Sonya Cheney

Writer. Witch. Creatrix.

trust in a witch.

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Was it in middle school, when a girl on my bus let me borrow–and ultimately keep–a copy of A Witch’s Guide to Faery Folk? Or maybe it was before that, when I was reading the Circle of Three series in elementary school. I never even finished it until a deep dive on Amazon in college earned me used copies of every book in the series that I’d been missing. Or maybe it was when I was a little girl, playing in my backyard with a teddy bear surrounded by twigs and plants as I tried to bring it to life.

I think we all start out with some kind of magical inclination in us, that imagination and openness to all the possibilities the world has to offer. I might have lost that at some point, but to be honest, it wasn’t a true loss and it wasn’t for very long; at most, it was just a temporary loss of interest. For more than twenty years, my imagination has run away with me, and it still does and it’s still fun. It’s part of why I write. I might not be trying to make my teddy bears sentient anymore, but my magic has shifted and emerged in new ways.

There’s not much I don’t believe in–or at least, not much that I disbelieve–as far as the strange and unusual are concerned. I have watched every episode of Ghost Adventures and Ancient Aliens numerous times, and I’m always adding new paranormal books to my Goodreads list. And along with ghosts, aliens and other oddities and outsiders, witches and witchcraft have always held a special place in my heart. It’s only in the past few years that I’ve embraced the “witch” label myself, but that nature has always been inside me, and as of late it’s really been manifesting itself in my everyday.

It started with faeries and Harry Potter, The Craft and Sabrina, the Teenage witch, and now it centers on the hearth and home. If asked, I’d proudly proclaim myself to be a cottage witch; it fits my motherly, nurturing personality perfectly. I’ve always loved cooking and baking for others, and it only makes sense to me that the love I’ve been putting into every roast chicken or chocolate chip cookie or loaf of bread that I’ve made over the years has been more than what it seems. I’m not just speaking my love language when I do these things, although that is also a huge part of it; I’m doing a spell to make someone’s day a little brighter. I’m creating with the intention of changing the energy in a space with the simple act of a home-cooked good.

And now, as I expand to creating and combining more thoughtfully with my cooking and working to cultivate my own herbs garden, I’m also diving headfirst into all things witchcraft. I’ve been requesting books from the library and making particular selections as far as books to purchase for my collection. I’ve watching countless hours of YouTube videos. I’m writing down anything and everything and pursuing a more in-depth focus on the topic. I’m spending so much cherished time bouncing back and forth between playing with Finn and taking notes in a witchy bullet journal. Those are probably the two activities taking up the majority of my days right now, and I’m loving it.

Maybe it’s a little silly, and I definitely spend time wondering what people close to me must think; for the most part, I expect laughter at my expense, but I don’t much care. This is what’s calling to my soul right now. Every hour that I spend reading, taking notes, and artfully transferring information into my witchcraft notebook makes me feel so damn good. Why give that up just because someone else doesn’t get it? Do I think Brigid and Cerridwen are or were real people? No, not really. But do I find the thought of them inspiring and motivational in regards to their corresponding attributes? Absolutely. They’re worth some pages in my book if their presence is going to help me take my nurturing personality to another level. And if I want to toss some herbs and a crystal into a little pouch and call it a charm bag, it’s not going to hurt anyone. (Probably not even if I throw it at them.) So it’s worth giving it a go if I think it will help me sleep or have a little more control over my wallet.

in a hole in a ground there lived a hobbit.

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All right—if I’m honest, I don’t want to live in a hole in the ground, though I’ve heard it can be very efficient in terms of heating and cooling. But I have been realizing more and more lately that a new dream of mine is to, essentially, live like a hobbit.

