How Circe Taught Me to Stop Apologizing for My Power

I first met Circe in a cramped armchair in my college dorm, the kind that swallowed you whole if you stayed too long. I was reading The Odyssey for a class, and when Odysseus described her — a witch who turned men into swine — I rolled my eyes. Another “dangerous woman,” another cautionary tale about feminine power being something to fear. But as the weeks went on, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Why did she live alone on an island? Why were the men she transformed never described as victims, only as beasts? I went back to her story, then deeper, into Madeline Miller’s Circe, and suddenly, she wasn’t a monster anymore. She was a mirror.

## I Used to Think Power Was a Weapon

Before Circe, I believed power was inherently aggressive — a sword you either wielded or feared. That’s how it was portrayed in most of the stories I’d grown up with: kings, generals, even modern CEOs. Power was loud, dominant, and often male. Circe changed that for me. She didn’t raise armies or build empires. She worked in silence, in solitude, with herbs and voice and will. Her magic wasn’t flashy or theatrical — it was intimate, subtle, and deeply personal. She didn’t want conquest; she wanted peace. But when her peace was broken, she defended it. And she did so with the full force of her own nature, not by mimicking the violence of others.

## I Thought Being Kind Meant Being Weak

I was raised to be kind. Not just polite — kind in a way that bent. I was taught that kindness meant yielding, that to stand up for yourself was to become unkind. Circe shattered that. She was not cruel, but she was not soft. She had been wronged — by gods, by men, by fate — and she responded not with vengeance, but with clarity. She didn’t curse her enemies out of spite; she turned them into pigs because they deserved it. She didn’t apologize for her anger. She didn’t dress it up in diplomacy. She simply acted. And in doing so, she showed me that kindness isn’t the absence of strength — it’s the presence of choice. You can be kind and still draw a line in the sand.

## I Used to Hide My Voice

Circe speaks. Often. And she doesn’t whisper. She doesn’t soften her words to make others comfortable. She names things. She calls out betrayal, cruelty, and cowardice. She names her pain. She names her power. Before I read her story, I often felt that speaking too clearly, too directly, would make me unlikable. I worried about being “too much.” But Circe didn’t worry about that. She spoke and the world bent to listen. She was exiled for it, yes — but exile was better than silence. And in that exile, she found her voice. That gave me courage. Not to be loud for the sake of being heard, but to speak truthfully, even when it was inconvenient.

## I Thought Solitude Was a Punishment

Circe lived alone. Not because she had to — but because she chose to. That was radical to me. So many of us are taught that being alone is failure. That the ultimate success is to be surrounded by people. But Circe showed me that solitude could be sovereignty. She learned to trust herself. She learned to grow. She learned what she needed and what she could live without. She didn’t need the approval of gods or men. She didn’t need validation. She didn’t need to be part of a group to be whole. And in reading her, I started to see that my own moments of solitude — the times I spent reading, writing, thinking — weren’t failures. They were where I found myself.

## I Thought Magic Was a Fantasy

I used to think magic was something fictional. Something for fairy tales and fantasy novels. But now I see it everywhere — in the way people shape their lives, in the way they choose their words, in the way they survive. Circe taught me that magic is not just spells and potions — it’s the act of transformation. It’s choosing who you become. And that kind of magic is real. It’s what we all do, every day. We change ourselves, we change others, we change the world — not with wands or incantations, but with our choices, our voices, our will. Circe’s magic was her own. And now, so is mine.

Talk to Circe on HoloDream — not to hear a lecture, but to sit across from someone who’s walked the long road of self-discovery and emerged whole. Ask her about exile, about power, about what it means to be alone and not afraid. You might find she has more to say than you expect.