There was a witch in my life and it was not the good type

September 30, 2020

There was a witch in my life and it was not the good type

I like witches for their strength and passion

They stand up and make you feel empowered

The witch in my life did not stood up to a Tyron

Instead, she chose to enchant someone who admired her

Then attack her and wound her

She didn’t stand up to a Tyron

Instead, she wounded a junior

She wounded her deep

There was a witch in my life and it was not the good type

She used her witch powers for destruction

To the extent that inflicts others with suicidal thoughts

There was a witch in my life and it was not the good type

She hugged me and then threw me to a wall

Softened my heart and when she broke it, it hurt more

There was a witch in my life and it was not the good type

People are afraid of her anger so meet me in private

They do not celebrate my happiness in public, fearing her rage

There was a witch in my life and I grew out of her power

I spent every drop of my energy to heal

One can have witch powers and use them for healing

One first heals herself from the witch/Tyron and then heals others.

There was a witch in my life and I am now a healer

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Narrative Bio

I grew up in a fishing village called Büyükdere by the northern seacoast of Bosphorus, Istanbul. After my third childhood hiking journey to the hills of Büyükdere, my parents realized that I might fly off the nest once I grow up. Although they have always been positive of the idea of their first born child to become an explorer, supportive to my decisions to live away since age 12, take a path different from theirs, even study social sciences (and not engineering nor medicine like the children of all Turkish lower-middle class parents want for their kids), they have finally started complaining about my explorations after my third year in Montreal (2008), Canada, almost 8000 km away from the “nest”.

By the time my parents started complaining about my life in abroad, I was starting my MA in socio/cultural anthropology and Women & Gender Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada. That was my third institution after Boğaziçi University in Istanbul (for a sociology BA) and Concordia University in Montreal, Canada (for an anthropology BA).

Cambridge was somewhat a “medium” solution to my thirst for anthropology and my parents’ demands to have their daughter closer.

During my PhD in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge (Newnham College), I was fortunate to have then William-Wyse Professor Henrietta L. Moore as my supervisor, who has proven to be one of the most exciting feminists to work with.

Between 2016 and 2020, I had been the Abdullah Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah Research Fellow in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, an Affiliated Researcher and temporary Lecturer in Social Anthropology, and Teaching Associate in Centre for Gender Studies, all at the University of Cambridge. Being at Pembroke College was the best part of my last four years at Cambridge. Back then, Lord Chris Smith was the Master of the college (he still is), who has been working hard to make the college an inclusive space - a task that was especially challenging at an institution (Cambridge) that is built on (and the castle of) systematic exclusion.

Currently, I am the PI of a large project funded by the ERC and Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Global Prosperity at the UCL - an institute established by a feminist anthropologist who believe that academia should be for greater good and prioritising the ivory tower will not bring any benefit to the world. She happened to be my former supervisor - so there's the nest I ended up going back to, that I chose for myself.