Homesickness

nI hesitate to post here, as if I am a trespasser in this place that I created, as if I need your permission to be here, your validation..nearly invitation..to take all of these crazy bottled ideas and splash them around in a bubbly frenzy.  And who is this “you” that I so need??  Who knows!

I will post first a warning of sorts.  On occassion, the words that I need to put out here are not pretty or kind, are not filled with Love and Light.  I try hard not to have more of those kinds of days than of the other days..yet today is a “not pretty” kind.  If you are already feeling sad or in the dark, I would recommend that you find a place more filled with Light, a place that is a soothing balm for weary hearts and minds.  As much as I would love to be an instrument of healing for another today, the healing that I will be dishing out today is just for me, a veritable feast of it I hope!

There was a time (it seems like ages ago and yet really it was just a few months!) when I had a place of safety.  It was a place that offered me (in theory) unconditional love and acceptance, a place where all that i am could BE, could be expressed and lived and walked through.   I could rush and run or I could lollygag all day and either extreme (or something in the middle) was okay.  The fact that this place of healing and hope, this “home” was made of zipping and zooming gigabytes and uncomprehensible (to me) internet “stuff” rather than concrete or bricks and mortar never mattered to me, never made that place less real.  It was not a virtual place to me.  It was vital and alive, real and tangible.  For the first time ever, I felt safe and welcomed.  I expressed to those who “lived” with me there that it was difficult for me to allow myself to be totally transparent, totally real.  I explained that if I was truly present there, if I was my whole and real self, I could not afford to have that place taken away..ever.  I was assured that it would be my always home, that no matter what happened it would not leave me and I would never have to leave it.  And yet it is gone.

I would love to be just angry about it.  I would love to feel just enraged and bitter.  But I still just feel devastated, violated, betrayed.  I know that it was folish of me to trust.  I know that I was blinded by my need to be safe, my need to have a place that was truly a soul-home.  I know that in my desperation to find those who could be my soul sisters, I was stupid enough to ignore the truth that most people will betray you at one time or another.

I know that now this sounds like a vile, self-pitying rant.  That really isn’t the intent at all.  I think that the point is to say that my job, my responsibility is to create that safety within myself.  I cannot look for some “out there” place to call home.  If I want to be at home, if I want that feeling of home, then home needs to be a space inside of myself that I carry with me always.  And maybe I need to learn that being violated is never okay, even when it is me violating myself.  Sometimes, I know exactly what I need, exactly what it would take for me to feel okay again.  I have people in my life (thank Goddess and you, my Beloved) that often ask what I need, that want to do or give or be whatever would be most helpful, most healing to me and for me in that moment, and yet often I ask for nothing.  It’s as though somewhere within myself, I would rather violate myself than risk offending those that I love.  The thing that I miss most about that place that was home was a rule that we had there, a boundary.   Most of the time, all of the words and thoughts that we expressed were “fair game”….others could contest them, challenge them, counter them, and flat out rant and rave against them.  But there was a certain place, a “room” if you will, that the only things that could be said in response to whatever was expressed were things like “I’m here with you”, “I love you”, “You are being very brave to walk through this and you need not walk alone”.   That is what I miss the most, that way to say to another, ” I just need you to sit here with me.  What I am expereincing right now really sucks and soon I will do the work that is required so that I may heal from this and be more whole.  But right now, I just need to be where I am and I need not to have to be here by myself.  Please do not try to fix me, do not try to make this go away, do not invalidate that it really sucks….just sit here with me in this pain until I am ready to work through it.”   And I could say all of that without having to say it at all.  And when I asked for those things, I got them and there was no judgement.

So today I am homesick for that home that was not a home.  Today I miss those sisters that are not sisters.  Today I sit alone with these injuries, old and new.  But at least today I have a voice again.

What is being lost?

So, I’ve already said that I am transitioning again (still?) and that it is a huge change.  It seems to me that even the change is changing, becoming both more and less of what I expected it to be.  And it seems that, in the changing, some things are being lost.

