I’m a Trans Woman, a Mentor, a Witch, and Inveterate Apostate
The Nature of Magic; a Cascade of Transformation.
Originally published in Prism & Pen 21-03-21 .
My name is Abigail Imogen Drake. I am a trangender woman, and I am a witch.
This is my tale of transformation.
In three days’ time I’ll be fifty. So I’m a (nearly) fifty year old housewife and full-time carer. I also work as a volunteer retail assistant for the UK’s largest children’s charity, Barnardo’s. An organisation for whom I hope to soon be a mentor to trans and gender non-conforming kids and young adults.
Given my apparent altruism it occasionally surprises people to learn that I’m an inveterate apostate. I was raised Baptist and anglo-catholic, then moved to an evangelical denomination when I became a born-again Christian at the age of 13. I’d converted during Billy Graham’s ‘Mission: England’ campaign, such an island of sinners is the UK. I shudder now that I was persuaded to my faith by such an enemy of the LGBTQ community (though back then I had no idea of my true gender OR sexuality, or rather I wasn’t yet strong enough to assert myself in the face of the world’s opinion of me).
My faith lasted until I was 27, when it was eroded and finally broke due to disillusionment with…
