After a breakup, and months of stress, and having to deal with ‘certain’ people, you can feel psychologically, emotionally or spiritually ‘contaminated’ and ‘rattled’.

Where you hardly recognise yourself, you somehow feel sticky, as if someone has left their dirty fingerprints all over your soul.

After heartbreak, many women find themselves drawn towards older forms of nature spirituality.

In particular: witchcraft.

I know I did.

I'd been a witch for thirty-seven years, and this wasn't my first heartbreak. I already had the rituals that stopped me falling apart—my sacred places, cleansing baths, movement, prayer. I knew how to hold myself together until a new life direction presented itself.

But what did surprise me was the sudden sharpening of my senses towards the living intelligence within nature. Spirits of the land. Fairies. Field intelligence. Call it whatever language feels right to you

The unseen seemed to creep closer, whisper to me, in an almost audible way. I received ‘downloads’ advice on what to do and where to focus my energy.

I could feel it pressing on my skin, and I received vivid dreams at night.

The frequencies of my usual spiritual practice had changed. It was as if something ancient had stepped closer and sharpened my senses.

I wasn’t seeing a different world. I was seeing the same world with fewer distractions between me and it.

It reminded me of the first time I received The Call.

Mine came through an energy I know as The Great Dark Mother. I'll tell that story another time.

I had somehow re-integrated, become hyper-conscious and aware of spirit again. The heartbreak had brought me there, closer to the backend of reality if you like, and for that I was grateful.

That is why you find many women communing with nature be it at the beach or walking barefoot in the forest. Trying to clear their heads and bodies. They may also be buying tarot cards, talking to the moon and asking their plants or dog for guidance.

If this is you, you are not going mad.

You are petitioning the universe for help, for re-integration with spirit.

And in the vulnerable time of heartbreak, reality creates a psychic crack wide enough for something ancient to whisper The Call to you.

Heartbreak doesn’t just make us sad; it makes us receptive. It somehow strips us back away from the noise of life. So, we can hear nature calling us to her and offering us a reset because something in us has become depleted.

Let me explain…

We all know that heartbreak doesn’t appear out of nowhere. It’s often the consequence of an imbalance that has existed for a long time. Whether we knew it on a surface level or not.

The spiritual world behaves like an ecosystem. When a series of emotional catastrophes culminates in heartbreak, it may be a sign that something has fallen out of balance and nature is trying to restore it.

When a tree is struck by lightning, it doesn't simply carry on as before. It reorganises itself. It grows around the wound. We, as children of nature, do the same.

For me, witchcraft is a way of restoring balance. It's the slow, deliberate act of nourishing the unseen parts of ourselves, by paying attention to our bodies, our minds, our choices and our relationship with nature and what serves us best as nature’s transient children here on earth.

I’ll say more about feeding the spiritual microbiome next time.

Heartbreak is like a crack in the etheric shell that has surrounded us for years. It heightens our sensitivity to the spiritual world and creates the space for something we've long ignored: a return to ourselves through our relationship with nature.

Painful though it is, heartbreak often becomes the gateway to reverence, wonder and, ultimately, the work of reclaiming our inner strength.

Heartbreak doesn’t awaken the spiritual world. It stuns us for long enough to notice it.

The modern world treats spirituality like a vending machine; it’s all about praying and receiving, praying and manifesting. Nature doesn’t work like that.

Nature has never been transactional.

Nature is reciprocal.

The Trees breathe out oxygen. We breathe out carbon dioxide. Bees need flowers. Flowers need bees. Fungi feed forests. Forests feed fungi,

And eventually, when we die, we give our bodies to the earth to taste, so she can see how humanity is doing.

Nothing exists alone in isolation.

Relationship is everywhere.

Why should our relationship with spirit be any different? We are a part of a constant exchange with nature, and we can’t escape that; it’s who and what we are.

Have you ever wondered why we instinctively talk to the sea, the moon, old trees or even the robin that visits the garden?

We don’t usually pour our hearts out to office blocks or ferris-wheels.

Because the moon speaks back to us, the trees give us something, the sea also. We feel ironed out after any interaction with nature, stronger, fed, ready to take on the next part of the day.

