Baba Yaga Lives

I sent the manuscript out a week ago.
Not to a publisher. Not to a stranger.
To someone I trust to read with her whole being.

After a year of steady labour—and a lifetime of circling the fire—I knew the time had come. The book was finished, or as finished as something like this ever gets. I had written my way through the thicket, peeled back bark, followed the bread crumbs, watched them dissolve in the rain. What remained was the thing itself: raw, shaped, trembling with life.

Before I sent it, I took it to Rome. I carried the printed pages across an ocean to offer them up, quite literally, on the high altar. I did not go to boast or to beg. I went to lay it down. To ask, in the holiest places I could find, whether this book was meant for others or only for me. I was prepared to walk away if the silence told me so.

But something happened in the hush.
A stirring.
A yes.

Too sacred to speak of here, but real enough to carry me back home with a quiet certainty: give it.

So I shaped it once more—refined the edges, listened harder, cut what did not belong. And then I pressed send.

She read it in a few days. A woman whose wisdom I trust, whose honesty I count on. A deep reader. A soul friend.

She sent voice memos as she went—each one like a lantern lit on the path I had walked mostly alone. At page 50, she said Wow and I exhaled. But today, I received her final reflection. And in it, she said the one thing I could not have even dared to hope for:

“Baba Yaga is alive in these pages. I felt her presence.”

I wept.

Because that is the miracle of this work. Not cleverness. Not polish. But presence.

To conjure a living archetype—to give her breath and teeth and soul through story—that is the kind of magic I prayed for.

And now, someone else has felt it.

We talk a great deal about the sacred terror of creating, and yes, it is real. To offer your heart’s work to the eyes of another is to stand naked in a storm. The fear is primal: What if it fails? What if I fail?

But the greater terror is in refusing the call.
In walking away from the fire when your name is being sung in the smoke.
In choosing silence when the voice within is whispering now.

We have come to that place in the wind
where we see trouble and beauty,
and the far wandering star leads us on.

It is not safe work, this storytelling. Not if you're doing it right. But it is holy. And I am beginning to believe that something holy has moved through me.

So yes, I pressed send.
And yes, I trembled.
But today, I rejoice.

Because Baba Yaga lives.
And someone felt her bones dancing in the dark.

Author’s Note:
Baba Yaga’s Wisdom: A Jungian Journey Through Dreams and Fairytales is complete in manuscript form. I’m currently discerning the next steps—whether traditional publishing, independent release, or something more mysterious. If you’d like to walk alongside this journey, I’ll be sharing more in the weeks to come. Thank you for reading, for waiting, and for witnessing. The bones are stirring. The hut has turned its face toward the forest path. Stay close.