I become an instant success in the Pagan and polyamorous world (after a rough start being offered a fake job at an organic chocolate factory and living out of my car).

I start running poly potlucks, becoming a well-respected leader in the Reclaiming witchcraft tradition, and start my own chocolate factory. I also found an urban intentional community in the Bay Area called Evermore house. I run rituals, and eventually start doing interfaith work, including being a delegate for The World Religions Fair (WHAT IS THIS CALLED).

And then I get my own column on the world’s largest religion publishing platform, Patheos. I write as myself with the column name of The Bornagain Witch, and I explore being a polyamorous witch working on integrating her Christianity into her witchcraft practices. And people love it.

And I am also a queer and trans advocate. I’m surrounded by trans people in my life, and consider myself “queer”, not fitting into what people typically think of as feminine.

Things are going better and better, I start to speak on the national circuit of Pagan events, and even better, I find that a friend wants to found a permaculture community with me and support my writing and rituals full-time.

Now this is the extraordinary part: (not kidding, mostly)

So I am left alone on sixteen acres of permaculture paradise, and my mind is shattered.

After August, Stacie and the cult, I am so traumatized I can often hardly sleep, hear people coming in the night, and am switching in between parts of myself.

Oh, and I forgot to mention something. When my mind was shattered, i began to see…everything. How parts of the self worked, what people were most afraid I’d know about them, how the world, God and the universe worked.

Yeah, I’d have a hard time believing me too, except it was true.

And meanwhile internal pain is excruciating. And everywhere I turn for help I get guidance I already know, or advice that is flat-outwrong. Nobody knows how to reintegrate a person who has DID-like systems.

So I figure it out.

I spend hours, sometimes days mediating internal conflicts. Shouting, crying, shaking, going numb, these are my days, my weeks, my months.

And my mind begins to heal, knit itself back together.

it takes several years and a great deal of patience, and I become a traumatized but whole and very wise person.

I decide to go on the road, to look for what is next. An intentional community where my gifts are welcome. A business partner. Instead I meet Aaron.

Hey. I’m Annika. And I have a story you’ve never heard before.

Sounds arrogant, no? Good. Because I was trained to be “meek” “humble” and “subservient” aka to downplay my gifts and talents, and just “serve” others.

See, that’s where my story begins, begin raised a Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian in Germany. I was raised to be a “good Christian girl” While most of my friends went to normal church, I was from the get-go an outcast. And I rebelled.

I was a tomboy.

And then I became a Jesus Freak.

Not only became a Jesus Freak, but founded a church plant in Frankfurt at the age of fifteen. I ministered to sex workers and johns, took communion in bars, and so much more.

But it wasn’t enough. And I met my now ex-husband while visiting the states as a nineteen year old.

Fastforward a few years, and I am the number one ranked Biblical scholar in the entire country (in my age group), and touring the country doing music and ministry full-time.

I run soup kitchens, play Christian hymns at Renaissance Festivals (hence the bagpipes in the picture over there), and run a touring music production from our thirty eight foot school bus.

I share the stage with Shane Claiborne, Tony Campolo, and other progressive Christian leaders.

But eventually I lose faith in the dogmas I grew up with, and my marriage falls apart.

A midlife crisis at the age of thirty and six months of sobbing in my parents basement later I move to the Bay area and begin life again. This time as a Pagan polyamorous witch.

And if you thought my life was exceptional until then, wait until you hear this:

I move up to outside of Portland, Oregon with myself, my benefactor friend (who has legally become my spouse for tax and healthcare reasons) and my primary partner, Mead.

Things are very exciting at first, as we move onto the land, clear trails, renovate the house using ecofriendly materials, and more.

And then things get weird. Our benefactor, and techincally my spouse is a trans woman. And she is just…odd.

It’s little things at first, her not remembering where she put things or saying something.

But eventually she comes clean: she has multiple personalities (eighteen to be exact) which can switch in at any time.

And my life gets turned upside-down.

I devote more and more of my time and energy towards being their for August (CHANGE IT IF YOU WANT), and we also get involved in a New-Age and empowerment cult.

August starts to switch more and more, and consume more and more of my life-force. And we start to see a therapist from our NEw-Age Cult.

And she, the cult, and living with someone with eighteen personalities breaks my mind.

It happens gradually, with each party breaking down mh boundaries, and punishing and chiding me when I put up any resistance or walls. And everywhere I turn I get no help.

And eventually I lose my mind.

My stories and defenses shredded, I begin to experience myself as multiple personalities like August.

I switch with them, and slowly lose all sense of who I used to be.

I start to identify as a trans man, to get some power and control back in my life.

And eventually things get so bad that August threatens to kill me.

And then, when I ask them to start to show up for me and my impact they leave.