I know deeply that change is cyclical that, indeed, life and all of its myriad complexities is cyclical.  I know that the earth changes in cycles, that my body functions in various cycles, that magic and and relationships and energies all seem to run in cycles.  I deeply feel the Birth, Death, and Rebirth cycle.   It seems to me now that the cycle of Birth, Death and Rebirth sometimes happens all at once rather than in an orderly fashion.  It feels that new things are being born in the same moment that old things are dying.  As I sit in all of this transitioning, it seems important to me to attempt to see more clearly what things exactly are dying off now, to try to allow myself to choose to grieve for the lost things as I also celebrate the new things that are coming.  But what is it really that I am mourning?

Certainly one of the biggest pieces that is bringing me great grief is the apparent death of a friendship that I value highly.  I’ve never been one to have a great number of friends.  My way of thinking and my way of being in the world is odd to most people and the strange way I have of seeing things is hard for most people to follow.  I have very little patience for small talk and silliness.  I’ve learned a little bit of how to play but it is still not my most common way of being.  In person, it takes me awhile to chase a thought down to its root so a conversation with me can be frustrating as it seems to ramble forever before I find its point.  I justify myself often and hear myself say “What I really mean is…” more often than not.   It seems that I have a story to match any topic and I struggle not to “take over” a conversation sometimes and to allow others their own stories without interjecting my own.   Often, I slip into childlike wonder over the simplest things and, if you don’t know me well, it can seem contrived.  (In all reality, the wonder is real.  So many “common” things are brand new to me and I see Her hand in almost everything.)   Also, my mind now processes everything as energy more than substance so those around me are always having to hear about the energy of something, what it looks and feels like more than what it is.  And everything (really…everything!) gets broken down to its elemental components and I tend to play with magic everywhere, all the time (ever been to a hibachi restaurant with a Witch?  So many things to play with!!).  So, I know that I am not the easiest person to be friends with.  Because I know this, I don’t often try to make friends and I can count on one hand the number of people that I would label as friend and most of those are people that exist here, in cyber-land.  To lose a friend is devastating.  To lose one that I call “sister” is more heartbreaking than I can express in words.  It is a death of a piece of my soul, a loss of a piece of me when I can ill-afford more lost pieces of myself.   It rattles my foundation and leaves me feeling like I do not know how to walk through this.  It feels like I am alone now in a way that I was not before.  I had grown familiar with that sense of being protected, of having my softest most raw parts shielded by people who love me.  And now those parts are no longer shielded and instead are uncovered and raw to the world.  Quite an unpleasant feeling and one that leaves me chilled and afraid. 

That is not all that seems to be dying now, that friendship that I need so desperately.   My sense of security is also dying off now.  Nothing feels certain to me, no path seems clear and illuminated.   My feeling of having a place to rest and be safe is gone.  It feels now like I must always be on guard, always be protected. always be shielded..magically and emotionally.  Grounding and shielding seem to be the first two skills that every Witch must learn and it feels to me that the more experienced you are, the more you must shield and ground.  It seems to me that I am spending a great deal of time this days running to the lap of the Mother and asking Her to wrap Herself around me, to walk me through the world.   I knew before that feeling secure was important to me, knew that I needed to know that I am safe before I could even give a thought to growing more or learning.  But now it seems Momma is making it clear that I must grow the most when I feel the least stable and settled.  It feels that all of those things that I have counted on are being stripped away, one by one, until all that is left is She and me.

The ironic thing is that Fear is the other thing that is dying.  How can I be afraid now?  What is left to lose?  My old Self is no more, my place of rest and safety is gone, my relationship is definitely different than it has ever  been, my job situation is up in the air, we may be moving to a whole new city, my familiar patterns of dealing with life are no longer effective….all I have left that I know for sure is not leaving is Her.  My only option is to work through all of this with Her and trust that She knows what She is doing.  And ever our relationship is different.

Have you ever stood outside, looked up at the Moon and screamed “F**k you, Momma!”?  I have, often in the last few days.  Have you ever told Her that She is being mean and dumb?  I have.  Have you told Her that you question whether or not She really knows what She’s doing and what She is asking you to do?  Yep..been there, done that.  The most amazing thing is that two minutes after screaming at Her, She picks me up and holds me close.  And I swear that She laughs at me.  She seems to be saying that I am finally “getting it”.  How can I say that I have true relationship with Her if things are always rosy sunshine between us?  How can I say that She is my Mother if I am never angry with Her?  How can I say that She and I are One if I always censor myself with Her, offer only my best to Her?

