Meditation should feel like a little bit of time that’s carved out just for you. It could be for five minutes. It could be sitting on a soft couch with your cat on your lap. It could be laying down. It could be guided by someone else’s recorded voice. It could be a practice of imagining, daydreaming, prayer, or connection with a deity or spirit guide.

Everyone wants pleasure—it feels good, gives us energy, helps us manage stress, and keeps us hopeful. Pleasure is the food of desire. But pleasure has a dirty little secret: sometimes it is unavoidably linked with pain. Opening to pleasure means opening to the truth of our bodies, and suddenly all the crap we’ve been repressing rises up to the surface.

There’s no evidence witchcraft as a specific religion ever really existed, though as a young teen who would light candles and try to cast spells while blasting the angsty strains of Alanis Morissette, I still can’t help but yearn for a ritualistic practice that literally gave women power. Magic wasn’t really what was being hunted, though: it was any form of power that could belong to a woman, especially if it related to her reproductive abilities.