Holly Smee, MA, RCC

22/11/2025

She gets it from her mama ❤️ a special Substack, dedicated just to my mom ✨️

Love Is a Verb (A Story About My Mother)

20/11/2025

For centuries, the witch trials had almost nothing to do with “witchcraft” and everything to do with power.

They were not hunts for spell-casters.
They were hunts for women who couldn’t be controlled —
women with influence, knowledge, intuition, healing skills, land, resources, or independence.
Midwives, herbalists, medicine keepers, truth-tellers, women who spoke too loudly, women who didn’t obey, women who owned their bodies and their minds.

The witch trials were the persecution of women who threatened the systems built to contain them.
Call it what it was:
a centuries-long campaign to silence women who held power that couldn’t be taxed, claimed, or coerced.

And still today… the word “witch” gets whispered at women who refuse to shrink.
I’ve been accused of being a witch more than once.
Why?
Because I stand in my power.
Because I know my influence.
Because I’m not afraid to be who I am.
Because I don’t follow the crowd or bend myself into socially acceptable shapes.
Because I live in alignment with my intuition, my creativity, and my truth.

If that makes me a witch,
then so be it.
I’ll wear that title like armor, like moonlight, like remembranc@e.

Because being “a woman in total control of herself”
has always been the most revolutionary magic there is. ✨🖤

19/11/2025

Life is so short, and we forget that.
We forget that our time, our health, our abilities are not guaranteed.
We move through our days like we’ll live forever, waiting for the “right moment,”
as if life will tap us on the shoulder when it’s finally safe to begin.

But here’s the thing:
no one knows how long they have.
No one knows which dream will be their last chance to chase.
And society’s ideas of what is “responsible” or “normal” or “appropriate”
are often just cages dressed up as wisdom.

Don’t let the world convince you to shrink.
Don’t let fear talk you out of living.
Don’t hand your life over to rules you never agreed to.

Think for yourself.
Feel for yourself.
Find your own way — even if it looks nothing like what you were taught.
Especially then.

Live while you have the gift of living.
The world is wide, and your time is precious.
Choose a life that feels like yours. ✨🕊️

18/11/2025

For ten years, I’ve sat with survivors of sexual violence — their shaking hands, their interrupted breathing, their stories spoken in fragments because the full truth is too heavy to carry alone.

One thing I’ve learned again and again:
sexual violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
It happens because systems protect predators, especially powerful men.
It happens because money can silence harm.
It happens because victims are told, directly or indirectly,
to stay quiet “for their own good.”

Jeffrey Epstein is not just one man.
He is a symbol of an entire structure built to shield abusers and expose victims.
A structure that tells survivors their pain is inconvenient,
their truth is dangerous,
their safety is negotiable.

But here’s the truth I hold for every survivor I’ve ever sat with:
Your voice is not dangerous — it is sacred.
Your story matters.
Your healing matters.
And you deserved protection long before the world cared to look.

Ending sexual violence means ending the silence that shelters it.
It means believing victims the first time they whisper the truth.
It means dismantling the systems that protect those with power
instead of the people they harm.

To every survivor:
I see you.
I believe you.
And none of this was your fault.

15/11/2025

Sisu 🌠 ⚡️🌈

- the kind of strength that doesn’t need applause. It doesn’t swagger or sparkle or demand to be witnessed. It rises quietly, like something ancient in your bones remembering how to continue when your mind whispers that you can’t.

It’s the part of you that gets out of bed on the mornings when your hope is thin. The part that keeps going even when life feels heavy and uncooperative. The part that chooses to try again tomorrow, even if today was a disaster.

Sisu is not adrenaline or hustle or that brittle, exhausted toughness you use to pretend you’re fine. It’s deeper. Older. A calm, determined heartbeat in the middle of the storm.

It’s the kind of resilience that doesn’t look heroic on the outside. Sometimes it looks like crying in your parked car. Sometimes it looks like taking one shaky breath and choosing not to give up. Sometimes it looks like admitting you’re tired and still moving anyway.

Sisu is courage braided with endurance. Hope stitched to perseverance. A reserve of strength you don’t know you have until everything else falls away.

It’s the whisper that says, “Not like this. Not the end. Stand up.”

And even when you’re trembling, you do. Not perfectly. Not gracefully. But truthfully. Honestly. Humanly.

Real perseverance is rarely cinematic. It’s messy. Quiet. Unpolished. But it counts. All of it counts.

Because resilience isn’t about never breaking. It’s about discovering that you can rise differently. Softer. Braver. A little more your true self each time.

Sisu is what remains when the world feels impossible: that stubborn, tender spark inside you that keeps insisting there is something worth continuing for.

Just keep going ❤️ ©️ Holly Smee

13/11/2025

In case you needed the reminder 💗

12/11/2025

Life is meant to be lived large ❤️

11/11/2025

My protectors ❤️

11/11/2025

Tiny devils 😈 🤣