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.

An Evolution of Beliefs

I think my beliefs have been evolving for a while, but I didn't recognize it.  It was easy to maintain the status quo as a member of the coven and not really think about my personal beliefs because it is important to conform to the group to maintain unity.  When the coven fell apart, I knew that I didn't want to continue a practice that looked like what we did there.  But what did that look like?  In the coven, I was supposed to hit certain milestones and that was kind of how I ran my practice in attempt to hit those milestones.  Well now I'm on my own with a couple witchy friends to check in with and I've had to spend the past seven months trying to figure out what that looks like.  I'm still not quite sure, but I'm working it out.  Right now, I think I am still Wiccan, but that may change or it may not.  It's hard to say.  I can't say where I'm going, but I can tell you where I'm at.

I started yoga about a year ago and I really love the peace I feel when I'm there.  I'm sure I've mentioned before that it is the only place I really feel at peace.  I'd like to explore that more.  I have no desire to have some spiritual practice that tries to transcend this physical world.  I have clearly manifested in this physical body for a reason and I think it's important to explore that.  I am a spiritual being and its important to acknowledge that, but also embrace the experience of this physical body.  I tend to live in the physical first, and acknowledge the spiritual second.  I'm not one of those people that only wants to dwell on a spiritual plane and forgets the physical.  Since I need to bring the spiritual into my everyday life, I need to find a way to incorporate that into my physical life.  Yoga helps me to do that.  I am able to focus on the movement of my physical body and elevate that into something spiritual.  I am working on strengthening my body and the poses and now I think it is important to focus on the theory and spirituality behind it.  This will help me to take my practice in the direction I would like to see it go.  

I also find that the Wiccan belief in just one god and one goddess is very limiting to me.  I am probably on my way to working with a personal pantheon.  I know some Wiccans work with the Lord and the Lady concept, but that is just too vague and impersonal to me.  I know they view all deities as facets of the same energy, so they'll call on any deity that suits their needs.  The reason this does not work for me is that I do not share this belief that they are all part of the same energy.  Instead I believe that all deities are distinct entities, which we must nurture relationships with.  You wouldn't hang out in your house and then when you need a doctor, go knock on your neighbor's door without ever introducing yourself.  I feel the same way about deity.  You need to develop a relationship before asking for help.  Additionally, you wouldn't ask the doctor for tax advice.  The reason I bring this up is because if you do not subscribe to the nebulous Lord and Lady belief, then you must find a matron/patron.  To me, this also leaves something to be desired.  This is like developing a relationship with the doctor and then relying on him for everything even outside of his expertise.  This is where I struggle with the idea of matrons/patrons.  Athena had made herself known to me as my matron.  At the time, I needed a warrior energy in my life.  That's not to say that I don't need that energy in my life still.  What I am saying is that I need a combination of energies in my life, which is why I'm beginning to feel that working with a number of gods may be in my best interest.  I don't know what that looks like quite yet, but I do know I'll never figure it out if I don't start exploring.  For the next year, I'll be working through a book with devotionals to many different goddesses and find how I feel.  

I think all of this will help me to find the next step in the evolution of my beliefs.

Finding Gratitude

So many times whether in ritual or otherwise, I find myself asking for something that is lacking in my life.  But about two months ago, I found myself standing in this temple in a busy part of Tokyo.  I made my offering and began to pray.  I found myself not feeling an ounce of lacking anywhere in my life.  I could not think of a single thing that I needed.  I found myself full of gratitude.  I recognized all that I have received and was so grateful for each beautiful moment.  All I could say was thank you for this moment and everything that led me to this point.  In truth, this may very well have been the first time in my life that I have not felt as though my life is lacking in some way.

I really love that sense of complete gratitude that I felt in that moment.  This is something I struggle with on a regular basis.  I want to always live in a moment of gratitude without a sense of lacking.  I really struggle to stay in the space on a day to day basis though and it is something I am working toward.  It's easy on the good days, but the bad days are really hard.  I find it hard to stay in a positive place and maintain my attitude of gratitude.  This is something I'm working toward.  It's so very hard for me, but it's also very important.  I know that to become the best version of myself, this is something I need to work toward.  When I find something I am grateful for, I am jotting it down so that I can remember all of the good things in my life and not only focus on the bad.

I have to find that feeling again that I found at Sensoji Temple.  It was such a beautiful feeling and I would like to get back to that.  It was peaceful.

Reflections

I like to reflect on the previous year, every year; look at what I'd like to keep and what no longer serves.  I used to do this on Samhain, but in recent years, I've found that I prefer to do this on my birthday, in September.  Maybe so that by the time Samhain rolls around, I've had time to think about the things that I'd like to release from the previous year.  I find myself doing more reflecting, this year, more than I normally do.  So much has changed this year.

I spent a year as an only child.  My brother lives in Ohio and my sister moved to China for a year.  Originally, this terrified me.  I know I was an only child 27 years ago, but I don't even remember what that was like anymore.  My brother and sister have always been my rocks and I especially relied on my sister, so the idea of her being across the world felt unbearable when she left.  I had two choices: carry on with my life or don't.  Since I wasn't able to go with her, nor did I want to, the only choice I had was to carry on.  In a strange way, I feel like this really helped me to nurture other relationships in my life.  I don't want to say I neglected these relationships previously, but I feel like "alone," allowed me to deepen these relationships.  At the same time, thanks to modern technology, keeping in touch with my siblings was not as difficult as it may have been in previous years.  This allowed me to feel stable and safe and still venture out for a lack of a better term.

I spent about 2 1/2 years training for my current job.  I worked really hard over the first year to master my previous position and prove myself worthy of spending the time to train me for my promotion.  I spent the next year, taking on more and more responsibility and training.  In the last 6 months (just before my previous birthday), came my test.  My mentor had to go on medical leave and that was sink or swim time.  I covered for her completely during the first 3 months and covered part time for her in the following 3 months.  Again, I found myself afraid at first.  What if I couldn't handle this job?  What if I had trained for all that time and I couldn't handle it?  When my regional manager came to visit my branch and did a "mini-audit," there were minimal findings.  I was so proud of myself.  From that moment, I was no longer afraid and was confident that I was capable of doing this job.  Once a position opened up, I was promoted, first as a float, and not long after, I was assigned to my own branch.

I got engaged this year.  My fiance and I were together for 7 1/2 years when he proposed.  I am very excited to be taking this next step in our lives together and I feel like our relationship has only gotten stronger.  We were in our early twenties when we met and so in many ways we've grown up together.  We've supported and loved each other through highs and lows.  I am so in love and so glad that he is the person that walks beside me in this life.

This may be a long term reflection, but it's worth sharing.  I found my old diaries from when I was a teenager and into my early twenties.  There are some things I found that have not changed in 10-15 years and that I must continue to work on.  There are some things that I need to learn to not do.  I need to continue to practice self love.  The good news is there are things that I used to put up with, some very hurtful things that were said and done that I should have never allowed, that I would never allow again.  So I guess in some ways, you could say that I gained some self respect.  I've also said that somewhere over the years, I became more serious and sensitive, and I can't remember exactly when that happened.  I actually pinpointed it, in my diary, when I was about 16 or 17 that I felt heavy and felt myself becoming more serious due to some difficult circumstances at that time.  Now that I've found that, I need to work on healing that part of myself.  I think this could use some contemplation, to say the least.  Maybe this is who I am now or maybe it's a product of my environment, I'm not sure.

My coven ended this year.  I've been hesitant to talk about it, but now that a few months have gone by, maybe now it's something I can talk about.  It didn't end because of divorce, which apparently is a leading cause of covens disbanding.  Just the same, it wasn't a pleasant ending.  I don't want to go into the details as some of them are deeply personal, but I think it's important for me to say what I am able to say.  I'm not exactly sure if there is a point in time that any of us could point to and say that was the beginning of the end.  I also know that not everyone will view what happened the same way.  This is my personal view.  I think somewhere along the way, the coven no longer fit any of us.  I think our spiritual growth was taking us in very different directions and we all had interests that were taking us further and further from each other.  At the same time, I also think we had things in our personal that were pulling us apart.  I think if we had all been open and honest with ourselves and each other, then perhaps the ending wouldn't have been as messy as it turned out.  Instead I think problems were created where there weren't any.  Rumors, for a lack of a better term, were started and used as an excuse for the dissolution of the coven.  I can't say it was all bad or that I regret being in a coven.  That would be a lie.  I gained a lot from it during the good times.  Just the same, I also think it's good for me that it's over now.  There are things that I am doing now and things that I want that would have never been conducive to the coven environment

I have to say that many things that started out scary and awful, but turned out to be great for me.  I am grateful for all that I received this year and grateful for all that I continue to receive.  I will continue to take stock of my life as I've been doing over the past year.  Most importantly, I will continue learn to love myself and learn who I am.  I am still working on the gratitude and forgiveness that I had mentioned in one of my previous posts.  I can't say I'm there, but it's a process.