And that my friends is why nature finds women after heartbreak, because you finally have the space to give the system you are part of your attention.

It’s probably been calling you, tapping you on the shoulder for long enough. It’s offering you the chance to tinker in the backend of reality and learn the mysteries it has hidden there.

Do you want your old life back now?

Or would you rather learn the language of a life that’s been waiting for you to claim it?

If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear about your own Call.

Did heartbreak change your relationship with nature, intuition or the unseen?

Did you suddenly find yourself walking in woods, buying tarot cards, dreaming more vividly or simply feeling that something old had begun whispering your name?

This is the first of a series exploring what I call Techno Druidism—my understanding of magic as a living relationship with nature.

Leave a comment below.

The oldest knowledge has always been shared around the fire.

I had to detach from the man I loved the most.

I didn’t know there was an ‘art’ to detachment at the time.

It was more of a case of withdrawal.

People talk about detachment as though it’s some graceful ‘Zen’ practice.

And in some circumstances, it is.

With hindsight and wisdom

But in my case, back then, it wasn’t Zen,

It was visceral.

Like death in the movies versus dying in real life, it’s a far grislier spectacle when it’s for real. We are okay for three days, then we spend the next week sweating and crying, trying not to text the ex and cause a drama, because we are addicted to it, I mean him or her.

If we could open a ‘detaching’ human and take a look at their gnarly, needy little hearts, you would find they are full of hooks, as we latch onto the ones we love.

Especially romantic partners onto whom we’ve projected all our hopes and dreams, only to discover years later that we wanted completely different lives.

But we jump right in because of the hot ‘chemistry’ without asking some basic questions about….well, anything future-oriented.

But it’s too late, those hooks are deeply embedded in our hearts.

So, how to detach with the least bloodshed?

Well, a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, otherwise known as the 90’s Heathcliffe asked me to marry him.

At first, I said yes. Then I had the sort of deep think I should have had four years earlier. But we were young, passionate about each other and laughed a lot and generally had a great time.

We were best friends and beautiful lovers.

I didn’t really consider the future. It was there in the back of my mind, of course it was, but we were being very ‘zen’ and living in the present….man.

However, I already had two children, and I knew the moment he asked me to marry him that I didn’t want any more.

But he did.

So, I knew I had to let him go.

I wrote him a letter explaining that I loved him deeply. The sort of love that changes the architecture of your entire life and it wasn’t an exaggeration.

I adored him.

He understood that I had lived through a difficult stepfamily situation, and I knew firsthand exactly what could happen when adults followed their desires and children paid the price. And I wasn’t willing to gamble my children’s happiness on the possibility that everything would work out.

So, I left, moved away and started a new life. I bought a dog, which ended up being four dogs.

This was the hardest detachment I have ever experienced because I was totally alone, unprepared, and I was the one who had walked away.

But then came the withdrawals, the rumination, the what ifs? They tortured me for five years. Being an adult means making decisions that can feel like swallowing broken glass.

Standing in the truth of having to detach was the hardest thing. There were no magical memory wipes. I did try NLP. Did it work? I honestly couldn’t tell you, but I did stop smoking, so something happened.

Acceptance is one of the hardest things a human being can do. Because we are story-making creatures. I would fantasise about the children we would have had. I decided they would be boys and be thugs, which helped curb my fantasies.

We don’t just experience loss. We negotiate, argue and interrogate it, but mostly we have to go through it alone, especially if it was our decision.

So how do we cope with the loss and move into acceptance?

I wrote a fantasy romance novel about alternative timelines where everyone made different decisions or maybe even suffered more than I had. Human beings are brilliant at suffering over things that have already happened.

The exhausting part of heartbreak and trying to detach isn’t always about missing them. It’s the fact that it goes on for so long; the monotony of the pain is incapacitating.

I liken heartbreak to a chronic spiritual malady.

What was the turning point in all this?

Well, it was gradual because life carried on despite the strange paralysis I was living with in my heart, and a gnawing feeling that I wasn’t living the life I was supposed to.

Even though I was in fact living the life I had chosen, I just had to let myself inhabit it.

