Talking with Shelley Johnson—identified to her thousands and thousands of followers as “A Good Witch”—appears like affirmation playing cards come to life, solely much less polished and much more entertaining.
“Being an entire individual is just not about judgment. Being an entire individual is about accepting your self.”
“You’re divine and you might be related. Nothing on this earth can shake you.”
“What you concentrate on me is none of my enterprise.”
These are just some of her mantras.
It’s just a few minutes into our Zoom name—how Johnson holds all her digital tarot card readings—and I already really feel higher, calmer. At 73, Johnson has mastered one thing most individuals spend their lives chasing: the power to be totally current.
However Johnson didn’t begin changing into a “Good Witch” at 69, when her Instagram persona took off @agoodwitchofficial. For greater than three a long time, she labored as an occupational therapist, constructing her personal apply within the Nineteen Seventies—unusual for a lady on the time—and serving to sufferers who believed their lives had been restricted rediscover what was doable. Her strategies weren’t at all times standard. She used humor, blunt honesty and even tarot playing cards to raised perceive learn how to join with the folks she was treating.
“I’ve at all times requested the identical query,” she says. “How do I get you to calm down, take pleasure in, be taught and develop?”
That query nonetheless drives every part she does immediately—it’s simply packaged in a different way.
Scroll by way of Johnson’s social media, and also you’ll discover a mixture of offbeat humor, hashish content material and hard-earned life recommendation. One second she’s joking about smoking weed and sharing bong-cleaning ideas; the following, she’s reminding viewers to like themselves precisely as they’re—then baring her chest post-mastectomy, urging them to launch disgrace round their our bodies. It’s chaotic, a bit disarming—and intentional. Hashish, specifically, has helped her invite folks in.
“I offer you what you need, so that you’ll take heed to what I’ve to say,” she says, including that her hashish humor is supposed to assist folks shed any disgrace round what she sees as a traditional, regulatory drugs.
Johnson has been open about her relationship with the plant—beginning younger, getting sober for practically 20 years, then returning to it after a breast most cancers prognosis made pharmaceutical therapies insufferable. “I began smoking once more at 50, stop the prescribed drugs and stopped going loopy,” she says. “I’m not an insane bitch once I smoke pot.”
However she’s fast to make clear: Hashish isn’t a treatment.
“The cure-all is regulating the nervous system,” she says. “Pot doesn’t repair it—it helps it.”
This nervous system work’s one thing Johnson explored deeply after her most cancers prognosis in 2000. She stepped away from occupational remedy and went again to highschool for studio arts, the place she found that sculpture—working together with her fingers, being totally current within the second—would turn into a key a part of her therapeutic. “I sculpt as a result of I’ve to—for neuro-regulation,” she says. “I would like time the place I’m not pondering, the place I’m not fearful in regards to the future or fearful in regards to the previous.”
She discovered this to be very true after creating trigeminal neuralgia as a facet impact of chemotherapy, which precipitated persistent facial ache for years. What in the end helped wasn’t medicine, however shifting her focus. “Once I cease taking note of my physique, the ache diminishes,” she says. “That’s why I’ve to sculpt.”
Johnson makes use of hashish as a software, identical to sculpture. A puff earlier than a exercise. Earlier than a stroll. Earlier than portray or sculpting. To not escape, however to decelerate sufficient to have interaction.
“If I get too stoned, I miss me,” she says. In her view, the actual concern isn’t what folks use—it’s why they’re utilizing it. That’s why she sticks to low-THC, balanced merchandise—typically out of doors, natural flower from Moon Made Farms. Getting too excessive, she says, defeats the aim completely. The objective isn’t to take a look at—it’s to remain current.
“Folks aren’t trying out from actuality,” she says. “They’re trying out from themselves.”
It’s a perspective formed not simply by private expertise, however by a long time of working with others. Lengthy earlier than she was constructing an viewers on-line, Johnson had already developed one other unconventional software: tarot. She’s been studying playing cards for greater than half a century, starting shortly after graduating faculty, when she discovered herself not sure learn how to emotionally join together with her first affected person.
So, she purchased a deck of tarot playing cards. At night time, whereas charting, she’d pull playing cards and use them to raised perceive learn how to method every affected person. “I at all times interpret the playing cards in a manner folks can be taught and develop,” she says. “Not in a manner that exhibits limitations.”
In different phrases, the identical work she was doing as a therapist—serving to folks reframe their experiences, regulate their reactions and transfer ahead—simply by way of a distinct lens.
That throughline’s what makes Johnson’s present persona really feel much less like reinvention and extra like evolution. The “Good Witch” was born out of necessity through the pandemic, when Johnson may now not promote her art work in individual and wanted to drive site visitors on-line. A marketing consultant advised she promote herself, not simply her artwork.
“Who may you be?” he requested.
“Properly, I’m a witch,” she replied.
To Johnson, the label wasn’t about aesthetics or mysticism. It was about company.
“Why am I a witch? As a result of I can create no matter I need,” she says. It’s the identical perception system she’s carried for many years: that individuals aren’t restricted by circumstance, solely by the way in which they give it some thought. “I’m not restricted to different folks’s concepts,” she says. “I create the fact of my residing.”
That mindset has carried her by way of a life that features being kicked out of a number of church buildings, constructing a profession on her personal phrases, surviving most cancers, elevating two daughters and repeatedly reinventing how she expresses herself—whether or not by way of remedy, artwork or now, social media.
It’s additionally what resonates with the thousands and thousands of people that observe her.
Johnson’s content material isn’t polished or aspirational within the conventional sense. It’s uncooked, generally chaotic, typically humorous and sometimes blunt to the purpose of discomfort. However beneath it there’s a constant message: Chill out. Concentrate. Study. Develop.
In a web based panorama crowded with curated wellness recommendation and completely packaged self-help, Johnson’s method stands out exactly as a result of it isn’t attempting to be something apart from what it’s. She’s not positioning herself as a guru. She’s not claiming to have all of the solutions. If something, she’s doing what she’s at all times finished—assembly folks the place they’re, getting their consideration nonetheless she will after which nudging them towards one thing higher.
You’ll be able to name it remedy. You’ll be able to name it spirituality. You’ll be able to name it content material.
She calls it being an excellent witch. So will we.
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