The Sisters Who Happened to Be Witches

As an evangelical Christian kid from the 90s, I was not allowed to watch several shows and movies for a number of pretty ridiculous reasons. But a big "not happening" in my family was anything that involved witchcraft.

Needless to say, I didn't grow up watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch or Harry Potter.

This part of my upbringing all came bubbling back to the surface when Shannen Doherty passed away last year. How do you mourn a character you weren't allowed to admire, but also felt like held your hand through the hardest years of your life?

One day I was rocking one of my baby siblings and couldn't reach the remote, and a Charmed rerun came on. I can't even fully recall which episode it was, but I remembered that it had hooked me and I’d started sneaking around to watch it.

I saw in Prue (Shannen) the older sister I wanted to be but also wanted for myself; her episodes will forever be my favorites. In her I was able to see a woman work through old, deep pain and come out the other side. I saw her walk through grief I thought I would carry with me for the rest of my life.

I saw her sisters carry her through it.

I found out later that the show's premise was pitched not as "witches who happen to be sisters” but “sisters who happen to be witches," and that was what kept me watching.

My family was dysfunctional, at best, and these sisters were everything to each other (and, of course, they also got to fight evil). I wanted what these sisters had in each other.

I had people I loved, but no one was reliable. No matter what happened to these sisters, though, they came back to each other. Not to their boyfriends or husbands, but to each other. I held onto Charmed as a place to comfort me when the real world couldn't.  

I always liked when the sisters came together at the end of the episode, either in the attic or their living room of the house they shared as adults. They had significant others, spouses, and eventually children, but it didn't change their relationships with each other or move them down some societal totem pole – they stayed each other's lifeline through it all. No one outranked anyone else, but people were added to the circle, to the family. 

So many things made a show like this seem so cool to 12-year-old me. Authentic portrayals of powerful women. Good action sequences, which I have always loved. Good vs. evil.

I cried for deaths that I already knew were fake-outs. I saw the seasons so many times, I could tell you which episode was which, just from the intro.  But what I wanted most was the bond that these sisters shared with each other.

The charmed ones were chosen to do something great, and do it together. Most girls at that age are planning some dream wedding, and I wanted to live with friends. I wanted to spend adulthood with people who chose me and strived toward the same goal with me. 

This series showed me something I’d unconsciously hoped for, but never had any reference for. 

Shannen’s sudden passing has been the only celebrity death that’s ever actually weighed on me and made me sad. She was restarting a rewatch podcast of the show, and I was excited to listen. I listened to the handful of episodes she recorded the week she passed as a way to mourn silently.

At the time, Charmed was simply a comfort show in a hard time of my life, but looking back I can see why it was so comforting in the first place.

I did not consciously know about my sexual orientation when I originally watched the show. I would be in denial for almost another decade. Our bodies and our unconscious minds often recognize things faster than we can. My brain attached to these women’s deep bonds because this was what I had been longing for on the inside. The show had no queer representation by any means, but it gently held the longing I had for female camaraderie in a way that normalized it for me.

Charmed normalized the thing that I thought made me weird. I thought feeling that level of euphoria over being truly seen by another girl was out of place.

I have lived through the lessons those sisters taught me, and I continue to live through them today. I still hope toward that level of soul-satisfying intimacy with women — a bond that is in no way sensual or sexual.

What do you think are some things you latched onto at a young age that pointed to some truth inside of you? What was a piece of media that made you feel more at peace about parts of yourself that you thought “made you weird”? What are some shows that represent the types of relationships you would like to have?