Now, in what I have to admit is a bit of irony, I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time watching YouTube videoes about slow, sustainable living, and following that up with a lot of daydreams, Pinterest vision boards, and baby steps. It feels like any day now we’ll be moving, and so much of my mental capacity these days is spent thinking about how to make our next house into a home, especially for Finn, regardless of what that house even turns out to be. It’s taken a long time—it’s something I’ve been thinking about for years if I’m honest—but I finally narrowed in on how to describe my dream home aesthetic: cottage-like.

I’ve fallen in love with a lot of home styles over the years: Scandinavian, “goth farmhouse,” mid-century modern. But I think, more accurately, those are just styles I admire (or in the case of the “goth farmhouse,” find amusing). Traditional farmhouse styling (think Fixer Upper) is one I’ve been focusing on a bit more lately, but even that hasn’t been quite right when I thought about it—appealing, but not fitting mem like a missing piece. The more videos I watched, though, the more I was attracted to this romantic, rustic style, and I only realized what it was when the word “cottage” finally popped up in the title of one of the videos.

A few years ago we had a small brood of chickens, and I really loved it. We raised them from chicks, and I loved how they were so sweet and friendly with me, not to mention the absolute abundance of eggs they provided. That plus a little garden experiment that we had at this house were my first forays into that slow, sustainable lifestyle that I’m becoming ever more drawn to as I get older. I’ve been a big proponent of baby steps lately—it’s how I’ve been getting writing projects done; just 500 words a day—and those two things felt like baby steps towards figuring out what I want. I’ll admit I wasn’t the best at the more laborious parts of those endeavors, like weeding the garden or changing the shavings in the chicken coop, but I’d like to believe that I’ll be better at them a second time around. Having a baby has, in my own opinion, made me more efficient and focused (see that 500 words note again), and I think adding those lifestyle changes would be more successful with my current personality.

Okay, I just really want chickens again, you guys.

I’ve mentioned my dive into bread baking this year, and that’s another effort that I think helped me figure out the journey I’m actually on in creating our home. I don’t want to say perfecting our home because that’s not really possible (unless we go with the cliché “perfectly imperfect” concept), but making it something that works for us and works for me and truly makes us feel at home is my goal. Bread feels like the ultimate symbol of slow and sustainable living right now, emphasis on slow: you spend so much time waiting for bread to rise, to proof, to bake; you spend time kneading it and connecting with it; and with the right ingredients, it can be vastly more sustainable than the loaves in the grocery stores. (I realize, of course, that sometimes it is just not feasible for everyone to bake their loaves of bread, so no shade.)

In diving into this world of bread baking—and it really is a world unto itself with some serious inhabitants—I’ve come closer to focusing on and creating the life that I’m looking for. In a way I feel like I’ve come full circle from those first chickens and that small garden effort back around to the self-sufficiency of bread baking and who knows what else I end up adding to my plate (literally and figuratively) as we find our new home and I mold it into my own little hobbit haven.

sharenting.

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Before Finn was born, one of the subjects that plagued me was whether or not to post photos of him online. Seemingly everyone I am friends with does it—celebrities do it—and overall it just doesn’t seem like something that would even come to mind among all the other details of having a child. There are plenty of other things to worry about without adding Instagram to the pile. Still, it came up, and it wouldn’t get off my mind. After a lot of thought I decided that I didn’t want too much of Finn present online; people can be creeps, and my Instagram is public, so I just didn’t feel like it was the best option.

And then he was born. And he was the cutest little guy I’d ever seen. And I couldn’t stop pulling my phone out and taking pictures of him, even from my hospital bed, and I couldn’t help myself from posting some on my Instagram story. And then some more. And maybe a couple more.

Now it’s become a nearly daily habit to share an update of him in some cute little position, meeting a milestone, or some other such adorable state. I don’t have a ton of interest in sharing potentially embarrassing photos of him, even if I fully enjoy my own personal embarrassing moments from when I was a child. (Including the photo of myself stuck feet first in the toilet—yes this really happened. It’s still a mystery.) I’ll text a funny story to a friend or my mom, but for the most part, those things are just for us to enjoy. I like the photos that are a celebration of him.