In these days of dying off, She has never been more alive.  And neither have I.

Back to Basics

Mother Wintermoon, one of my favortie blog spots to visit, made reference to a Meme that I just had to check out, one for survivors of abuse that she found at Survivors Can Thrive.  I had to do this one now, in the midst of all that is new and changing, because it is very easy for me to forget to care for myself in the most basic ways, especially when it feels that huge things are happening in the now.   I would invite any who need this, any who wish to affirm their own healing process to visit either Mother Wintermoon’s site for the “I am” needs list or Marj at Survivors Can Thrive for the version that I am using here.

The Survivors Need List:

1. I need to stay with my body and in it.

2. I need to remeber to provide my body with nourishment in the form of food and I need to do that everyday.

3. I need to remember to drink water and receive it as a kiss from the Mother who can love me.

4. I need not to hate myself when I am triggered.

5. I need to stay in the present and see how healthy and happy my children are.

6. I need to sleep.

7. I need to allow myself to connect to those people in my life who love me unconditionally.

8. I need to take the time to practice my spirituality.

9. I need to ground everyday.

10. I need to take the time to pet my kitty and receive the love he gives back to me.

11. I need to feel what I feel and work towards knowing which of those feelings belong to “now” and which belong to “then”.

12. I need to give myself permission to decide which traditions I want to have and which I am ready to discard.

13. I need my pajamas and monster feet slippers.

14. I need time to curl up in my soft magenta throw and receive that as a safe hug from the people who love me.

15. I need to remember that I am allowed to be sad for the childhood that I didn’t ahve at the same time that I take joy in the cildhood that I am creating for my own girls.

16.  I need to feel safe while I am sleeping.

17.  I need to know that my body is mine and that nooone has the right to touch it when I feel unsafe with that.

18.  I also need to know how to ask for touch when I feel the need to affirm my ability to celebrate my sensual self.

19. I need to know that I can ask for time alone when I need it.

20.  I need to recognise my unhealthy coping skills while also celebrating my ability to cope for so long.

21. I need to have my needs heard.

22.  I need to affirm for myself that I am strong and brave even when I feel small and afraid.

23.  I need to laugh.

24.  I need to allow myself to connect with my female friends and trust that they can accept me even in my weakness.

25. I need to hug my girls and know that they have always been safe.

Wants:

1. I want time to curl up with the one I love and just hold on for awhile.

2. I want lots of coffee!

3. I want lots of cigarettes.

4. I want to feel my bonds of friendhip strengthening and supporting me.

5. I want to feel like I have found home.

Please, if you are a survivor, remeber to tend to yourself this season.  And if you are in a place where you are able, receive a safe hug for me in celebration of the fact that we have indeed survived!!

Earth Shattering

Have you ever had an experience that, even in the middle of it, you know that you know that you will never be the same?  Those “Uh-oh” experiences that rock your world?  Those moments of awareness that tell you that your whole life just changed and the events that set that change in motion started so long ago that there is no way to tell Her now that you didn’t really mean it?

That’s where I am now, smack dab in the middle of one of those experiences, the center of a series of events that started ages ago, perhaps even lifetimes.  If you are reading still because you are waiting for the revelation of the big event…give up now.  The what of this experience is much less important than the how, meaning the way that I walk through it.