Taking My Practice Off the Mat

I was at yoga class the other night and as I was going through the different poses, I realized something.  Yoga is the place I feel most clear and the only time I feel truly at peace with myself and the world.  I often go into class with thoughts from the day or issues weighing on my mind and questions as to how I should resolve them.  I like setting an intention for my practice to find the answers to these questions or just finding peace.  At the beginning of class, I find myself consciously mulling over things. I shoo them out of my head and focus on my breath and my posture.  By the end of class, I find peace and often have an answer to how I should handle something.

Unfortunately I am only able to go to yoga class a couple times per week at best.  I want to take my practice "off the mat," as they say, and incorporate yoga principles into my daily life.  I started reading about how to do this.  Two of the things that stuck out about how to do this is by practicing gratitude and forgiveness.  In truth, I have no idea how to practice forgiveness.  I don't think I've ever really forgiven anyone outside of family members (and the close friends I've had since my childhood).  I hold onto grudges from throughout my life against those who I perceived to have wronged me, like weights that I drag around.  I know it does me no good to carry them, but I have yet to learn how to forgive them.  Gratitude is something that I do know how to practice, but do not do it enough.  I often focus on what's bad in my life and struggle to see the good in my life.  I've started a gratitude journal.  I'm writing down at least three things from my day that I am grateful for.  Right now, this is the best way that I can find to practice it regularly.  It helps me to reflect on my day and find the good in the difficult times.  I have a job that I enjoy, but also carries a heavy load of responsibility and stress.  I often leave it feeling spent, this gratitude journal helps me to find the gems in my day.  It's a slow process, but slowly, I find myself appreciating what I have a little better.

Once I get the hang of gratitude, it is my hope that my perspective will shift and I will find it within myself to begin forgiving.  First and foremost I need to forgive myself.  I made some bad choices in my late teens/early twenties that I am still feeling the repercussions of.  I constantly berate myself for these choices.  I know that's what's done is done and I can only move forward, but sometimes I think what if?  Where would I be if I had made better choices?  What if I had listened to others who knew better than I did?  What if I didn't think myself to be so smart that I knew better?  The logical part of me says I was a dumb kid, move on and get past it.  But let's face it, the guilt I've felt over it has turned into full blown shame.  I need to move beyond that shame and forgive myself.  I think once I do that, I will be able to forgive others.

On Giving Kindness

I find it hard to be kind to myself.  I'm my own worst critic and I have a problem with negative self-talk.  I will stew on it and beat myself up long after the issue has gone by, long after the person that I affected (if someone else was affected at all) has let it go and forgiven me.  One of my goals is to cut back on the negative self talk, but I struggle and recent events have been no exception.

I work in a large commercial bank and have spent the last two years training to become an operations manager.  The manager that trained me is tough and has high expectations of her employees.  She's brilliant and I couldn't have asked to be mentored by a better person.  Recently, I was promoted and put in a branch that was in rough shape.  My company knew that I was capable of cleaning it up and I eagerly rose to the challenge.  My mentor's reputation follows me wherever I go in this company (in truth not a bad reputation to have attached to me) and I continue to hold myself and my branch to the standards that she holds her own branch to.  I always ask myself how would she handle this situation?  What would she do?  And if I don't know, I call her.

Every day, for the first three weeks, I went into this branch holding it and myself to her standards.  I would berate myself that it wasn't like her branch.  She trained me thoroughly, why can't I get it in tip top shape?  What am I doing wrong?  I managed her branch when she wasn't there, this should be easy for me.  It got to the point, where I couldn't stop thinking about work, even at home.  I constantly stressed about it, to the point where I even dreamed about it.  Most of the time, if I dream about work, it's usually that my kitchen is the lobby and there's a customer in there, so I can't get to my bathroom.  Now the dresser in my bedroom became the vault door and I couldn't get it open.  I would wake up from my dream and stare at it until I realized it was just my dresser.  I dreamed about not being able to accomplish everything that I needed to get done.  I dreamed about getting audited and failing.  I couldn't disconnect from work.

Finally, about a week ago, I was beating myself up again and wondering what I got myself into when I took this job.  I happened to complete a task that was a big weight off my chest and looked around my branch.  I looked at my employees and marveled.  Part of the problem before I got there was that the previous operations manager didn't promote best practices and didn't really set expectations.  In four weeks, not only had I had set expectations and promoted best practices, but I got my employees on board with me and together we have improved our branch.  It's not my mentor's branch by a long shot, but let's be honest, Rome wasn't built in a day.  She has been in her branch a very long time and she has worked very hard to have it the way that she does.  It took a while to fall into bad habits and it will take some time to get back into good habits.  In this moment, I need to be proud of the what we have already accomplished and not beat myself up for what I have yet to accomplish.  It will all come with time.  And with that, I found a way to be kind to myself.  I didn't berate myself later.  I didn't look for ways that I should have done better.  I simply gave myself credit for what I have already accomplished and acknowledged that while there is still work to be done, what I have done already, is pretty great.

Finding Peace

I have not written in a very long time... like about a year.  I often start posts and never return to them.  I'm going to try to change that, this year.  In fact, I'm trying to make several changes this year.  Why this year out of any other, you ask?  I'm turning 30, much later this year.  30 is an age I have always feared.  To me, it marks the end of my childhood and the beginning of really being an adult.  I've never really felt like I've had it together and to truly enter adulthood without a clue is terrifying to me.  Before you tell me it's just a number or you loved your 30s and the best parts of your life happened in your 30s, let me stop you.  I've heard all this before, and while it does bring some comfort, for some reason I feel like I'm looking over the precipice of the unknown, like something will happen and change me on September 3, 2016.  I'm not the oldest of my friends and family.  There are those who have already crossed into their 30s and have survived without any strangeness.  But just the same, it does cause me some anxiety.

I think one of the hardest things for me is finding peace in my life.  Admittedly I am high-strung and very sensitive all at the same time.  I am very rigid and my feelings are often hurt very easily.  I try to hide all of this with false bravado.  Those who don't know me very well are fooled by it, those who do, see right through it and call me out for it.  It often feels like my insides are in a state of turmoil because of this.  Little comments hurt me, things that shouldn't bother me repeat over an over in my head.  It takes a lot of energy to keep this mask up and it is an exhausting way to live.  I know that I need to make changes.  I've realized that my current way to cope is with food.  That's obviously not healthy in any way, so I'm working on better ways of coping. I want to stop using food to fill a hole in my soul that can only be filled by me.  I don't think it will take just one thing, but will be a multi-pronged approach.  The following are plans in no particular order or priority:

Yoga.  I've always been drawn to yoga, even as a teenager.  I think I probably saw it on Oprah with my mom when she used to watch her religiously.  I looked it up, learned a few poses and went to a few classes, but it never really stuck.  I think part of the problem was that the classes I took neglected the spiritual aspect of it.  And because they neglected it, I had no idea that it was a part of yoga and my attempts to practice it at home lacked it as well.  I was left with what seemed like a series of poses that seemed like they were held for an eternity.  As I got older, I started to learn that there is spirituality involved in yoga.  Recently, a friend of mine brought me to a yoga class where everything just clicked.  I just love the teacher.  She incorporates the physical and spiritual and even more importantly shows the easier version of a pose first and then adds the more challenging versions.  This is really helpful for someone like me who has a few injuries and health issues.  I find peace when I'm at yoga.  I enjoy the stillness and focus on the breath.  My brain quiets and the stress of the day melts away.  I need to get better at going every week and then I will add an at home practice too.

Tea.  I know this seems so small, but it really does sooth my soul.  I just feel better when I drink a lot of tea.  It really doesn't matter what kind of tea it is, as long as it's flavorful.  Even the making of the tea is calming.  I just love it.