And eventually something strange happened.

My brain, mercifully, took over.

The human brain is remarkably practical like that. Eventually, I stopped thinking about him every day. He’d pop into my mind maybe once a week, which was an improvement to the heinous rumination.

Life carried on, I made new friends, developed my spiritual practice, wrote books, walked my many dogs, (although full disclosure: only one novel is published as of writing this) and after five years, I started a new relationship.

I brought up my children unencumbered by a second family, and I never lived with the man I was seeing.

As time went on, I knew I had done the right thing in leaving Heathcliffe, even though the detachment process had been utterly traumatic, and my recovery from it had happened in micro baby steps.

I worried about entirely different things now. The grief I felt became part of the background scenery, like a distant landmark on one of my walks.

And that’s about as detached as I could get.

My time with Heathcliffe became like a bench on one of my walks. I could visit it if I chose that route.

The bench periodically moved further away. It started on my main walk, but after a while it moved to its own grove that I would have to deliberately visit, but the visits became less and less until I only thought about him once or twice a year.

I would pause for a while and smile at the deep, passion we had shared in our youth, and be grateful to the universe that I had experienced such a great love.

The truth is that most people don’t heal because they discover some secret technique or framework to follow.

They heal because we come to terms with what has happened, it’s a painful, slow and ugly process at times, but life keeps dragging us forward whether we like it or not.

Do we ever fully get over it?

I thought not because of the bench in the middle of my secret clearing.

But then came an unexpected plot twist.

My life changed suddenly and I had to move back home and leave behind my thirteen-year relationship with a lovely man. We’d had some wonderful times together, but when it was time to say goodbye, I was able to let him go easily. It was all very Zen indeed.

This perplexed me for a while, but then I realized two important things.

1) Not all relationships are created equally in passion, intensity, or future planning. Some, even though they may last successfully for years are light and transient on the heart.

They were meant to keep us safe for a while before throwing us back into the jaws of the world.

2) Real detachment isn’t detaching from the person. It’s detaching from the identity you imagined becoming with them, a phantom of a future that can never be.

The fantasy has to die before the heart can heal. Otherwise it can consume us. Sometimes, as in my case, for years.

With my thirteen-year relationship, I had made no plans, and we certainly didn’t share a relationship identity. I had mine and he had his, and there was no cross-over.

But with Heathcliffe, we’d imagined an entire life together. We weren’t just grieving each other—we were grieving the future we’d invented for a little while.

So, I moved back to my hometown.

I opened a little restaurant and late one night after closing,

there was a tap at my door.

It had been almost two decades.

I opened the door

And there he was.

Heathcliffe had turned up on my doorstep.

He’d grown into a very handsome silver fox.

We were in our mid 40’s.

I used to think detachment meant removing someone from your heart.

Now I think it means letting go of the person you imagined you were going to become together.

That’s the true torment that keeps us awake until three in the morning.

Because some people aren’t just people.

They’re whole imagined futures.

Heathcliffe came back.

But he didn’t come back to the woman he’d left.

And I never met the man I’d once loved again.

We met each other as two entirely different people who had finally let go of the life we’d imagined. We had detached from our past and were free to make enough room for each other to return as someone new.

So we shed our old skins and met each other for the first time.

As for that old bench...

I honestly couldn’t tell you how it’s doing anymore.

Maybe it’s still there.

I never walk that way.

Well, hardly ever.

As for Heathcliffe and I?

We were married in May 2026

Until next time...
Stay wicked. Stay aware. And remember, people aren’t just people. They’re futures. Choose yours carefully and consciously.

If this article resonated with you, you’re exactly the sort of person I’m building something for.

This September, I’m opening the doors to the Lick My Evil community.

We’ll begin with heartbreak, because that’s where many of us find ourselves. But this isn’t really about exes.

It’s about learning who you are, what you truly want from your life, and how to stop accidentally building futures with the wrong people.

If you’d like to be there from the beginning, subscribe below, it’s free. I’d love to investigate all this with you.

Love

Micky

You may be wondering where the title Lick My Evil came from.

Welcome to lick my evil where we talk about love, heartbreak, human nature, revenge, magic and everything in between.