The Mother and I have been discussing this now for days.  I know that the title of this blog leads one to believe that I adore change, that I revel in it and almost define my life by it.  This is both true and untrue.  I love the end of the change but not always the process of it.  I keep experiencing all these changes in my life as sort of being the “it” in the sense that I think I am done with it, finished with it, that I have successfully navigated itand now things will be calm and quiet.  Clearly, this is not the case.  I was expressing to a friend the other night the “Uh-oh” feeling that comes to me when I realise that the last huge change that I expereinced was NOT it and instead was merely the very beginning of the prep work for this current not-it.  As I said, I have been discussing this with the Mother often in the last few days.  It feels that I am being told to just step..step forward into the unknown and just keep stepping.  I want to rant and rave to Her that I can’t see  where I am stepping and I’m not quite sure what me will be the one that steps through.  The last time I felt like this was when I decided to actively pursue a pagan path and pursue it to the exclusion of Christianity (this is not to say that it is best for others to do the same nor is it to say that it is the best way period..it was simply best for me!).  In the time since that decision, everything is different.  I have lost my old and rigid world view, my ethics are totally different, my approach to the world and the people who live in it (people being a word that currently describes everyone from humans to crystals to produce!) has been radically re-created, and nothing in the manner and sense of my old daily routines is even remotely similar to that old me that I walked around with for so long.

This new thing is that big, that life altering.  On some level, I feel like I should be afraid.  I’m not.  I do feel a bit overwhelmed..I mean, I mentioned how big this is right??  It seems complex and complicated, something that needs to be navigated with great care.  I am not always kown for managing things with great care.  It isn’t that I intend to be care-less with others, I just feel like I need to be so care-filled with myself.  It’s not always easy to balance those two things, care of others and care of self. 

I’m not sure how I’m going to walk this through, meaning the very specific daily things of doing, those tedious and tense moments of having to decide and step through the minefield.  But I am committed to walking, stepping through day by day to get to the end result..the magic that She promises is waiting at the end of this part of the journey.

Grief

I think grief is a sneaky thing, finding its way back into the center of my Self about the time that I’ve decided that I’m feeling okay.  Grief never comes when I am expecting it, when I am ready to meet it on my terms.  Samhain seems the time for grieving, if one must grieve for those who have left this place, but Samhain never feels like grief to me.  Samhain seems to be the time when I wait to hear the voices  of those who have no faces now or those whose once familiar faces are made up of only blurry have remembered pictures in my heart.   But tonight, sitting in the middle of my ordinary life, grief steals up behind me and slams in the back of the heart with a fresh wave of ouch.

In the midst of the horror of my life when I was young, and adolescent trying to make sense of my non-sensical reality, I had a friend.  This was no ordinary friend and no ordinary friendship (though I must say, no friendships are ever really ordinary).   He happened to be a guy and I happened not to be, but that never got in our way.  Somehow, we never tripped over each other’s gender or sexuality in general.  We were just twins of the soul, he and I, and it never occurred to either of us that it would ever be any other way.  I say that our relationship was not ordinary because of our odd sort of bond.  We were connected in the way that twins in storybooks are, feeling each other’s emotions and physical pains no matter where either of us happened to be.  We used to laugh when we tried to call each other, back in the days before call waiting, because each of us would be dialing the other’s number.   When the manure went flying for either of us, the other just showed up, shovel in hand.  When we were broken hearted over ended romances or idiotic parents, the other always had the required shoulder to cry on (or pound, as the situation dictated!).   We each secretly ran away from home once, neither of us confiding in the other, and ended up in the exact same place.  We laughed and cried and then he walked me home.   His girlfriend was another close friend of mine and we used to joke that I would have to be in the middle of the aisle on their wedding day because I was more his best man than her bridesmaid.   When I had broken bones and a bloody face, he would always fix me up and sit with me until the pain was manageable again.  In the nighttime when I could not sleep because I was afraid, he would sneak in and “stand guard” all night so that I could feel safe.

When I was 16 and my world was falling apart again, he was the one I called to come and rescue me.  He was on the way and I could feel him coming, the way I always could.  There was a sudden pain all over me and I knew something terrible had happened.  He was shot and wrecked his car.  I made it to the scene right after the ambulance and I sat with him as he left this place.   Over and over, it seemed that we said I love you.  In some ways, it felt like it took an eternity for him to stop breathing and I swear that he and I talked the whole time, though I can  say now that his mouth never moved.  Yet I heard him so clearly, reminding me to be careful, to stay safe, to stop crying, to really commit to LIVING and not just being here.  I heard him tell me how much he loved me and how he really wasn’t leaving me at all.  I told him everything that I always wanted to: that he was the best friend I would ever have, that he was my hero and my shining knight, that he was the brother of my soul, that I loved him more than anything.  And yet, no words were spoken.