I got swept up in the fun of sharing and the satisfaction of all the likes that his cute little face would get because I made that.
Recently, though, I was reminded of all the less-than-stellar parts of sharing your child’s life online, from the more mild invasions of their privacy to the truly terrifying possibility of identity theft. My mind has been churning again with all the worries and worst case scenarios, and almost immediately my sharing of Finn—or at least his cherubic face—has slowed down noticeably. On the one hand, this is nice not just for the prevention factor but also as a reminder for myself and everyone else that even if I spend 24 hours a day with him, I’m not focusing those 24 hours on him. I’m still writing, cooking, and crafting. I read more books in January than I probably did through the last three months of 2019 combined. I’m even practicing watercolor now.

On the other hand, I want everyone to see and know how cute my child is, dammit.

In an age when we’re surrounded by everyone sharing every moment of their lives and demanding that we share our own (often so they can compare, consciously or not), it’s hard to remind myself to take that step back. It’s hard to remember to stop and wait for a moment before adding something to my Instagram stories. But it’s worth it to put in the effort, even berate myself once in a while if needed, to give myself that peace of mind regarding the comfort and safety of my child.

I feel like this is going to come off as if I’m saying that no one should share anything about their children online; I actually feel completely the opposite, and I love when my friends post updates about their children. I just wish people weren’t such garbage that I felt unsafe for Finn, and I also have personal qualms about invading his privacy for the sake of other people’s entertainment and my own social media gratification. But I love when other people do it, no doubt. And maybe I’m just overthinking everything, although if that’s the case, I know I’m not the only one. And maybe this will only last a month or two before I go back to constant photo and video updates of this kiddo. I honestly don’t know. I just know that it’s something that’s on my mind right now, and I wanted to get it out.

bread baking | eight-hour no-knead bread

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Months ago, I started following Jenna Fischer on Instagram only to discover that she is obsessed with baking bread. I’m not sure how I didn’t know that beforehand, but whatever. My status of being behind the times is not the point of this post. The point is to share the fact that Jenna’s obsession quickly turned into my obsession, and maybe a week or two after following and binge watching all of her bread-related Instagram highlights, I ordered a few supplies for myself and got to baking.

Sort of.

I ordered Bonnie Ohara’s Bread Baking for Beginners in late November, and since then I’ve made exactly three (3) loaves of bread–and two of them were the same recipe. Yes, having a small child in the house who often demands my undivided attention is a pretty good excuse, but still–I want to bake all the bread, dammit! Even if he can’t quite eat it yet, Dan and I sure as hell can, and when I do get around to baking a loaf, boy do we. One of our favorite dinners lately has been a good loaf of bread, fig jam, and goat cheese. That’s it, unless we decide to go really wild and add some olives and salami. But just those three keep me perfectly content.

Anyway, I recently finally had the chance to try my second recipe in the book, the eight-hour fermentation no-knead bread. What I love about the book is not only how much I learn, but how much it focuses on precision to get your loaf just right. I’ve made a pretty good amount of bread over the years, but I’ve only recently really committed to not only weighing my ingredients but also checking the temperature of them. Doing this in the winter in a somewhat drafty house can make it a little challenging at times, but it’s still amazing the difference it makes and the results that I’ve gotten so far.

Dan suggested after the first loaf that I should make a scrapbook for the breads I bake throughout the book–especially since I’m just baking my way through in a linear fashion, building foundation skills to add to as I go–and I definitely think I’ll be doing just that. I’ve become so enamored of travelers notebooks lately, and along with that, one of my goals this year is to get back to using my dSLR camera again, so I think it’s a great way to combine all of these loves.

I’ve got this funny little dream of a very rustic life, being a writer with a farmhouse and a good-sized garden to feed us. Baking bread is a big part of that dream; it’s simple, but it’s wholesome. It is, in fact, very hygge. Basically, I just want to be a hobbit.