But we’re starting with heartbreak.

Please consider subscribing and liking, I’m told it’ll really help.

That being said, You may be wondering where the title Lick My Evil came from.

The truth is, it was born from heartbreak and some hard-won wisdom.

That wisdom is about having the courage to look at the ugliest parts of ourselves and our story without flinching. I’m not talking about blaming ourselves for what’s happened,

Oh no.

But when we have the courage to look at ourselves and our part in what happened, and really look at the clues we missed, because we were busy, because we were lying to ourselves, or unable to deal with problems in the relationship for whatever reason.

If we have the courage to look at ourselves and master ourselves without judgement, then we are free.

To give ourselves the space to exercise our inner beast and roar for a while, then we are free to move forward with a clearer vision for our future and of who we are as people.

Let me explain…

There was a crossroads in my life when I was angry with my ex-partner.

I was angry with some of the women around him. I couldn’t find the sisterhood I’d always believed in. I was angry with people who seemed able to watch another woman’s pain without a second thought and, to some extent, either true or imaginary, revel in it.

It was a dark time where I felt etherically nibbled at, as though life had unleashed a plague of invisible creatures to take tiny bites out of my confidence, my hope for a future I thought I had, and eventually my spirit.

If anything could go wrong, it did. I felt as though unseen forces were tossing me around in the relentless swarm of locusts, while everyone else watched me struggle.

Hoping I would disappear.

Powerlessness doesn’t begin to cover it.

Does any of this sound over the top? Mad? Any other words for it?

If yes, then that’s because heartbreak is a spiritual malady, and we all feel it, how we feel it; and where we feel it is in the vastness of our own inner worlds where there are no limits to the depths one can travel….. except the limits we impose on ourselves.

Lick My Evil is a phrase that makes sense when you’re standing in the middle of an emotional apocalypse in your inner landscape.

It’s gathering your strength and turning back to the world and the people who have turned on you and shouting with a sonic boom,

Lick my evil, bitches!

Out of those desolate emotions of that landscape rose a hairy, vengeful beast that erupted from somewhere deep inside me, and I know we all have one.

I know you have one.

This beast was ready for action, ready to sort out my life, and not lie down and let others pick at the carcass of the woman I used to be.

My inner beast growled from the pit of my soul as the scales fell from my eyes, revealing how my world really was at that time, not how I wished it to be.

It was the voice of someone who had discovered that heartbreak doesn’t only expose the people around you.

It exposes parts of yourself you didn’t know existed. Parts that “nice girls”—the girls who want to be liked by everyone—don’t express.

I didn’t like those feelings of abandonment, hurt and resentment. They didn’t fit the sunny person I am.

But pretending those feelings weren’t there wouldn’t have made them disappear.

They would have festered, and to some extent they did, and I let them, then I used them.

What got me through this?

My Earth-based Spirituality. Which I will expand on further in other articles.

I emerged whole, intact and ready to take my life back, but with a new and improved vision and a plan.

And that, dear listeners and readers, is exactly what I did, and I hope to share it with you.

But it took time to unpick what had happened.

I did it clue by clue, eliminating the red herrings along the way, because situations and people aren’t always what they appear to be.

We are all at times both victims and villains of our own story.

That’s really what this blog is.

Not a place where I point at everyone else’s faults, but a place where I investigate my own assumptions, my own choices and the stories I told myself about love. And the magic I used to weave my own future.

People say witches licked poison from the backs of toads to see visions. I don’t know if that’s true. But I do know this: sometimes we have to taste our own bitterness and the bitterness of others before we can see the truth.

Heartbreak reveals uncomfortable truths about human nature, when you are at your weakest. But it also reveals uncomfortable truths about us as individuals.

Lick My Evil is about that moment. When we are most vulnerable, backed against a wall, not knowing who is friend or foe, and trying to sift through the ashes of our lives that have blinded us.

I’ve used this title because it reminds me where this all began and the warrioress inside me, refusing to be broken in the middle of a very human horror story.

Which was corrected with intentional focus, a strong connection to nature and a weaving of the back end of reality.

Does this sound wacky?

