STERILIZED: An Update from La Sirène’s

On June 20, La Sirène’s on Etsy was closed.

I was given vague information as to why. The communications came through members of Etsy’s “Integrity” team, and I was referred back to policy guidelines that are extensive and generalized enough that, even now, I cannot tell you with certainty what caused the removal.

There could be a number of reasons.

I have wondered whether some of it had to do with ingredients. That is only my speculation. I do not knowingly use illegal ingredients, and I take the safety of what I make seriously. I research these materials. I research how they are used. I practice safety.

So I could sit here forever asking why? But I think I have reached the point where the answer matters less than what happened afterward.

The honeymoon phase with Etsy was amazing. I got my feet wet there. Without Etsy, I might never have gotten that first taste of doing this for myself—of making something, putting it into the world, and discovering that people actually wanted what I was creating.

But Etsy was also an umbrella. It was infrastructure. It was a platform and a support system. And then the umbrella disappeared. For a while, that hurt. But one cannot grow where one is not supported or believed in.

That has become one of the messages of this year for me: Why keep the anchor so heavy? Set sail. Move on. Be free.

And somewhere in this process, something much stranger and much more important has begun happening: I am discovering who La Sirène actually is.

I do not mean La Sirène the Lwa or the Vodou spirit herself. I mean the egregore that has emerged around this work—the spirit-form created through my experiences, my customers, the things I have made, the products that have come through inspiration and channeling, and everything this strange little shop has survived.

I founded La Sirène’s. It began as my store. I still care for it. I still make the products. I still do the work. But I don’t think it belongs entirely to me anymore.

It is becoming hers. Now La Sirène’s has its own website. I built it from scratch—with the aid of Squarespace, because without that I would probably still be staring helplessly at a blank screen. I am still learning. The website is still changing. La Sirène’s is still changing.

Sometimes it feels as though she is standing in front of a mirror, putting on different clothes and different outfits, seeing what fits. And I think that is exactly where we are supposed to be. The honeymoon is definitely over. Then came the underworld.

In some forms of traditional witchcraft, there is the idea of an initiatory descent—a stripping away of the identity that carried you through the beginning so that something deeper can emerge. I think of Inanna descending into the Underworld, passing through gate after gate. At each one, she must surrender something she carried with her until eventually she arrives naked and empty-handed.

That is what this has felt like.

Etsy was stripped away. Certainty was stripped away. The identity I had built around being an Etsy seller was stripped away. And eventually, even my wounded pride had to go.

My ego kept me shut down and, frankly, butt-hurt after Etsy kicked me off. I had invested so much of myself into something that could disappear without my permission. I had to grieve that before I could understand what was trying to emerge from it.

I know what the Underworld is for. You do not descend simply to suffer. You descend to return changed. So this is not an announcement that La Sirène’s disappeared on June 20. It is an announcement that she survived June 20.

I am finding a new home within myself. She is finding a new home on the web. And I am building that home so that what we create can remain accessible to everyone who finds something meaningful here.

There is still much to build. There will probably be more outfits before she decides exactly what she wants to wear. That’s all right. We have set sail.

Healing and success always.

— Ricky & La Sirène’s

August 6, 2026