TANYA LEE’S WITCHY WOMAN STORY

I was born on an island located just east of the mainland of Nova Scotia called Cape Breton or Unama’ki, a part of the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) People. When I was young, the poor economy of the Maritimes had my father move us to Calgary to look for work. I was that ginger kid in grade 5 who signed out all the books on ancient Egyptian tombs, organized a ‘secret society’, led seances, and truly believed I could move objects with my mind.

When I was entering high school, my mom married a cattle farmer and moved us to rural Alberta. I traded my black lipstick for wranglers and my ‘coven’ became the 4H club and volleyball team. This was my young adult life as I learned to excel in team sports, run a business, and eventually go off to train for a career in law enforcement. I was a full blown muggle, but there was always this quiet pull within that drew me towards the mysteries and magick of life.

Fast forward to the early 2000’s (my mid twenties), I was running a fitness business, performing as a bodybuilder and helping my husband (at the time) build the Canadian mixed martial arts scene. A friend introduced me to this ‘new style of exercise’ called yoga. My experience with yoga became what tarot readers would call my ‘tower card moment’.  I could feel that this yoga thing wasn’t just an exercise class – something was calling to a deep and dormant place within me, and I needed to answer that call. I dove head first down the spiritual yoga rabbit hole and when I resurfaced I was divorced, living in a van (in a new country), studying astrology, fusion bellydance and the structures of ancient secret societies.

It was 2007 when I returned to Calgary ready to start over and build a new life for myself.  Due to previous success publishing a bodybuilding book, my reputation as a personal trainer was still well and alive. This became my entry point to rebuild financial stability.  At this point yoga had boomed and there were studios in every neighbourhood – people were more open to the spiritual, but I still didn’t feel safe coming out with the ‘witchy’ work that I had discovered.

Over the next few years, I ended up conditioning my creativity muscles by applying structural concepts from ancient astrology toward enhancement of modern lifestyles.  I worked with corporate companies to design productivity and work-life balance models based on solar and lunar cycles. I adapted this similar model for professional athletes and successfully worked it into their periodization training to optimize performance output and prevent the onset of overtraining. From that program, I worked with a client on the development of a patent for a new piece of training equipment that would later receive funding on Dragons Den.

I started to reveal more about the ‘method behind the madness’ by talking a bit more about things like astrology, cycles and energy work. I was pleasantly surprised at how many “normal people” resonated with the logic and functional application of these ancient arts and sciences.

Astrology has now become mainstream where you can get a mini birth chart interpretation through snapchat, also there are currently thousands of members belonging to local non-for-profit witches associations.  Due to this upsurge in the mystic arts, and the internet making the world a smaller place, I’ve been able to expand and refine my studies and practices in hermetic traditions, tarot and ceremonial magick.  I am so very thankful for all of the mentors, grandmothers, occult scholars and modern mages who have found the courage to share their cultivated wisdom.

It feels like this is the moment in time where it is, once again, becoming safer for the spirit of all things witchy to come out of the shadows and into the light.

Now in my late forties, I feel like I’ve finally arrived at a place in my life where I care less about what the average person thinks about what I’m doing. I’ve accepted and embraced that this is “witchy work” and I am, and have always been, a Witchy Woman. I am here to serve this work (and the people drawn to it) as best as I can, using the experiences, lessons and skills I have developed along the way.

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