I don’t think about him everyday anymore.  I think that might be a good thing because it’s still so hard to hold all of the good stuff and not hold this grief.  It feels brand new all over again today.  I wish I could say it was his birthday or some other special day.  But it’s just the day that grief comes calling.

I Summon

Today I summon quiet.  I do not need the world around me to sit in silence or still the busy bustling rush.  I need the soul quiet.  Today I summon into myself the energy of non-motion.  My emotional and spiritual pond has been rippled and ripped.  Today I allow it to return to stillness.  All of the things that I do not know, all of the things that make no sense, all of the Truth that I can see and cannot feel…they will wait for me.

Today, I will dig my toes into the soil of home.  I will  sit in the sacred spaces I have made and allow myself to receive the healing balm of being.  I will not work today and I will not travel.  I will not wear shoes and I may even forsake my clothes.  Deep in the core of my cells, I will rest.  I will allow her Breath to come into me, wash over me. 

I saw a Druid man in a green cloak in Salem.  All around him, people were rushing and exclaiming and hustling and bustling.  He moved through the crowd as a totally inward being.  He seemed outside the madness though he was truly in the midst of it.  He walked in stillness.  That is what I choose for today.  Thank you, Sir Druid, for showing me the way.

And the journey continues!

It’s been a few days since I blogged, not because I have nothing to say but because it sometimes seems hard to find the voice to say those things with.  It seems that so much is going on in so many different areas of my life that it becomes a rushing noise instead of a quiet voice….

I’ve been working at a magic shop that my friend owns for the last month.  I cannot express how terrified I was of doing that.  This friend is my teacher, my guide along this journey.  Her experience far surpasses my own and our approach to daily things is very different.  People come to her for tarot readings because she is the most accurate, most gifted Seer I have ever known.  But I don’t use cards.  Sometimes I intuit things and can share what I See or Know, but I am not a reader.  People come to her needing help: which crystals to buy, which herbs to use, which candles to burn.  These things are not things that I always know…often I need to check some book or another to find the answers.  I was terrified that all of the things that I don’t know would interfere with all of the things that I Know.

But instead, I have had an amazing opportunity to own my own power.  I have had to rely on my wisdom, my knowing and I have seen changes happen.  Every person that came to me during this time has received help.  They left me feeling better than they felt when they came.  I have done active and exciting healing work.  I have dispensed crystals and herbs and have seen the changes happen for people.  I have made a difference! 

It is thrilling to step inside of my self, find the Spirit that is there and share it with others.  I still do not know many more things than I do know, but I have been willing and able to find the answers that have been needed.  I am exhausted.  I feel like the world has come to my door step and asked for help.  But I have done it!!

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be the Woman in the Woods.  We’ve all seen that depiction of a Witch…the woman living just on the outskirts of her village in a little cottage that is fully Wilded.  Things are growing everywhere and herbs are hanging from the rafters inside to dry.  Even the air around the cottage feels charged with magic and mystery.  Her door is always open when you need it and inside you will find hot tea, a listening ear, and intuitive Knowing that will guide you on your way.

My place has not been a cottage and I have not been on the outskirts.  But I have kept the doors open, listened with love, handed out more hot tea than you can fathom, saged and smudged more homes and people and objects than I can name, and delivered the Wisdom that I have.  I have done it. 

And the Wolf within howls in satisfaction as one more piece of me settles into place within.

Whoo hoo My first meme!!!

Poseidon’s Muse at Ramblings from the Mermaid Tavern (a site as fun and mystical and magical as its name) tagged me for the “ABC’s About Me” meme.  I am supposed to post the instructions for the blog and describe some randomly quirky things about myself alphabetically (all in the name of fun).  Oh, and I need to tag some people too (if I tag you and you don’t feel like playing, you won’t hurt my feelings…but we’d sure love to get to know some fun facts about you…so please try to jot some stuff down and participate).

