start living.
Have you ever felt like the version of yourself that everyone praised was actually the version that cost you the most? Like the good girl, the strong one, the one who always holds it together was built to protect everyone else and not you? Drop a comment below. I want to know if this lands for you.
THE WOMAN WHO KEPT SHRINKING
I want to talk about the men now. Not with bitterness. I promised myself Part 2 would move toward something, not just sit in the wound. But I cannot talk about shedding without talking about what I shed.
I made myself smaller for people who were not made to hold my full size. Read it again Sis. That is the sentence. That is the whole confession.
I adjusted my volume. I softened edges that did not need softening. I held back pieces of my knowing because I could feel that the people I loved were not quite ready for them, and I did not want to make them uncomfortable. I put myself on the altar of someone else's comfort over and over again and called it love.
It was not love. It was fear dressed up as devotion.
And the thing about shrinking is that it does not stay contained to the relationship it started in. It spreads. You start shrinking at home and then you are shrinking at work and then you are shrinking inside your own dreams, second-guessing the thing you were clearly called to build because somewhere along the way you absorbed the idea that wanting something big for yourself was selfish.
I almost did not build Rich Bitch Conjure.
Not because I doubted the craft. I have never doubted the craft. I doubted my right to claim it publicly. To put my name on it. To say out loud: I am a Rootworker, I make luxury conjure oils, and they work, and I deserve to be paid well for what I know and what I create.
That claiming required a shedding. It required me to step out of the skin that had been built to make other people comfortable and into the one that was built for me.
THE NURSE WHO POURED OUT EVERYTHING
Nursing taught me to give.
It also taught me, through years of exhaustion and compassion fatigue and shifts that stripped me down to the bone, that giving without replenishing is not virtue. It is slow destruction.
I have held people at their worst moments. I have been in the room when people took their last breath. I have absorbed grief as a professional function. I have smiled when I was breaking and kept moving when I had nothing left because the work required it and the patients needed it and somewhere in my training, I learned that the nurse does not get to fall apart.
That version of me was strong. I will not minimize what she carried.
But she was also disappearing. Quietly and efficiently pouring herself into everyone around her and not asking for anything back because asking felt wrong, felt weak, felt like the kind of thing the good church girl and the accommodating partner and the professional nurse were all trained not to do.
The day I started taking my rootwork seriously as a business, not a hobby, not a side thing, not something I apologized for, was the day I started pouring back into myself.
Rich Bitch Conjure is not just a brand. It is how I learned to receive.
Does any part of this feel familiar to you? The giving that goes one direction for so long you forget you are allowed to need things too? Tell me in the comments. This is a safe space.
WHAT SHEDDING ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
People romanticize transformation. They talk about it like it is a spa day for your soul. A gentle release. A soft letting go accompanied by healing music and the smell of sage.
Sometimes it is that.
More often it is disorienting. It is the moment you realize you do not know who you are without the role you have been playing. It is the grief of releasing an identity that, yes, was limiting you, but was also familiar. Was also yours in some way. Was also the thing that got you this far.
The snake does not shed because it wants to. It sheds because it has outgrown what it was wearing. The old skin becomes a constraint. It has to go.
Here is what I learned about my own shedding:
The church girl did not need to die. She needed to be integrated. The faith she carried was real. The anointing was real. What needed to go was the performance of goodness at the expense of truth.
The woman who shrunk for men did not need to become hard. She needed to become discerning. The capacity for love and softness that she carried was not the problem. The problem was the direction it was flowing without any coming back.
The nurse who poured out everything did not need to stop caring. She needed to stop pretending she did not also need care. She needed to build something that poured back into her.
All of those women are still in me. They are just no longer running the show alone. Raven runs the show. And Raven holds all of them with compassion and keeps moving.
RAVEN OIL AND THE MAGIC OF BECOMING
I want to tell you about the oil I reach for when I am in a season of transition.
Raven Oil from Rich Bitch Conjure is the one I made for myself before I made it for anyone else. It is a handcrafted, fully spelled hoodoo conjure oil made with real herbs and curios, set with intention rooted in transformation, mystery, and the kind of feminine power that does not need anyone's permission to exist.
I work with Raven Oil when I am standing at a threshold. When I am leaving something behind and not yet sure what is ahead. When I need to be reminded that the dark is not something to escape but something to move through with intention.
The raven in spiritual tradition is a messenger. A guide through shadow. A creature that carries wisdom precisely because it is not afraid of the places where light is scarce. That energy is what I embedded into this oil.
If you are in a shedding season right now... if you are leaving behind a version of yourself that no longer fits, releasing a relationship or a role or an identity that has run its course... Raven Oil was made for this moment.
You can find it at richbitchconjure.com.
And if you are not sure how to work with a conjure oil, reach out. I teach what I know. That has always been part of the work.
YOU ARE ALLOWED TO OUTGROW WHAT SAVED YOU
I want to leave you with this before we get to what is coming next.
The thing that kept you safe in one season is not automatically the thing that will carry you into the next one. Survival strategies become cages if you hold onto them past their expiration date. The good girl, the selfless one, the one who made herself manageable... she did her job. She got you here.
But here is not where you are staying.
You are allowed to outgrow what saved you. You are allowed to grieve it and honor it and leave it behind anyway. You are allowed to step into a version of yourself that is larger, louder, more honest, and less interested in being palatable than she has ever been before.
That is not betrayal. That is the work.
That is what I am calling the snake shed. And if you are reading this, I think you might be in one.
THE RAVEN CHRONICLES: WHAT IS COMING NEXT
Here is the full series schedule leading to my birthday on May 2nd:
Part 1: April 14 -- She Did Not Turn Them to Stone (live now at richbitchconjure.com)
Part 2: April 19 -- The Snake Shed (you are here)
Part 3: April 23 -- The Altar Was Always Here
Part 4: April 28 -- What the Men Left Behind
Part 5: May 2 -- I Am the Birthday (Birthday Drop)
Subscribe to my email list to get each new part delivered directly to you. The next one drops April 23rd and it is about the thing nobody in my church family wanted to talk about.
CLOSING
I started this post in the rawness of what it cost to shed those old skins. I am ending it in the clarity of what was waiting underneath.
If you are in a season of becoming right now, if the old version of you is getting tight and uncomfortable and you are not sure who is on the other side of this shed, I want you to know that is exactly where the real work begins.
Explore the Raven Oil and the full Rich Bitch Conjure collection at richbitchconjure.com.
And tell me in the comments: which version of yourself are you in the process of releasing right now? I read every single one.
Nurse Raven | LadyDi Founder, Rich Bitch Conjure, LLC
