Mashed Potatoes as My Magic Wand
This ritual story was born from a whisper—clear, unexpected, and deeply felt. The ancestors said: Mashed Potatoes. Just those two words. And it unlocked something inside me. A memory. A vibration. A call to return to the joy, curiosity, and magic of my inner child. This story is an offering—an act of devotion to all the parts of me that remember how to sculpt beauty from softness, how to blend play with presence, and how to find the sacred in the everyday.
We invite you to honor your own joy as holy, to reclaim your childhood wonder as a source of power, and to remember that your magic doesn’t have to be elaborate to be real. Sometimes, it looks like mashed potatoes on a plate and a fork in your hand.
Ritual Story
I sit at the table with a fork in my hand and a warm plate in front of me. Steam rises like spirit. The scent is memory—meatloaf, green beans, and a generous, joyful mountain of mashed potatoes. My feet don’t dangle off the chair like they used to, but my heart still knows what time it is. This is sacred play.
I pause before the first bite. Not in hesitation, but reverence.
I didn’t come here to eat physical food.
I came to remember.
To receive a platter of spiritual mana, hot and fresh from the altar of my childhood joy.
This is a sacred moment dressed in mashed potatoes.
I close my eyes and breathe in the magic.
And there she is—my younger self, maybe seven or eight, maybe younger, maybe ageless. Elbows planted on the table, fork in one hand, determination in the other. She’s sculpting mashed potatoes like they’re enchanted clay. Digging moats. Building soft castles. Nesting green beans like secret treasures. Drizzling ketchup like a potion that makes everything just right. She’s not trying to make a mess. She’s making meaning.
This wasn’t chaos. It was creativity.
This was one of the first places I ever practiced magic.
Back then, I didn’t have language for alchemy, for sensory embodiment, or somatic joy. I didn’t know I was building rituals with every bite. I just knew that mashed potatoes were my favorite canvas. That ketchup made me feel powerful. That combining flavors and textures was freedom. And even when Mama sighed, or said, “Why you gotta mix it like that?”—she still let me do it. Because I ate. And somewhere deep down, I think she saw it too.
She saw my spark.
She saw my joy.
She saw my magic.
And now—grown, tender, powerful me—I see it.
I open my eyes. The plate is still steaming. My fork is still in hand. And I smile. Because this isn’t nostalgia. It’s a return. The ritual is alive. The magic never left.
I swirl the mashed potatoes with my fork like a wand. A gentle scoop becomes a curve, then a hill. I nestle green beans right in the middle. I tear off a piece of meatloaf and tuck it in like it belongs there.
And I speak. Not out loud, but from my belly:
I give myself permission to play.
I give myself permission to feel joy before I earn it.
I honor my appetite as holy.
I shape my reality with softness, pleasure, and intention.
Each movement is deliberate. Not forced. Just felt.
I remember how textures brought me back to life. How combining things in ways that “weren’t supposed to go together” made perfect sense to me. I was never messy—I was curious. I was never picky—I was attuned. I was never doing too much—I was creating new worlds.
This is the magic I carry with me now.
In how I layer sound and scent into ritual.
In how I create space for laughter, for softness, for divine chaos.
In how I build offerings that speak directly to the child in me who never stopped believing in possibility.
In how I trust my body when she says, this feels good, stay here.
In how I dare to blend things—pleasure and grief, discipline and play, silence and song—and call it wholeness.
That little girl made potions on her plate.
This grown woman writes spells with her breath.
Same spirit. Same wand. Different form.
I take a bite. And let it melt.
The textures on my tongue speak a language older than words. They remind me who I am—someone who’s always known how to blend sensation and spirit into something holy.
My inner child doesn’t just smile—
She locks eyes with me across time,
and nods like a co-conspirator.
We’re doing this. Together.
She’s not behind me.
She’s not lost.
She is me.
Alive in my body.
Sculpting joy with every forkful.
And as the last bite melts into my being, I whisper—
This is not the end of the meal. This is the beginning of my remembering.
Mashed potatoes are my magic wand—
because I used them to shape joy,
to blend what didn’t belong,
to make something beautiful from what was given.
They taught me that I could create worlds with my hands.
That I didn’t need fancy tools—just presence, play, and permission.
I didn’t just eat dinner. I practiced alchemy.
And I still do.
I’ve always known how to sculpt the life I want.
Now, I do it on purpose.
Thank you to all aspects of me, especially my inner child.
Thank you, Spirit. Aṣé.