Crochet.  I am a creative soul at heart.  It may have something to do with why I'm such a sensitive individual.  I went to school for photography thinking that that was what I needed in my life.  I think because I am so sensitive, I have a hard time taking the constant criticism that comes with the art world.  You have to have a thick skin to do well there and I just don't.  Just the same, it helped me to foster my personal creativity.  Along with being sensitive and creative, I am also very tactile.  I think that lead me to my love for yarn.  I started out by knitting, but it took forever to work anything up that I felt good about.  I moved onto crocheting and I found such comfort in it, that I never looked back.  I know it's all repetitive, but that's good for me.  It becomes a form of meditation and my head becomes clear.  I'm bad about crocheting daily, but I'm working on a blanket where I crochet a line each day and the color is based on the local temperature.  Sometimes I don't make it everyday, but I catch up.

Therapy.  I haven't been to therapy since I graduated college five years ago.  There are various reasons why I haven't been, but those aren't really important, what's important is that I found someone that I was comfortable to even call.  I can work on all the stuff I need to work on.  My first appointment is this week, but I feel hopeful and I'm looking forward to going.

These are the things I need to find peace in my life and step into adulthood without feeling someone is going to find out I'm only faking it at adulthood and kick me out.  I know that sounds crazy, but that's how I feel sometimes and I don't want to, so this is my plan.

Splitting In Two

When I started this blog, 2 1/2 years ago, my life seemed to have several different things colliding at the same time.  It seemed to make sense to combine health and spirituality.  Over time, that started to feel a little convoluted, and so I dropped the health portion of this blog and focused on spirituality.  While I still intend to focus on spirituality, I find myself drawn again to work on my overall wellbeing.  This blog will continue to focus on spirituality, while I have started another blog, Fumbling Toward Health and Wellness, to focus on my health.  This will help me to hold myself accountable health-wise, while I am still able to focus on my spirituality here.

Creating Boudaries and Giving Love Properly

I had an excessively long lunch yesterday. When I put my timecard in the system, it turned out I had 45 minutes of overtime. Since overtime is a no-go at my job and I had to close, my manager just added it onto my regularly scheduled 30 minute lunch. On the rare occasion that I'm scheduled to have a long lunch, I usually will bring my coven "homework" or my textbook for the class I'm taking. This impromptu lunch left me completely unprepared. After eating my lunch, I still found myself with an hour of nothing to do and so I grabbed one of the magazines on the table in the break room. I flipped through it. It was mostly Christmas related: Buy a new home in time for Christmas; History of the Christmas Tree and where to find a Christmas tree farm; How to not go into debt around Christmas time; Fashions for Christmas; and an article about things to love about winter. They all helped to pass my time, but were really nothing of substance. Then I came to an article about Love and Relationships. I steeled myself for yet another ridiculous article about love. What I found was different and refreshing. It was an article written by a local relationship and sex therapist.  The following is an excerpt:

"A widely held belief is that love is a feeling. Not only is this incorrect, but the fallout this causes places our long-term relationships in jeopardy. My definition of love is: efforts and actions which encourage and support growth, nourishment, and well-being, while also protecting the other or oneself from harm. So love is action that comes from a choice... If love is only given when positive feelings for the partner are present, no relationship would ever improve once in trouble, and few relationships would stay positive. We must persistently love the partner whether or not we have loving feelings...Love is what we give to be our best and it cannot be based upon our fluctuating emotions and moods. Unless we get love right, obtaining satisfying relationship results will be elusive. 

Paradoxically, we need not have good feelings about our partners to love him or her... but can still love by making loving efforts. A significant cause of relationship failure comes from the repeated practice of withholding love when the partner is judged as not deserving it because he or she has behaved in a way that is objectionable. In reality, an 'undeserving' partner and the coinciding at-risk relationship need love the most. A badly behaved partner is an opportunity to practice loving compassion... 

When facing relationship adversity, anger and bitterness are usually provoked, but if we respond with loving actions, our growth results. By choosing loving actions we increase the chance that the relationship may improve, the partner will open to our influence, and we will be clearer about the role we play in the relationship drama... Love is the energy we bring when we act by giving our best to nourish and support, and in long-term relationships it RESULTS in loving feelings."

 I read this and something just clicked.  I do this.  Not just in my romantic relationship, but in all of my relationships.  I judge hard, especially when I'm angry.  Even if I love you, when I am angry with you, I withhold love.  I can be unkind and/or withdraw.  I tend to let the "nuclear fallout" happen and then attempt to fix it later.  I want to make a concerted effort to change my behavior.  What if I continue to be loving, even when experiencing negative feelings?  What if I learned to not lash out in anger?  What would that look like?  I honestly don't know.  I've never done it.  I have a hard time with boundaries and so I let anger act like a shield when I've been pushed too far and don't want my boundaries pushed any further.  I've spent so long without any boundaries whatsoever, that now that I am setting them, it seems to put others off.  It's a struggle for me to maintain them.  I think if I can continue to work on setting clear boundaries and expectations for those that I am in relationships with, then I will also be able to give love even in the most difficult times.

Note: The entire original article can be found in the December 2014 issue of Soco Magazine

On Losing Life's Flavor and Trying to Find it Again

I haven't written in a very long time.  I often find myself starting to write something and then I get to a point where I know someone's feelings will be hurt if I publish it, so I put the post down.  Other times I find myself with so much to say that I don't know how to say it, so rather than say too much, I say nothing.  This is my attempt to say something... if anyone's feelings are hurt in the process, I do apologize.

About a year ago, there was a death in my extended family.  It was traumatic and unexpected.  Nothing could have prepared anyone for it.  It was just before a holiday, and that first of many firsts that the year to come would hold galvanized the pain of that person's death.  I became a caretaker for a loved one who was consumed by this pain.  Not that I wouldn't do it all over, but my approach would have been different.  I think it was right around then that life lost its flavor.  I cried every moment that I was alone (on the way to work, in the bathroom, on the way home, as I cooked dinner... the tears never ran dry), I stopped crocheting, I stopped baking, I barely cleaned my house, I had to force myself to work on my studies for my coven, things such as getting our Yule/Christmas trees felt like a chore and I couldn't wait to get rid of them when the season was over, I isolated myself because I couldn't take one more person asking what I needed when I had no idea what I needed.  All I did was sleep, go to work, come home, try to keep my shell of a home life together, and search for answers where there were none.  I guess you could say I found myself in a dark night of the soul, so to speak.  I felt distant from deity, my covenmates, and worst of all I could not reconcile my feelings with my beliefs.  The answers that I received from Wicca were not sufficient to quell my pain.  It wasn't what I was looking for, and so I found myself sad and angry.  I trudged through the past year, passing every first family event without this person present.  I watched a family fall apart and continue to this day to struggle to find a new structure that can work.

So here we are one year later.  There is still pain and sadness, but it has become less of an open wound than it once was.  We have survived every terrible first and it seems as though the storm that raged in my home has finally broken.  There is love and peace in the air again and the energy of my small apartment is no longer oppressive.  While we will never make sense out of what happened, it seems as though we are no longer "stuck."  I am grateful that this year is over.  I know that it was love that got us through it.  Love gave me the strength to persevere when I thought I had nothing left to give and that I would surely break.  It was love that allowed me to see the best in everyone, and it is love that will help us to continue to move forward and heal.

So this is where I have been.  I am looking forward to finding life's flavor again and maybe stronger than it was before.

Finding Athena

I've been searching for my matron and patron for some time.  I've found myself confused and exploring different goddesses without any results.  I explored a relationship with Cerridwen in my early years, and more recently Diana, Hera, and Gaia.  None of them seemed quite like a fit. Recently in an attempt to find clarity, I went in search of my matron using my pendulum.  The answers I received were unexpected.  My matron is not Cerridwen, Diana, Hera, or Gaia.  The answer I received was Athena.  I was baffled by it.  The only inkling I'd ever had toward Athena is that I am very drawn toward owls, especially in more recent years.  I found this answer surprising.

