The confessions of women - by Freya Rohn

Witchcraft was hung, in History, But History and I Find all the Witchcraft that we need Around us, Every Day - —Emily Dickinson My mom is deep into genealogical research most days. It’s not unusual to get texts from her with some new ancestor story. Most of the time I brush these off—everyone is related to everyone when you go back far enough. While I believe in honoring ancestors, I can only feign interest because of the shame I feel that my ancestors all came here from somewhere else and contributed to the trauma and legacies of settler colonialism. But the story she shared last week I can’t stop thinking about: my tenth great grandmother was the last woman executed for witchcraft in the Connecticut witch trials in 1662, thirty years before the infamous trials of Salem. And Connecticut was also the place of the first witch confession in New England. The roots of the word confession come from the 14th century—around 100 years before the first description of witchcraft was written in 1

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