Rachel Christ-Doane, Salem Witch Museum Director of Education
Release Date: 10/24/2025
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For many people, healing means learning to manage pain. But what if healing meant something more? This week on Real Women's Work, I sit down with Spiritual Guide and Healer in the Lineage of King Solomon (listen in to see why this matters) and founder of Empowering Path, Alex Bynum, for a thoughtful conversation about spirituality, trauma, purpose, and what it means to become more fully yourself. Alex shares her own journey from struggling with bulimia and feeling stuck in her early twenties to discovering a path that completely changed the direction of her life. We talk about skepticism,...
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info_outlineThere is so much about the Salem With Trials that I had wrong. The more I dug in, the more I saw that all who were involved were real actual humans. They had famlies and jobs and homes and neighbors. Yet, so often when I thought of the Salem Witch Trials it was with an almost dark entertainment fascination- as though the people involved were not human at all. Rather, they were some kind of mutant variation stupid enough to let this happen around them.
The more I learned, the more that time period became alive to me. I started to know the people by name. Know some of their background. Understand some of the relationships and circumstances. I learned the broader picture that included the European witch panic.
Before I knew it, there was a reverence and deep sadness that came over me every time I thougth of the Salem Witch Trials. As I got to better know the people who were invovled I started to feel upset when people made jokes about them or when misunderstandings were perpetuated.
This is what made me want to do this series. I wanted experts to not only help me learn more, but help anyone else who wanted to learn, too.
Because now I know that history really does repeat itself and that if we removed "Salem Witch Trials" from this episode, listeners might wonder which event --historical or current-- we were actually talking about.
This episode is about a set of circumstances several hundred years ago whose characteristics are so universal they can be applied to many, many situations between then and now. It is about real women, history, its role in our lives, and how it even changes with time!
Rachel Christ-Doane is incredible. She is articulate, insightful, patient, knowlegeable, and oh so passionate about sharing her knowledge about the Salem Witch Trials. Her role as the Director of Education at the Salem Witch Museum gives her a breadth of experience that is valuable to all of us.
Listen in. Share the episode. Tell your friends. This is another awesome woman doing Real Women's Work!