Last night, I was at a monthly healing circle that I've been attending recently.  We begin the night with a guided meditation, which is then followed by mini energy work sessions.  It's a truly sacred place that has helped me to cope with a recent death in the family.  During the meditation, we were guided to travel up to source, however we envisioned that source.  There she was standing before me.  It was Athena and it was clear that is my matron.  She was shining and beautiful and comforting.  After that, the meditation moved on to balancing and cleansing our chakras.  I didn't want to leave Her, but I knew I needed the balance.  She then gave me a vision of a large barn owl flying toward me.  I felt at peace.  It was a simple knowing... different from any other experience.  Words cannot truly describe how I felt in that moment, or how I feel now.  They fall short.  It was a truly beautiful experience that I am so grateful for.

out of the broom closet... unexpectedly

I never spent much time in the broom closet.  I was only in the closet when I was first researching Wicca and wasn't entirely sure it was the path for me.  Once I decided that it was for me, I didn't hide it from my friends or family.  I was open and honest about it.  It wasn't a huge coming out or anything, but as it came up I was honest about it.  Some wanted to know more, some were unsure about it, some didn't want to know anything except to ensure that I wasn't getting into anything of a Satanic nature.  I've always felt comfortable talking about what I believe.  There are certain questions that are harder to answer than others and I prefer specific questions.

There has been one place that I've always been hesitant about talking about my religion and that's work.  My religion has no effect on my ability to do my job and it doesn't make a me a better or worse employee.  I work hard regardless of my beliefs.  I'm not naive and even though I know that religion is a protected class, I also know that if someone wants to fire me, they'll find a legally acceptable reason.  I don't want any possible prejudices to cloud a performance review or possible promotion, so at work, I have always remained in the broom closet.  I've played along with whatever the expectation is of me.  I was raised in a Protestant family and my mother's side of the family is Roman Catholic, so I know just enough about the Bible and the religion to get by.  If co-workers asked if I believe in Jesus Christ, I would say, "yes, I believe in Jesus Christ."  And as far as I'm concerned, I never lied since they didn't ask what I believe about him.  Do I believe he lived and brought a good message to many people?  I most certainly do!  Do I believe he is the messiah?  I'm not going to rule it out, since I believe that all paths are true, it just happens to not be my truth.  If they made a comment about my rosary beads, I would say they're at home.  I have my great grandmother's rosary beads in my jewelry box.  If religious discussions came up, I could participate.  I would bring my dedicant homework to work and tell them it was for a meditation class I attend so that I can stay "zen."  When they asked why I could never work on Monday nights, that was when I went to my meditation class.  No one ever questioned me and if they did, they never voiced it.

Recently, I inadvertently outed myself at work.  I requested Halloween off, which I know calls some things into question since I don't have children.  I told my manager that I needed it off for religious reasons and that made her more willing to work with me, but she didn't ask any questions.  Another co-worker was not pleased about me having it off as she has children.  And don't get me wrong I understand her wanting to get out of work early to take them trick-or-treating, but since she didn't need a full day for that, there was no reason that I couldn't have it off and that's how my manager felt about it too.  My co-worker saw the schedule and was not happy.  

I got into work and she asked, "why do you need Halloween off?  Are you going to a party?"  I said, "no."  So she asked, "are you going down to Connecticut to see your family?"  Again I said, "no."  I had hoped my one word answers would give her the hint that I didn't want to talk about it, but she kept pushing.  She asked, "so why do you need it off?"  So I said, "religious reasons."  She said, "religious reasons?  What sort of religious reasons?"  So I told her, "I have to go to church."  This is where I miscalculated, telling a truly good Catholic that I needed to go to church on a non-Christian holiday.  I'm used to people who do not attend church regularly, so they take my surface answers as they are.  That was not the case with this co-worker.  She said, "church?  What kind of church do you belong to that requires you to go on Halloween?"  I knew I was in trouble at this point, so I said, "a spiritual one?"  And then she asked the question I dread getting at work and have avoided for most of my working life.  "Are you a witch? Do you practice witchcraft?"  I didn't say anything.  So then she said, "you do, don't you?  So I said, "I don't really talk about it at work.  I don't want people to judge me."  And then something surprising happened, she said, "yeah I understand that.  I would keep it on the down low too.  People do judge.  I'm not judging you, I believe in all that stuff, I go to psychics and get my cards read.  Oh my god do you read tarot cards?"  So I said, "no I'm not very good at cards.  I'm learning to read stones (referring to my witches' runes).  I'm just learning though, I'm not like a professional or anything."  So then she asked if I would read for her.  We talked a little more, and then we went about the work day.

I fully expected to come into work, the next day, to whispers about me being a witch.  I prepared myself for the whispers and dirty looks that can accompany being outed.  Surprisingly, that was not the case at all.  There were no whispers... no looks... it was a totally normal day at work.  My co-worker asked if I brought my runes with me and I had honestly forgotten them and offered to bring them the next day.  She expressed concern that everyone would be around and that I wanted to keep my religion quiet.  I was so surprised that she didn't tell anyone.  I work in a bank and to be honest, bank tellers are the biggest gossips you will every meet.  I thought waitresses were bad, when I was still waitressing, but I've come to the conclusion that bank tellers are FAR worse.  The fact that she kept things quiet touched my heart.  I've been able to continue to work without any trouble and enjoy my job.

Today, our manager must have been struggling with some personal issues and this co-worker must have mentioned that I read runes and asked me to bring them to work again.  I was a little nervous when this came up, I won't lie.  My co-worker assured me that she didn't say much beyond the runes.  I don't know what was said, so I approached the situation carefully.  There were no comments made and it seemed like my manager got some answers that she needed.  My co-worker asked how my Halloween was and she seemed to take an interest in what I was saying.  The point is, people can surprise you.  There was no judgement, only appreciation.  I don't know if this experience will bring me out of the broom closet entirely.  I think I will always hold my religious beliefs close to my chest, but this whole experience has given me a renewed sense of hope.

Love and Baking

Fall is a strange time for me.  I hit the seasonal change (which for some reason the summer to fall change is the worst) and I have found myself in a funk on more than one occasion.  At the same time, I enjoy the fall, especially now that I am out of school and have my own home.  My boyfriend and I have created traditions that I look forward to every year.  

I have found that one of the things I look forward to is baking.  It's too hot to bake in the late spring through early fall.  In fact, I don't even want to cook in the hot and sticky New England summers.  If I could afford it and it was healthy, I would probably eat out or get take out every meal of every day.  But in the fall, there is something that just feels so magical about baking.  I light a candle and usually play music and the constant internal chatter of my head shuts off.  I find myself focusing on love as I work the ingredients and beyond that my brain just seems to flow.  My hands know what they have to do and the only disruption in this flow is to check the details of the recipe.  Even after I check the recipe, I go back to the flow of working through the recipe.  

I've only noticed recently that I do this, but as I look back on my baking season, last year, I did the exact same thing.  Now that I realize I do this, what do I do with it?  I have a hard time with normal meditation, since my head doesn't normally turn off, so perhaps this could become my form of meditation and communication with deity.

Restlessness and Longing

I find myself restless, this time of year.  I can't really say why, but it's always in September, just after my birthday that I begin to feel like something is off.  I can't say that I feel like I'm in a funk, this year, like I did last year.  It's far from that.  I find myself happier at this point in my life.  I have a job that I can be happy at, I am initiated, I am at a good place in my relationship, and I see my family fairly regularly, finances aren't great, but they'll get to where they need to be.  Just the same, something feels like it's missing and I can't say what.  I feel a longing for something, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is that I feel is missing.  I'm a firm believer that if you don't find it within yourself that you won't find it outside yourself, so I have to ask myself what part of me is feels separate from the rest of me?  What have I sectioned off for whatever reason?  I know that I have learned to survive in this life by compartmentalizing different aspects and not allowing them to mix.  But until recently, I haven't felt as restless as I do now.

The more I think about when I start to feel this restless feeling each year, the more I realize that I've always felt this way, but it's been magnified over the past two years since I've been out of school.  Is it the routine I miss?  I have a different routine that has replaced the school routine, so is that really my issue?  Is 20 years of some sort of school routine and then the loss of that what's really throwing me off?  Living in a city, I've lost that slow transition that comes from living in a rural farming area.  I find these strange seasons a bit jarring.  They don't transition quite the same here as they do in a farm town.  You don't see the plowing, planting, nurturing of said plants, harvesting, dying off, and repeating of the cycle, in the city.  Instead you wake up and it's spring, and then you wake up and it's summer, and then you wake up and it's fall, and then you wake up and it's winter.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  The seasons almost have a sterile quality to them.  It's not something that I ever thought I might miss since I guess you could say it was always something I took for granted.  It was the farming that drove me crazy, living there, but it was also how I subconsciously marked time, I suppose.  Is my sense of time disrupted?  I don't know if that's where my sense of restlessness and longing comes from.

