I’ve been circling around this word lately: transmutation.
Emotional transmutation, that is.
It’s been haunting me. Following me into the shower. Whispering itself in my journal margins. Popping up in books and conversations when I least expect it.
The idea that a feeling (no matter how dark, heavy, unbearable ) can become something else.
Not erased.
Not denied.
Not fixed with a quick affirmation.
But transformed into something entirely new.
On the surface, it sounds almost clinical. Change one thing into another. But when I sit with it, it feels like something more: a kind of survival art.
Because I don’t always know how to “fix” the exhaustion, the guilt, the anger that comes with caregiving and over-giving. But I do know how to sit with a feeling long enough that it starts to shift shape. The ache of resentment can dissolve into a new boundary. The sharp edge of guilt can, strangely, soften into permission to rest. Anger can ignite clarity about what I will and will not carry.
That’s transmutation in its rawest sense: taking the heavy and letting it become fuel.
But the word didn’t begin with me.
From my understanding, in traditional alchemy—centuries before self-help books or therapy sessions—transmutation was the heart of the work. Medieval alchemists are most often remembered for trying to turn lead into gold. But if you go deeper, it wasn’t only about physical metal. It was about the soul. I’ve read my fair share of books on the esoteric and the ancient doctrines that seemed to have lost favor with the mainstream over the years. Most of them mention alchemical transmutation in some form and each time I feel a little buzz just from reading (maybe I was/am an alchemist in a past life or alternate timeline?)
Lead wasn’t just lead. It symbolized the heavy, the base, the dense matter of human experience: fear, guilt, rage, despair. Gold wasn’t just gold either. It was illumination, wholeness, divine presence. The alchemists built furnaces and laboratories, yes, but what they were really building were metaphors for transformation. To burn, to dissolve, to separate, to purify. These were inner processes as much as chemical ones.
When I think about that, it clicks: maybe every time I sit with an unbearable feeling instead of fleeing from it, I’m working in the same tradition.
I’m the furnace.
My nervous system is the cauldron.
My boundaries, my words, my choices are the tools. And the heavy matter of guilt or anger becomes, slowly, the gold of a self I can actually live with.
Here’s what strikes me most about old alchemical texts: they knew transformation was never quick. It was a process of cycles, repetition. A process of patience.
They called it “the Great Work.” Hours, years, lifetimes of tending the fire, testing, failing, refining.
There’s something soothing in that for me. Because I have a habit of wanting quick results and neat fixes. The danger in that is when things aren’t ‘fixed’ quickly, I spiral into disappointment. 
I wonder if I didn’t do ‘it’ right or if I’m doomed to a life enveloped in gloomy clouds. But maybe the real work of transmutation is slower.
It’s got me thinking…maybe every time I take guilt and transmute it into permission, or anger and transmute it into a boundary, or frustration and transmute it into excitement, I’m doing a small piece of the Great Work. My piece.
Not a grand finale. Not instant gold. Just the ongoing, quiet alchemy of survival.
And perhaps that’s enough.
So, I’ve answered the call and I’ve been experimenting with transmuting my feelings.
Guilt. Anger. Resentment (turns out, I’m experiencing a lot of negative feelings).
The sticky emotions caregivers and over-givers don’t talk about because we’re supposed to be endlessly patient and endlessly kind.
I wondered…
What if instead of pushing those feelings down, I let them fuel something, slowly?
Like rage, turned into words.
Or guilt, transmuted into boundaries.
Or exhaustion, spun into tenderness for myself.
Sometimes it works.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
Some days, I can sit with a feeling and literally feel it melting — almost like wax dripping down a candle, reshaping itself into something softer.
Other days, I just sit there with the rawness buzzing in my body, unsure if I’m “doing it right.”
But maybe that’s the point.
Maybe transmutation isn’t about perfection. Or curiosity and giving myself permission to try a different way of relating to what I feel, instead of abandoning myself every time a hard emotion shows up.
I don’t know yet where this rabbit hole is taking me. I never know (and I like it that way).
But I do know this:
Every time I experiment with transmutation, I feel a little less afraid of my own emotions.
A little less desperate to escape them.
A little more willing to believe that even my darkest states carry power, if I let them shift instead of shut them down.
And that feels like freedom and power at the same time.
So this is me, mid-experiment. I’m deep down the rabbit hole, consuming everything (worthwhile) I can about transmutation, especially emotional. I’m also actively self-experimenting.
I have no answers to give you, just questions. Just curiosity.
Maybe you’ve been playing with this, too?
Maybe you’ve already been transmuting without even naming it?
If so, I’d love to know what it looks like for you.
xo
Alicia
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