I didn’t start this story at the beginning.
Because beginnings, for people like us, were never blank pages.
They were already loaded—with silence, with judgment, with eyes watching before we even stepped into the room.

Victory wasn’t something I felt.
It was something my mother named me.

She whispered it into my bones before I knew the weight of it.
“Viktoria means victory,” she told me—not just as a name, but as a spell.

At the time, I couldn’t see it.
I was still speaking in crayons and half-spelled dreams.
But she said it with her whole body.
And women like her don’t waste breath on names they don’t mean.

I carried that name into kitchens, classrooms, boardrooms—
offering warmth, truth, culture, presence.
Not performance. Not polish. Just reality.

And still, I was measured by the wrong metrics.
Not seen. Just calculated.

They didn’t see Victory.
They saw someone who didn’t play by the rules and still walked in like they belonged.
They saw someone they couldn’t place, so they tried to put them in their place.

I stayed quiet. I played small.
I forgot that Victory wasn’t about winning in their game.
It was about not being erased in mine.

And I know I’m not the only one.

So I built Witch in Progress for everyone who’s been told to behave, to heal quietly, to make themselves smaller just to be tolerated.

This is where we un-numb ourselves.
Where we stop apologizing for still being in progress.

This is where we take our names back—
not just mine, but yours too.

This isn’t about revenge.
It’s about remembrance.

You were always more powerful than they allowed you to be.

Welcome to the circle.
Let’s conjure our victory—together.