Sometimes I feel like maybe I'm missing out on something.  There's something I'm not doing that I should be doing.  I don't want to say that there's something I don't have that I should have since I'm not big on material possessions if it's not something I don't have already.  I'll admit I'm a bit of a pack rat and have a hard time letting go of current possessions, but at the same time I'm practical when it comes to acquiring new things.  I know this doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but work with me here.  So what's missing?  What am I not doing?  Is there something non-material that I feel like I'm missing?  I can't quite figure it out.

A Crossroads

I've been on hiatus for a while.  I don't really know why I've been gone.  I hit that fall funk last year, and haven't had a whole lot to say.  I was feeling lost and alone for quite some time.  I tend to isolate myself and stop talking or writing when I feel this way, which for me, is completely counter-productive.  I find that I do my best decision making by writing my feelings down and talking to people.  Knowing this about myself, I don't know why I shut down like this.  I think sometimes I feel like people stop listening, which I know is most likely me projecting.

That fall funk progressed to full on crisis.  I don't know what exactly started it, because it started slow and eventually moved from feeling kind of off to crying daily, if not several times a day for hours.  It was completely unreasonable and I couldn't control it.  I did my best not to cry in public, but the tears were always just below the surface and they would occasionally bubble over without warning.  I think it had a lot to do with my initiation into my coven.  I had heard that you go through a sort of purification prior to initiation.  Old things that are no longer of service find a way out of your life, leaving room for the new things that you are ready to manifest.

I thought I was prepared for this purification since I had already experienced an awakening of spirit (see  previous entry).  I went through a sort of purification and transformation, that time, with my friendships.  I lost some friends that I thought were good friends that were no longer good for me and I gained a stronger relationship with a friend who became one of my dearest friends.  It was a painful process, but nowhere near the amount of pain and anxiety that I went through for my coven initiation.  That process was significantly more painful.

Cricketsong predicted that my purification would be job-related.  I assumed it would be in relation to my current job at the time, which was extremely toxic.  What I didn't know is that my purification would cause me to question my entire career path and the direction of my entire life.  I found myself confused and eventually at a crossroads.  I have a degree in photography, I spent seven years working on that degree.  I love photography.  I love the life and emotion that it captures and is able to inspire in viewers.  I loved the idea of telling stories visually; stories of those without a voice that needed to be heard.  I wanted to travel the world doing this and work for big name award-winning magazines.  I didn't mind working strange hours and two jobs to do this.  I wanted to be world-famous.

I graduated from college and began to look for an entry level job that would eventually lead down the path toward the dream job.  Here I am two years after graduation, many applications submitted, and only 3 or 4 interviews, 1 job that didn't work out due to the gallery owner misrepresenting the job duties and requiring less experience than the job really required.  I've found myself reconsidering my path not only because of the difficulty finding employment, but also because I think that what I want out of life has changed dramatically.

Who I am at almost 27 is very different than who I was at 19, when I started school.  I don't want to live out of a suitcase in hotel rooms anymore.  I don't want the fame or be a "household name."  I don't care for the terrible hours and working two jobs anymore.  I want a quiet life with my friends and family.  I want to be married and have a family of my own.  I still want to help people, but I think the way that I want to nurture and help people has changed.  I want to get involved in my community, not just tell someone's story and then never return after the story has been told.  I want to consistently have an effect on people's lives.  I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do this just yet, and the process was anxiety-producing prior to initiation.

Finally my initiation came, and while I cannot disclose what happened that night, I can tell you that something within me changed.  It was as if someone opened a window and all of the anxiety, stress, and negativity flew out.  It was one of the greatest experiences of my life.  I still don't know exactly where my career is headed, but right now it's ok to not know.  It's ok to explore.  It's ok to take care of myself first and allow the rest to just fall into place.  And that's what I've been working on ever since my initiation.  I'm finding myself and my happy all over again.

Welfare... Do I have your attention yet?

I've been going back and forth on writing this blog for about a month.  Yes, this is about my personal transformation and the journey through it, so I've shied away from political topics.  This is most likely the one and only timed that this blog will get political.  Before I lose you on this one, hear me out.  I hear a lot of negative talk about welfare and food stamps and people living off the system... very ugly words from otherwise kind people.  Let me tell you, when they say never judge until you've walked a mile in someone's shoes, they mean it.  You really can't judge without knowing someone's story.  This summer, I was given a unique opportunity and I want to share it with you.  Maybe you'll change your mind about some things.... maybe you won't... either way, just hear me out.

This is a face of welfare and food stamps... not exactly what you were
expecting, was it?

I've worked in some way, shape, or form since I was 12 years old.  I started babysitting when I was 12.  I wasn't old enough to get a work permit, but I still wanted to make my own money.  It was hard finding a steady gig at first.  I'd substitute for my friend who, for whatever reason, found several steady families.  Finally my mother mentioned to a friend that I was looking for a babysitting job.  She had a 4 year old and 2 year old set of twins and also worked from home and needed someone to look after the kids so she could get work done.  I would go over her house and play with the girls, so she could get work done.  I didn't make much, just $3/hr at first, I would get a raise here and there.  It didn't matter how little I made, because I was making money that was mine and that I didn't have to ask my parents for.  I stayed with them for 5 years, until the oldest was 9 and the twins were 7.

In between babysitting, I also worked on a farm for their Halloween season, when I was 15 and 16.  I worked my way up from upkeep of the pumpkin head scarecrows that they had on display, working the games, caring for baby animals, face painting, and finally working the admissions at the front/ running the cash register.  I worked hard and proved I was responsible and could be trusted with the money.  I don't even remember my starting wage, but it wasn't much.  Just the same, it was mine.

Finally, just before my 17th birthday, I got my first "real" job.  I started waitressing in an assisted living facility.  For almost 10 years, I've been working hard, making my own money, and paying into the system.  I remember seeing how much was taken out of my paycheck in taxes.  I'll admit it, I was shocked.  What did the government need a 17 year old's hard fought dollars for?  After the first couple paychecks I got over it.  I've continued to work since then, and from 19-21, I worked 2 jobs, sometimes working 7 days a week, while also going to school full time.  I will admit that at one point, I didn't work for 8 months after being laid off from one job and waiting for my work-study to start, but I was still living at home at that time, so that was a great help.  But in those 9 years, I have worked hard, only calling out of work in the case of severe illness, injury, or family emergency.  This past summer was one of those times.

Back in May, I injured my back.  There's no clear cut reason as to what caused the injury.  It very well could have been overloading my trays at my waitressing job or it could be the fact that one of my legs is significantly longer than the other so I walk unevenly.  Regardless of what caused it, I was in agony.  I was not able to get out of bed without help, and with help, it still took me an hour to get out of bed.  I eventually had to sleep sitting up.  It was the only comfortable position, and I didn't struggle to get up as much.  I was barely able to walk.  All I could do was cry.  I was in the emergency room twice in the same week. Two nights out of work turned into a week.  One week turned into two. Two weeks turned into a month.  Next thing I knew, I was sitting in a neurologist's office being told I needed to go to physical therapy and I wouldn't be able to work for 2 months.  I swallowed my fear and tears walked out of that office wondering what I was going to do with myself... how was I going to pay my bills?  I had some savings, but only enough to make it through the month.  My boyfriend has two jobs, but it's only enough to pay his portion of the bills.  Two days later, I swallowed my pride and applied for welfare and food stamps.  I knew it was the only way to survive.  