Then buckle in because if you stick around and cross the threshold with me, your eyes will be truly opened.

When you know what is possible, anything is possible.

I'm not asking you to agree with my version of events, excuse my behaviour, or see me as the heroine of this story.

It’s simply to invite you to examine your own story with the same honesty I’ve tried to bring to mine, and set yourself on the right road again.

Perhaps that’s all any of us are doing—trying to understand ourselves a little better than we did yesterday.

Before you go...

If any part of my story felt familiar, you’re not alone.

I’d love to hear your story. Leave a comment below. Some of the best conversations begin when someone is brave enough to say, “I feel the same.”

If you’d like to join me as we deep dive into love, heartbreak, human behaviour, magic and everything in between, subscribe to Lick My Evil.

Until next time,

Keep being your powerful self

I believe that heartbreak is a spiritual malady.

I would argue that heartbreak is the loneliest part of grief; it’s like a death, except everyone wants you to ‘get on with your life’ because nobody has died.

What I did to deal with the loneliness of heartbreak.

I stopped talking about my heartbreak openly to friends.

I found it draining, especially when my friends’ faces glazed over around month two. Even though they knew I had lost the love of my life, I could see their exasperation and helplessness reflected in their eyes.

You may think I have awful friends, but in reality, it’s human nature. People are mainly concerned with themselves, and that includes you, my friend. We’re all trying to survive our own problems.

Compared with illness, war or hunger, heartbreak—like mental illness—is an invisible suffering that the world expects us to promptly recover from.

I realised there comes a point where talking about heartbreak stops helping. You begin rehearsing the same thoughts, looping the same emotions, and spending today's energy reliving yesterday's pain.

I was trapped in a thought maze of my own making, but in my defence, I had no closure at the time. I was genuinely confused about what had happened, trying to make sense of it, and getting nowhere.

Protracted grief is an insidious waste of time. That sounds harsh, but it’s especially true when you get stuck in repeated thought cycles, like a hamster on a wheel, going over the same questions and arriving nowhere.

But we all do it.

The worst has happened. The relationship has ended, and no one can give you the answers because your friends and family weren’t there all the time.

They may have picked up on clues in the weeks and months leading up to the breakup and be able to give you some insight from their perspective, but it’s unlikely to be the whole truth because who wants to deliver bad news? We’ve all heard the saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger.”

If they tell you the truth, it’s likely to open up a whole box of horrors.

Equally, they may not have seen any signs at all.

So now you’re going round and round in circles, ruminating about what happened, replaying old conversations, and generally picking off the heartbreak scab some more just to let fresh blood flow and maybe fester a bit more.

Recovery Ritual no. 1—Journalling

Ever heard of a witches Grimoire?

Words have power, my friend.

Journalling is a technology because it takes information trapped inside your mind and externalises it into the physical world, where it can finally be examined.

It slows thinking down, allowing memories to be analysed instead of endlessly replayed. It exposes repeating patterns you never noticed while they were happening.

It gives painful emotions somewhere to go other than endlessly around your head, and gradually updates the story you tell yourself about your life.

You input experience, process it through language, debug faulty assumptions, and return with a cleaner, more accurate model of reality.

I wrote down how I was feeling every day.

How I really felt in the relationship beneath the surface.

I was brutally honest in my writing, and things emerged that I’d never admitted to myself.

I began to uncover the path of destruction. I began to ‘see’ what was really happening, not my illusion about the relationship. Those were powerful moments where I could track what I didn’t want repeated.

The “behind closed doors” moments, where I lost myself and my life became a circus, and I was the audience watching as the monkeys and clowns performed.

It’s so simple, but writing it down really does help to move the needle forward in your recovery from heartbreak, because problematic areas in the relationship begin to reveal themselves.

Break-ups don’t happen in a vacuum.

You’ll see it eventually.

I let all my rage and disappointment flow out into my diary—or journal, depending on where you’re from.

It helped me move forward, step by micro step, as a pattern emerged. I realised I’d become a paralysed spectator in my own life, and slowly I began to thaw out and regain the sense of humour and adventure I’d lost.

I started doing more and seeing friends again (but not talking about the heartbreak).

