Catharsis

I take about a year heal from strong emotional situations.  About a year ago, the coven I was a part of disbanded and as usual, I have taken the year to heal.  I know why it fell apart.  Many of us had priorities that just didn't match up anymore.  However, there are some events, that no matter how much time passes, I will never understand why they happened.  I will never truly get the answers that I'm looking for, so all I can do is speculate.  I guess that's not really what matters anymore.

For the better part of a decade, I participated in some sort of group practice or another.  In the fall of 2008, I helped to found the Pagan group at my university, and in my time at school, I was also part of another coven.  When that coven didn't work for me anymore, I continued group practice with the group at school and with one of my spiritual sisters.  She and I continued to practice together even after graduating from college.  About a year after graduation, she was heading overseas to pursue her masters and I had found my most recent coven.  I practiced with that coven for 4 years, which brings us to last year, when it disbanded.  This left me feeling lost and adrift.  What was my practice going to look like now?  I had no idea.  I needed space in many ways.  I needed to decompress.  I knew that I had very little interest in structured rituals or any ritual for that matter.  While I found myself observing the changing of the seasons, I observed them more internally than externally.  I felt the energetic changes within myself more than anything else.  I found myself embracing the physical as well.  I think within the coven, I was trying to "transcend" the physical due some members feeling uncomfortable with it.  To me, that doesn't feel natural.  We manifest in this physical world to experience it and allowing ourselves to have that experience is important.

After the initial shock and hurt of the coven disbanding, I felt a sense of freedom.  I found a lot of literal free time and also emotional freedom.  I was able to go car shopping, work on wedding plans, visit with friends and family, take vacations, and put in the necessary time at work that was required of a hard-earned promotion.  I was able to do all this any time that I needed to without the guilt that might have accompanied various events throughout last year and early this year.  I was grateful for that time and feeling.  I found a deepening interest in yoga.  I know that yoga is supposed to prepare your body for meditation, but for me, the physical flow of yoga is meditative and clears my head and energizes me.  I have a few books that I am reading as well as trying attend more classes.  Eventually, I need to create a personal practice, but as I've practiced Wicca in a group setting for so long, I think that is what I'm used to and need to get out of that frame of thought.

A couple weeks ago, we hit the one year mark since the coven disbanded and I'm feeling that final purge of emotions.  I'm not sure that I'll ever feel friendly with some former members of the coven, but I am feeling more comfortable with the outcome of the coven disbanding.  Recently, I had some of my feelings validated that hadn't been previously and that made a big difference for me.  Although I had held a ritual for release, last summer, I had a dream a couple days ago where a former member insisted that we should still maintain a relationship.  I knew that it was not healthy and so I took the doll that she had that represented me.  It wasn't a poppet, but a sad looking teddy bear that she had tied up with string.  I took it from her and cut the strings and threw it in a river.  And after that, she stood in front of me crying, asking if we could still be friends.  I told her that we both knew that it was not a healthy relationship and then I hugged her goodbye and walked away.  I think my catharsis is almost complete.