I looked up all the information I needed to bring with me and walked into the Transitional Assistance office, completely ashamed of myself.  I was handed another stack of forms to fill out and submitted myself to ridicule and scrutiny.  I was a pariah... an untouchable.  Even though I had no income and my job wrote a letter confirming this, I had to run my accounts down to less than $250, give them every single bill, prove my car was not worth anything, fill out a stack of forms, give them access to monitor my bank accounts, and bank statements.  Because that wasn't enough and my bank statements cut off before my accounts ran down below $250, I also had to print out my current transactions from my online bank account.  That still wasn't enough proof for the Transitional Assistance office and they told me they didn't know what to do for me.  Finally my boyfriend suggested I do a screen shot of my online banking main page.  It listed my bank, account #s, the amount of money in each account, and the total of the two, and was time stamped.  That finally got their attention.  The last piece of information that they needed was a statement that my boyfriend signed stating how much I paid in rent and how much he paid.  Finally, they approved me.  I got $303.60 in cash assistance, $200 in food stamps, and MassHealth.  I was flabbergasted.  The food stamps was more than enough, but the cash assistance wasn't even enough to cover my portion of the rent.  When I called my case worker, he told me he knows it isn't much, but it was the maximum he could give me since I was technically a family of 1.  I asked how I was supposed to pay other bills and he said he didn't know and hopefully I could find a way.  Fortunately, my family was able to help me with the rest and I was able to scrape by.  

It got me thinking though.  Not everybody is as lucky as I am to have family who is able to help.  And even if you do have someone to help, you will have to submit yourself to questioning as to how much money they gave you and what it was used for.  It could be counted against you if they give you "too much money" even though it's just to make up for the gap in what you got from welfare.  People talk so much shit about these so-called system manipulators.  I can understand why some people have more kids to get more money.  You still won't get everything you need in cash assistance, but if you get more  food stamps, you can buy yourself and your kids what you need for food and then "sell" the rest of your food stamps.  I know this isn't the right thing to do, but people will do whatever they have to do to survive.

Back to my own experiences.  The first time I used my EBT card at the grocery store, I was mortified.  I'd heard the things that people said about people on welfare.  I felt the cashier and the people behind me judging each and every single item on the conveyer belt.  I could barely tell the cashier that I was using food stamps.  I couldn't even make eye contact.  People would constantly make comments in front of me about bums on welfare.  It was very hurtful.  My favorite is when they would make their comments and I would tell them I'm on welfare and they would say, "oh you don't count.  You've worked your whole life and you needed a little help because you got hurt.  YOU'RE different."  I would half-heartedly smile.  The truth is, how do you know that I'm different?  What if I'm not?  What if a lot of the people on welfare and food stamps have a similar story or a worse one?  

After a while, I got sick of feeling bad about my situation.  I have been paying into the system since I was 17, and if I needed help and the system was willing to help me, why not take it?  I stopped feeling the shame that society said I should feel for not being able to support myself.  I held my head up high and when I swiped my card, I looked them in the eye and told them I was using food stamps.  I no longer cared if people judged me for the ice cream on the belt.  I also bought a lot of healthy food.  What I eat is not their business.  I stopped caring if they thought I was a bum.  I know who I am and what I'm doing.  Their words do not define me, only my actions can do that.  True or false, people will say what they want.  It's my job not to internalize and know that it has nothing to do with me.  I know what's true and real.  I can share my experiences and bring it out of the shadows.

After 3 months, I was finally cleared to go back to work.  When I did, I called my caseworker and told him.  He said to bring him my first 2 pay stubs and they would make a decision from there.  As expected, I was taken off cash assistance, but they did allow me to keep some of the food stamps.  I don't get as much as I did without income, but I don't need that much.  I won't lie, it certainly helps to make ends meet.  They also let me keep the MassHealth, which is also a relief since I got kicked off my father's health insurance when I turned 26 in September and my job does not offer health insurance.  I have 2 chronic health conditions that are easily managed as long as I have access to healthcare.  Without that access, it is difficult to function.  I continue to work hard at my job and keep looking for a job in the field that I went to school for.  I am not lazy, I am not scum.  I am a 26 year old woman trying to make it through in this terrible economy.  

I don't know if this changes anyone's views.  Maybe it doesn't, but maybe you'll think twice before judging others or making careless comments.  All I'm saying is we need to find a way to love one another and be kinder. If we each make a small effort to start a dialog, then maybe we can understand and respect each other.  This is my small contribution to that dialog.  Go out there and start talking.

Diana

As mentioned in a previous post, Michael told me that I have aligned myself with the Goddess, Diana.  He essentially told me that she is my matron.  I was surprised.  Never in a million years did I expect her to be a Goddess.  I assumed that Diana was just the name of another spirit guide.  I would have been less surprised to hear that Michael was the arc-angel.  I found this information to be very confusing.  My understanding has always been that your matron and patron will make themselves known to you.  You will have a strong reaction them, whether positive or negative.  I was told you would feel drawn to them.  I've never had any sort of reaction to Diana, instead I've always felt neutral toward her.

I've always felt drawn to Cerridwen.  She seemed right to me since I started exploring the Goddess.  I have to admit that lately, I've been starting feel like our time together has come to an end.  I was starting to feel drawn to Hestia, although I wasn't sure if that is because I've been working with fire or if she was making herself known to me.  Diana has never made herself known to me, except for the time I asked for the names of my "guardian angels."  She presented herself as guide, not a Goddess.  I keep looking back at different parts of my path trying to see if I missed a sign somewhere along the way, but I can't seem to find anything.  All I can find is that moment when she told me her name.

This kind of has me questioning how one really knows who your matron and patron are.  I am finding myself very confused and unsure.  This rocks everything I've ever been told or thought.  I had accepted that the Goddess has never really manifested in front of my eyes whether in my waking life or alternate states of conscious.  I had accepted that the God and Goddess presented themselves to me as visual effects through light, color, and the clarity with which I see the world.  But this?  I don't know exactly what to do with this information.  This starts to come down to, do I trust my spirit guide?  He is my guide and if we accept that negative messages cannot come from spirit, then I have to trust him.  He is there to serve as a positive force in my life and guide me down the path that is for my greatest good.  If I am going to call him a liar on one thing, then how can I trust him on anything else?  If I trust my guide, then I must trust that what he says is true.  Diana is my matron.

I started to do some research after speaking with Michael.  Nothing seemed to resonate with me, except the physical descriptions of how she has been depicted.  The wikipedia article describes her as having "a fair face like Aphrodite with a tall body, slim, big hips, and red hair... As a goddess of the moon... Diana wore a long robe, sometimes with a veil covering her head."  This is how I have always envisioned the Goddess.  I could never explain why this is what she looked like to me, but it is what I have always seen when envisioning her.

Coincidentally, Cricketsong had been doing research on Diana.  She printed it out and gave it to me.  From what she has found I have many similar characteristics to Diana.  So I guess my question is how do you really know if a goddess is your matron if she doesn't really make herself known?  And even if a Goddess does make herself known, how can you be sure that she is your matron?  Cerridwen made herself known to me (or at least I thought she did) around the same time that Diana presented herself as a guide.   Do you look at EVERY single Goddess' characteristics and see if you share those characteristics?  I honestly feel very lost and confused right now.  I've completed my research and I do agree that we do share similar characteristics, but outside of that?  I just don't know.

Enter... Michael

When I first started down this path, one of my very first teachers suggested I meditate.  I explained that I have a hard time clearing my mind and I struggle every time I try.  She suggested that instead of clearing my mind as is stereotypically suggested, perhaps I should try to focus on something and not think of mind as a space that needs to be cleared, but think of it like a flow of water.  If the flow starts to wander, just redirect it.  She said to use a candle and stare into the flame.  She said to picture the Goddess, however she appears to me, next picture a white triangle of protection, finally picture the triangle and Goddess merging.  Once the Goddess and triangle merge, ask for the names of my guardian angels and then be open to whatever comes to me.

I followed this advice and tried it.  Three names came to me: Gladys... Diana... Michael.  I heard the names and that was it.  I didn't see them.  I didn't talk to them.  All I got was their names.  Around this time, I had my first seizure and had a difficult time driving the 40 minutes to see her, so I never knew how to progress or what to do with them.  I've walked around with these names for nine years, unsure of who they are or if I was just talking to myself.  In my heart, I felt like the names had been given to me, but my head questioned it.

When I joined the coven and attended my first table tipping and seance, I did what I always do in unfamiliar experiences.  I went in with no expectations whatsoever.  There was no one that I was looking to make contact with, no particular questions that I wanted answered.  I mostly sat back and watched.  I saw spirits come through for others without asking, especially in the seance, but not for me.  I found myself interested in the process of the seance and the messages that were coming through for others, but also a little disappointed that no one had come for me.  I mentioned this to Cricketsong.  She asked if there were any loved ones that I wanted to communicate with.  And while I do have family members that have died, there is no one in particular that I want to speak with.  The only one I find myself missing still is my great grandmother, but I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to call her out.  Since there were no loved ones, she suggested asking for spirit guides and/or messages that they might have.  She asked if I knew of any spirit guides.  I related the above story to her and she suggested that I ask for these names at the next seance.

