How to Age Gracefully
Another retreat at Lake Waccamaw, another zine by the coven!
Welcome to So Relatable, a newsletter for creative folks who want to make things that matter. To support my creative work, buy my zines! ✨
Back in February I spent a weekend at Lake Waccamaw, only forty-five minutes outside the city yet a completely different world. Regular readers will recall this is my annual Craft Retreat—a long weekend with 14 of my closest friends, collectively known as The Coven.
Each year we descend on the same giant house with an overabundance of craft supplies and snacks. We take turns cooking and cleaning, and eat all our meals at a giant table glowing with lit candles. We run around the lake, take naps on the couch, and search for alligators in the reeds. We drink coffee on the dock, give each other poke and stick tattoos, and devote one night to presentations on our current obsessions. If this sounds like heaven, that’s because it is.
Last year, I used the weekend’s themes of creativity and connection as an excuse to shepherd a collaborative group zine into existence. Our inaugural issue was a gorgeous homage to Lake Waccamaw and the weekend, and the group zine immediately became an annual tradition.
I wanted this year’s volume to feel like part of a series, but also different enough to stand alone. Because creativity thrives within constraints, I sent out an assignment a few weeks before the trip.
Let’s create a spell book for witches everywhere, full of our unique wisdom, niche advice, and helpful how-tos.
And Reader, we did.
I love this zine so much—it feels like a moment in time, a perfect blend of so many people I love so much, a window into our chaotic and sprawling friendship. Each zine we make is a time capsule, each year we gather together an impossible gift. I hope we never stop going to Lake Waccamaw, and I hope we never stop making beautiful things together.
If you’ve ever wondered how to make tofu with mass appeal, write good sci-fi, start a cult, bake focaccia, deadlift your friends, age gracefully, find your fight, transform anger into action, make migas, or fold the perfect strudel, then do I have the zine for you. You can buy a copy of Dear Witch on Etsy, along with all my other zines.
In the meantime, here’s my contribution to the guide. Consider it a spell for middle-aged witches everywhere, a little push to make the years pure magic.
Thanks for reading! Have a magical solstice. ✨
💛 Creative Club
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👋 About Me: I’m Chrissy Hennessey, an enthusiastic snacker and native New Yorker living in coastal North Carolina, where I stayed after earning my MFA. My writing has appeared in a decent number of journals, I’ve received fellowships to some fancy residencies, and I’ve written three unpublished novels. This newsletter is a passion project I started in 2019 as a way to connect with artists and writers, share my creative journey, and build a community. Thank you for being here!