They’d ask politely,

“How are you doing?”

And I’d say,

“Small steps every day... anyway, it’s really great to see you.”

Then I’d change the subject.

Because, even though I was still utterly heartbroken, I didn’t want it to stagnate my friendships with an endless cycle of bewilderment and circular thinking.

I was boring myself too.

Talking to friends about it isn’t helpful after a point.

What could they do, really?

They’re not counsellors or therapists.

On the other hand, and as an aside, talking to a professional is a good idea, especially if you’re struggling with the ruminating stage. It can help you move through the initial anguish much more quickly, and I’d highly recommend it.

However...

I did have another secret weapon.

Recovery Ritual NO 2

This is simple but powerful

A friend of a friend was also going through a heartbreak of a similarly catastrophic nature, so we started meeting once a week.

We made a pact never to repeat what was said, and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

She splurged.

Then I splurged.

We shared our tactics for heartbreak recovery.

I’m going to share one of my favourite ones with you now, which comes from my practice of Witchcraft.

It’s simple but effective.

We are lucky enough to live by the sea, so we’d go down to the beach.

We’d write hateful slogans on stones.

We’d hold them in the palms of our hands, pour all our anger and heartbreak into them and....let’s face it, it was pretty dark back then.

(I’ll probably be banned if I write what was actually written on those stones.)

Then we’d throw them into the sea with all our might.

The sea didn’t solve my heartbreak.

But there was something deeply satisfying about watching those stones disappear beneath the waves, carrying my pain with them.

It transformed my feelings into something I could hold, look at and finally let go of. Sometimes the mind needs the body to help it move on. Rituals like this are simply technologies for changing the way we think, feel and remember.

The sea became my reset button, and every stone was another reminder that I didn't have to carry the same story forever.

I also did this alone, and it really helped me acknowledge what I was going through, to name it, and let it go.

Over time, I found myself writing positive words on the stones instead.

I’d send love to my ex.

Wish him a speedy recovery.

Send him forgiveness and gratitude for the time we’d shared together.

And happiness for his future.

That was when I realised something had changed.

I also started thinking about my own future.

I finally had the mental space to work out what I wanted from life, the places I wanted to travel to, and the lifestyle I wanted and who I was now after years of being ‘we’.

I passed my driving test.

I bought a new car.

Little by little, my life stopped revolving around what I’d lost and started revolving around what I was building.

At the nine-month mark, I looked in the mirror and realised how well I looked and how content I felt.

That’s when I knew I was ready to move on with my life.

That was May 2025.

I’d been asked out a few times, but I’d always declined.

There was one lovely man in particular who messaged me on Facebook, but I told him I wasn’t ready to date, even though I felt lonely and desperately missed physical touch.

My relationship with my ex was a big, big love, and I wasn’t ready to give anything even remotely that intense to anybody else.

Looking back now, I’m so grateful I gave myself the time and space to heal and get to know myself again.

Loneliness after heartbreak isn’t a bad thing, although the feelings are horrible.

Every day is a healing day, no matter how painful it feels.

I hope that makes sense?

The Verdict

I found my edges again after my breakup.

And I found a new life,

And massive plot twist…..

A year later, in May 2026, I was married, and I couldn’t be happier.

The real plot twist is, dear reader, I married my ex.

He’d been on his own spiritual quest and had come back a new man.

If you’d like to write on stones and chuck them into the sea, here’s my Amazon link to some mighty fine pens that will give you a cathartic experience like no other.

..Lickmyevil-21

(Cheeky, I know. But it’s so therapeutic and cheap!)

The Ruling

The evidence tells me that heartbreak hurts so much because it happens in the unseen realms.

Nobody can see the wound, so nobody knows how long it will take to heal.

We are expected to carry on because everyone else has.

But healing isn’t measured by the calendar.

It’s measured by the day you realise you’ve stopped mentally looping, started laughing again, and begun making plans for a life that no longer depends on someone else’s presence.

Case closed?

Not quite.

If you have any Heartbreak rituals you’d like to share, please drop them in the comments.

Until then, if anyone doesn't like where you are in your life journey... they can Lick My Evil.