And so the next seance came.  The first entity that came through was not related to anyone present at the seance, so I asked who Gladys, Michael, and Diana are.  This entity immediately focused in on Michael.  It repeated his name several times, but all it could say is, "he sits, he sees."  I didn't know what this meant and felt confused and unsure of where to go from there.  All of a sudden, I saw the medium transition to a different spirit, without asking to speak to someone else.  Her assistant asked who we were speaking to.  The entity seemed surprised by this question as he stated that we called him.  Another member asked if he was Michael, which the entity confirmed.  We were all shocked.  My jaw dropped and my mind went blank.  Because it was a deeply personal experience, I'm not going to go into exact details.  Michael confirmed that he is my spirit guide, but he is not the arc-angel.  He does not interfere, but offers guidance.  All I have do is ask for help, and he will answer.  He prefers to communicate in the non-physical, so it's easier to communicate during meditation, through dreams, right before sleep, rather than in my waking mundane life.  He did not know Gladys, which was mildly disappointing since I have the sense that she might be my great grandmother, but he did know Diana.  She is the Goddess, Diana, and more importantly my matron (I will address this in a separate post since this post is about Michael).

I have to admit Michael is not what I expected in a spirit guide.  I was expecting nurturing, and while I don't want to say he isn't, he was very different from what I was expecting.  He often answers questions with more questions and I found myself easily frustrated when I was already overwhelmed.  I interpreted his responses as sarcastic.  I kind felt like "leave to me to get the sarcastic spirit guide."  When I'm overwhelmed, my brain tends to go blank and forget important details, so I wasn't able to recall much of the conversation during the seance.  Thankfully we record them so that the medium can hear what was said.  I asked to borrow the recording so that I could listen to the conversation again and transcribe it.

After listening to it again, I realize that sarcastic is not the accurate way to describe Michael.  He is no nonsense and very matter of fact.  He expects me to think and refuses to spoon feed me the answers, even when I feel like I need him to.  He expects me to do the work to grow and progress on my path.  I do like him and am glad he's my guide.  I need to do some more research as to how spirit guides.  I don't know if he chose me or I chose him, but I think we are a good fit and I understand why we are together.  I have to admit, I do have some more questions.  How long have we been together?  Has he ever manifested on the physical plane?  If so, have we shared lives?  He gave me a signal to call him with, but I am not entirely sure how to use it.  I have tried to consciously contact him, but I am not sure it has been successful.  By successful, I mean a conversation and/or images that I remember.  He says we have spoken and I have seen him, but I do not consciously have access to this.  I'm hoping to get something soon.

My First Permanent Altar

I put up my first permanent altar today.  I know, I know, how can I have been doing this Wicca thing for so long without an altar?  I would make temporary ones for rituals and spells, but none of them ever felt very special, so I would take them down when I was finished.  I've been told over and over again how I needed an altar, but I was never able to build one that felt right.  Ever since joining the coven, I've been encouraged to have an altar, but nothing felt right still.

Today felt like the day to build an altar.  I have no idea why, but it felt right.  I have a little sunroom in my apartment that is referred to as "my nook."  I have a comfy chair in there and keep my crocheting basket in there.  It's my personal space in the apartment.  We moved in here over a year ago, but I hadn't done anything with it up until today.  I unpacked all of my nick nacks and pictures and spread them out on the floor and just left them there.  It's directly across from my front door so I look at it every time I leave and every time I come home.  I knew I needed to do something with it, but I couldn't figure out what.  I wanted to buy shelving and get a table to put in there but I just didn't have the money, so I just left it.  I recently went to the store and bought a large box and I packed all of my nick nacks away, today, and organized my crocheting.  I vacuumed, dusted, and got rid of all the cobwebs.

I used the box as a table top for my altar.  I put a green towel on top and started building it from there.  I went online and found artwork that I would like to represent the god and the goddess.  A friend bought me a set of crystal lotus candle holders, a couple years ago, and they are for my god and goddess candles.  My boyfriend has asthma and smoke irritates him, so I am unable to burn incense while he's home.  Instead I have a gold ostrich feather in a ceramic cup that I made years ago as a representation of air, in the east.  In the south, I have a candle holder with roses on it (roses are associated with fire) to represent fire.  I have a little blue dish with water and a large oyster shell, in the west, as a representation of water.  In the north, I have a small dish of sea salt and a geode, representing earth.  Right now, in the center, I have an affirmation that I pulled years ago that has always resonated with me.  That will probably move at some point, but for now it's there.  My athame will also be added at some point as well, but for now it's not there until I consecrate it.

My altar... not a great picture since I took it with my phone, but still my altar!

Even without it being formally consecrated, it feels right.  As I write this blog, I am sitting in my living room, two rooms away from where my altar sits.  Despite that, I feel it pulling me toward it, calling to me to come sit by it, whispering to light the candles and bask in their light.  It's simple and small, but I love it.

A Change of Heart

My grandmother is dying.  She and I have a strained relationship... barely existent really.  Not all of my recollections in this blog may be accurate, but it is how I remember hearing the stories and feeling the feelings that I have had throughout my life.  I learned recently that the way we remember events as a child may be very skewed from what actually happened.  If family reads this and wants to correct how things happened, by all means, please correct me, but remember that this was MY experience and how it shaped my opinions and feelings about people.

When I was a baby, my parents were supposed to be in my aunt's wedding.  At the time, my mother was still breast feeding me and my great grandmother (my mother's grandmother, whom she was very close with) was dying of cancer. My aunt didn't want any children at the wedding, even though my mother was breast feeding.  My mother had arranged for a friend to stay with me in the hotel that the wedding was at, so that she could still attend the wedding and breast feed me.  Eventually, both of my parents ended up bowing out of the wedding, due to my great grandmother's cancer and the strain between me being breast fed and my mother having to leave the wedding every so many hours to feed me.  This caused a rift in the family.  My parents were told to not bother going to the wedding, even as guests, and my father was given the terrible ultimatum of choose between your family and your wife and child.  Naturally my father chose his wife and child, and we did not see his family for 7 years (except for my great grandmother, his grandmother).  I have never known who delivered this ultimatum, but I have always held my grandmother responsible for it.  She was the matriarch and the glue that always held the family together, so I believe that she could have put a stop to it if she wanted to.

7 years after all of this, I was 7 or 8, my sister was 5, and my brother was 1.  Two more children were born in that time span and my grandparents didn't know them... they didn't know me either.  Over those 7 years, I remember my parents speaking of his family but they weren't real people to me.  They were distant people I had never met.  They could have been dead and their ghosts were haunting my father for all I knew of them... that's what they seemed like to me as a little kid.  One day, my parents said that my grandparents were coming to see us.  I found this confusing.  Where have they been my whole life?  Why do they want to see us now?  I knew my other grandparents, my uncle, and my great aunt and uncle on my mother's side of the family.  Those were my grandparents and my aunt and uncles.  Who were these people coming into my life now?  My sister has a clear memory of my mother sitting her down and trying to explain grandparents to her.  She wasn't getting it and my mother had to break it down for her.  My mother's father died when she was 4 and her mother had been in a nursing home since my sister was a 2, so she did not have the memories of them that I had.  Grandparents were a completely foreign concept to her.  I don't remember that first visit at all.  I remember meeting my aunts for the first time and being unsure of myself.  I wasn't sure what to call them; the only aunt on my mother's side of the family was married in and we called her Tante, but that was her special name.  I didn't know these people.  I didn't know how to act around them.

After the initial awkwardness of meeting them, we did go visit them more and try to develop relationships with my father's family.  I guess you could say it got better... sort of.  I always felt like my siblings and I were second class family members and my grandmother only perpetuated these feelings.  If I got stitches in my foot, my grandmother was quick to tell me that one of my cousins got a piece of floor tile stuck underneath her big toenail and how painful it was, but she was such a trooper.  If I broke a bone, she told me how that same cousin's appendix burst.  It was if she was always trying to one up me for my cousins, even with injuries.  I never heard "oh you poor thing" from her or got extra kisses, instead I felt brushed aside and like I didn't matter.  She and my grandfather pointed out a fake $100 bill on the refrigerator and told me that sometimes it would "have babies" and a $20 bill would be with it on the refrigerator.  It was made clear that these "babies" only went to my cousins.  They even listed specific cousins that they told to check if it had had a baby and sure enough, these cousins had found one.  Never once did I get a "baby" from the $100 bill on the fridge.

