Hey everyone. Welcome back to Seeking Witchcraft. I'm your host, Ashley, and today I have on Jessica Sattergreen to talk about her book, Defying Shadows for Witches and Pagans battling cancer and chronic illness. So welcome Jess to the show. Thanks so much for coming on today. Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely. Yeah. So just to start, for the listeners who don't know, could you tell us a little bit about your background and what inspired you to write this book? Sure. So I have been solitary pagan for a long time, a really long time, 1996. It was when I started. I have studied all sorts of different mythologies and histories and

and pantheons. I ended up landing mostly with the Morrigan and I was diagnosed with breast

cancer in fall of 2019 when I was diagnosed as a big reader. First thing I did, of course, was go look and

see, you know, what's out there available that I would want as kind of a comfort, support,

and maybe a guide through what I was afraid that was coming.

And I found out while I was doing all of these searches on Amazon and Barnes Noble and pretty much everywhere,

that there are thousands upon thousands of books and workbooks and media available for cancer support. And almost none of it was for

pagans or witches. I wrote Defying Shadows partly because I wanted to give people what I couldn't find from somebody who had been there.

So like if you're going through traditional cancer treatment and you're getting surgery or having

chemo or radiation or like the chemical endocrine therapy where they suppress your hormones

afterwards for a few years.

I've done all of that. And so I wanted to put all of that together sort of with how I got through

it, not really having a ton of that sort of support. I had plenty of support. Don't get me wrong.

Like, you know, parents, family, friends, lots of people

were very supportive. There's support groups out there. There's all that kind of stuff. But

there wasn't anything specific to what I was looking for from like a spiritual and witchy perspective.

So I wrote that partly because I wanted to share and partly because I got a very clear,

oh, this is what you're going to do since you've made it through cancer message from

the goddess when I was done with active treatment.

Well, first of all, congratulations on making it through cancer treatment and all that that's

amazing. Second of all, yeah, no, I was very excited when

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