Hello, beautiful creatures.

Long time no see, right? Sorry, totally my fault. I’ve been busy with a few things (see below), and one thing led to another, and then I looked up and it was May 2024. Yikes!

So, what’s been eating up all my time? Glad you asked! In no particular order…

• Realization
  So, it turns out that getting a bachelor’s degree in Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies and writing a book about gender, sexuality, embodiment, and spirituality is actually a really good way to trick yourself into doing some hardcore examination of your own feelings about those issues, all under the guise of “coursework for my degree” and “research for the book.” Roughly ten days after Outside the Charmed Circle was released, I finally had the breakthrough realization that not only was I nonbinary, but that I’ve been a nonbinary girl this whole time. Surprise! My wife was a key part of this realization, and remains not only my beloved life-partner and spouse, but my best friend and strongest supporter. (Take that, transphobes.)
• Transition
  It also turns out that transition takes a lot of time and resources! I came out first to friends and family privately over the next few months, then publicly the following March, on Transgender Day of Visibility, because I’m the worst kind of cringe sentimentalist. I’ve taken various steps in the past few years to bring myself more fully in alignment with the woman I’ve always been but, until now, was never allowed to be. I can honestly say that I am happier now than I ever have been, which feels nothing short of miraculous.
• Survival
  As with so many people, the pandemic changed the shape of our lives as we struggled to accommodate the new normal. Our social life was reduced to Zoom and phone calls for a long while, which was hard on both of us, and we were unable to see our daughter for about a year, which was even harder. The isolation wasn’t without its upsides, though. We knew we enjoyed one another’s company, of course, but even close friends and partners can sometimes feel a little claustrophobic when cloistered with one another for long periods. That… didn’t happen to us. We discovered that we actually really liked having so much time for each other. We explored new hobbies separately and together, we dusted off old hobbies and got reacquainted with them, we read so many books, and we learned a lot about ourselves and, for better and worse, about the ways people respond to a global pandemic
• Movement
  In June 2022, my wife and I packed our house into three separate means of transport, loaded ourselves (and our long-suffering cats) into a moving truck and our car, and made a four-day cross-country move from Seattle to Providence, Rhode Island. We love it here: the art, the music, the food (yes, really!), and the people themselves. My beloved has enthusiastically embraced being an émigré Rhode Islander, much to my amusement and delight. Likewise, I’m finding life in New England considerably more my speed. I grew up on the West Coast, but never really felt at home there. I’m delighted to do my part in the nefarious plan to consolidate queer occult power in the shadow of Lovecraft’s grave, thereby causing that pasty little bigot’s corpse to spin fast enough to power most of the Eastern seaboard.

Sharp-eyed readers may note the lack of mention above of any kind of writing. It’s not that I haven’t been committing words to the screen, mind you! On the contrary, I’ve actually been writing up a storm… but it’d be entirely fair to say that my actual authorial output in the past few years has been, shall we say, a bit on the thin side. I have written a few things for publication here and there, though, including a ritual in Enfys Book‘s forthcoming book for Llewellyn on queer rites of passage and a short piece for inclusion in a tribute to Rachel Pollack. I’m proud of both of these contributions, so I thought I should mention them. Further details to come once I have them!

Mostly, though, I’ve been busy living a life, not as Misha Magdalene, but as the person who writes as Misha Magdalene. I’ve been spending time with my wife and daughter and friends and family, I’ve been reading books, listening to music, and watching movies and TV shows, I’ve been going places and doing things and being about the business of living as myself, in many ways for the first time ever.

It’s been amazing. 🥰

And that’s the news from Narragansett Bay, where all the women are strong, all the enbies are good-looking, and all the cats are above average. If you’re reading this, thanks for making it this far. (Oh, the title? The French part translates to “the fashionable peach,” or possibly “fishing in fashion.” This is what happens when you leave me alone with an empty title bar.)

Be safe, all of you. 🖤