Another time, my siblings, my cousins, and I were playing together.  I forget what we were doing, we had soapy sponges and toy watering cans.  My grandfather might have put us to task to wash something for all I know.  All of a sudden, all 3 of my cousins started waving the soapy sponges near my eyes.  I have always been nervous about things near my eyes, and asked them to stop and said that I didn't want to get soap in my eyes.  My cousins found this funny and started threatening to throw the sponges at me and started chasing me.  I ran away from them.  While I was running, I realized that I still had the toy watering can in my hand and so I let go of it.  I had no intention of hurting anyone, I just knew that I could run faster without some sort of wind drag.  The watering can flew back and hit my oldest cousin in the arm.  True to form, she hammed it up, started crying and wailing that I threw the watering can at her.  My grandmother started yelling at me and asked why I would throw the watering can at her.  I tried to explain that it was an accident and what had happened but she didn't want to hear it.  All she knew or cared about was that my cousin had been hurt and I was the monster that had committed such a heinous crime.  From then on, I knew for sure that what I said and did, didn't matter in her eyes.  I was a second class family member, never to be loved like my cousins are.  I didn't know if I was even loved at all or was I just the unfortunate offspring of my father?  I continued to go with my father when he would say we were going to my grandparents' house.

Eventually we stopped going to their house except for holidays from time to time.  The last time I was at their house was when I was 17 or 18.  My grandfather died when I was 19, and I never went there again.  I think it was largely because my grandmother became agoraphobic, after my grandfather's death, so my father would try to get her out of the house by inviting her over for parties and holidays.  Sometimes she came, sometimes she didn't.  In later years, the latter became the norm.

Fast forward to more recent times.  I had a couple dreams of my great grandmother, who has been gone for 14 years, and who I miss very much.  One of them was just her face and she said, "you need to go see your grandmother," and then the dream ended.  I found it odd and told my sister about it.  She suggested that since my grandmother is dying perhaps deep down somewhere, I have a need to talk to her and/or see her.  I still held onto my anger with her and was not sure I was ready to commit to a 4 hour round trip drive to see someone who didn't give two shits about me.  Two days later, my sister texted me to tell me that my grandmother had gone to the hospital with pneumonia and had been released to a nursing home and that she may or may not have lung cancer.  I wrestled with whether I should go see her or not.  After all, my work schedule did get changed and I had Sundays off.  I called my mother and told her about what was going on.  My mother is a creature of light.  She will encourage you to do whatever it is you need to do, regardless of her personal feelings.  My parents have been divorced for 15 years and she could have very easily said "you don't have to go see your grandmother."  But instead she said, "that is your grandmother.  You need to go see her.  She is dying."  I told her of my hurt and anger and about the time with the watering can that she had never heard about.  She insisted that "these are the times that you need to put all of that aside and go see her.  Don't let it get in your way and let her die without seeing her.  You will regret it for the rest of your life if you don't."  I said that I felt nothing for her.  She said she understood but maybe I should go see her anyway and if I feel nothing still, then that's fine, but this is about having compassion for another human being.  She suggested that I go with my sister if it's too awkward to go alone.  I wrestled with this idea for a couple days and finally texted my sister asking if she knew whether my grandmother was still in the nursing home.  She said as far as she knew she was and that she was going to go visit her the following day after work.  My sister knows me all too well and asked what days I had off and asked if I wanted to go with her.  I jumped on that and we agreed to go the coming Sunday.

Saturday came and my sister called my grandmother.  She told her that we were planning on coming to see her.  She told my grandmother that I was coming from a long way to see her.  My grandmother said she didn't know if she wanted us to come and that she would call her on Sunday.  My sister called me after that to tell me what my grandmother had said.  She said I didn't have to come down if I didn't want to since there was no guarantee that my grandmother would see us.  I was angry at first.  Yet again, my grandmother doesn't want anything to do with me.  I'm coming a long way just to see her and she doesn't care.  Why doesn't she care?  Do I really want to drive all that way and run the risk of her refusing to see me?  I thought about it and decided to go down to visit.  I knew that it would be better to go down in case she said to come.  And what was the worst that would happen?  If I didn't see my grandmother, then I would spend the day with my sister, and that's not a bad day at all.

On Sunday, I made the 2 hour drive.  My sister and I went to lunch and had a great time as we always do.  We called my grandmother and asked her if it was ok to come over.  She didn't answer.  We decided to head toward her house.  We stopped for flowers and decided that if worse came to worst, we would leave the flowers on her porch if she didn't want us there.  My sister knocked on the door a couple times, but she didn't answer.  We cracked the door opened and called to her.  From the living room, I heard a frail voice that said to come in.  We walked into the house and all of the shades were drawn and the house looked so sad.  It was nothing like what I remembered.  It used to be bright and airy and had a distinct but familiar smell.  That was gone.  I walked into the living room and there was this small, frail woman wrapped in a fleece magenta bathrobe and blankets.  Was this my grandmother?  It couldn't be.  She was a giant among men... or at least that's how I always remembered.  She had always been thin and tall, but now she is all skin and bones.  Her fingers are swollen and twisted from what I can only guess might be from arthritis.  She saw the flowers and smiled.  My sister and I gave her a hug and a kiss and asked where she would like us to put them.  She pointed to a table and told us to sit down.

This was the first time in my entire life that I remember seeing her happy to see me.  Don't misunderstand, she never acted like she was unhappy to see me, but this was entirely different.  I had never seen that look on her face when I came in the room.  It was the look that I have been craving my entire life.  It was a look of being excited to see us and happy to spend time together.  My heart melted. I wanted to hold on and be angry, but in this moment, I couldn't, my heart went out to her.  She was so alone in this dark place that used to be a warm home.  I wanted to cry when I saw her.  We sat and talked for some time.  I don't know if it's that she's dying, or that she's developing some sort of dementia setting in, or if she has just gotten to that age when she just doesn't care anymore, but I saw a wall come down.  She was a raw human being and I gained a window into my grandmother that I had never seen.  It was something entirely foreign to me.  In some ways it was jarring, but in others it was nice to see.  We didn't stay too long since she seemed to keep nodding off and we didn't want to overwhelm her.  We made sure she had what she needed until my aunt was supposed to get there to cook her dinner.  When we left, I also saw a look that I had been craving.  She was sad to see us go.  Sure, we always said goodbye and we loved each other, but this was not the same.  This was a moment where she was truly happy that we came to visit and she was truly sad to see us go.  This short visit was everything that I wanted from her, my entire life.  I desperately wanted to feel loved and wanted by my grandmother and for the first time in 26 years, I felt that.

This visit changed me.  I was so angry with her, my entire life.  I felt so unimportant and unloved.  I felt cast aside.  In some ways, it would have been easier to stay angry with her.  It would have been easy to shield myself with the anger built up from such a young age and into my early adult years.  This visit stripped that anger away and left me vulnerable and raw and hurting.  I had been looking for this from her, my entire life, and I could never get it until now when she is dying.  In some ways, this hurts more than the previous 26 years.  Why couldn't it be like this my entire life?  Why did it have to be at what looks like the end of her life?  Why did she allow her pride and stubbornness to get in the way?  Why hold a grudge against innocent children that had nothing to do with the family drama?  There is so much I wish we could do over, but with the love that I saw from her today.  There are no do overs though.  Life is fleeting and you can only move forward, but there isn't much time to move forward.  Sometimes I think maybe it would have been better to stay away.  I tell myself that because I am uncomfortable with these raw emotions and vulnerability.  It certainly would have hurt less.  I don't really think I could have done that though.  I think deep down, I knew I had to see her.  I think it was something I needed as much as she needed the company.  I wanted to cry when I saw her.  I wanted to cry when I left.  I cried when I called my mother to tell her that I had visited my grandmother and expressed my hurt and frustration over my relationship with her.  I fight off tears now, as I finish this blog entry... I don't even know how to finish it really.  All I can say is that I am raw and vulnerable and hurting... but I'm not sure that I could go back to the anger that I felt before last weekend.