Here goes…

Hehehe.. I copied all of the above from Poseidon’s Muse and just edited the names…thank you!!

The legal “yadda, yadda” as quoted from PM’s site:

“The instructions say that each player starts with some random facts/habits about himself/herself. As you are tagged you need to post the rules and your responses on your own blog. At the end of your post, you need to choose some people to tag, list their names and, of course, leave them a comment, telling they have been tagged and they need to read your blog for more information.”

A:  Aquarius, born at 11:59 on the 18th, one minute short of Pisces!

B: Brown, Amy Brown..love how her faeries aren’t “pretty” like human women are..they look like faeries!!

C: Cats, currently 4 of them.  My husband just managed to save me from becoming the crazy cat lady!!

D: Daring, I’ll try anything at least once

E: Easily-amused..silly things crack me up (but not most comedians!)

F: France…I want to sit in a cafe with a croissant and cafe au lait, just once!

G: Grounding, still my biggest weakness in magical workings and life in general

H: Hopeless romantic (shhh…that’s one of my biggest secrets!)

I: Independent, sometimes to a fault

J: Jealous (sometimes) of women who are free to travel often and to many places

K: Kings and Kingdoms…can’t name them or tell you when they ruled (translates to I hated studying history and still can’t really get into it)

L: Love to read, but mostly just fun fiction..though I do read everything I can get my hands on!!

M: Married young, only 19 when we tied the knot

N: Nose..mine has too many freckles

O: Open-minded about everything!

P: Proud pagan for the last 2 years or so

Q: Quiet.. IRL, you would never even know I was in the room!

R: Resourceful..give me a few minutes, and I can solve most of my own problems

S: still smoking, even though I know better (cut me some slack..I was up to a pack a day when I was 9!!)

T: Tarot..even though I’ve had my decks and have used them faithfully for the last year, I still need the little book

U:Underweight….but working on it!

V: Virginia, the state I still think of as home even though I haven’t lived there for 15 years (eek..now I feel old!)

W:Wild about my convertible (1991 Mustang GT named Sassy Kat..of course the car as a name!!)

X:X-rays I’ve seen the broken bones that I’ve healed for myself..way cool!

Y:Younger than my age..I think I’m 16 instead of 31

Z:Zebras..I always wanted a pet one like that woman from the movie

And I’m tagging Aerolin from Becoming and Sara from Pagangodspell

Re-Wilding of my Self

I’ve been thinking of this post for days, wandering around my own being trying to find what it is that this feels like, this urgent grieving that is happening in the core of me.

Before I try to explain it, lasso this thing within me, I want to explain the way that I’m using the word wild.  If you’ve read Women Who Run with the Wolves, this explanation is probably redundant for you, but I need to explain it for my own self, to reclaim the taste of that word in my own depths.  A wild woman is not a woman who behaves in ways that are destructive to herself, unless it is to destroy that which has become moldy and useless.  A wild woman is not necessarily promiscuous, unless she is hunting for that knowing of falling into the right soul at the right moment.  It’s not about drinking and drugs and parties and driving to fast.  For me, in its barest essence, it means to be untamed.  I feel that word, wild, as oceans roaring, mountains towering high above in a way that seems to give the finger to the laws of physics.  It’s roses growing up in hard packed dirt and hummingbirds that choose to visit the feeder but never look you in the eye.  It is that piece, or one of them, that I seem to have abandoned on the side of the road of my living.

As a child, behaving as if I had been tamed by my captors was the only way to survive.  I felt like a tiger in the circus, always alert and aware but also swallowing the secret of my inner wild jungle while jumping through the masters’ hoops.  And sometimes, even then, I felt my own soul-claws growing, longing to lash out at those who would dare to hold me captive and demand that I perform tricks for those who would never have the wisdom to see the true me that was hidden within the flimsy skin of girl-thing.

Somewhere along the way, long after that, I sacrificed that wildness to the god of public acceptance.  I remember sitting in the park about 10 years ago and feeling as if I could smell the scorching of my soul as it burned in a bonfire, raging and sparking.  I chose, on purpose and deliberately, to surrender that part of me that needs to run, needs to breathe in gulping gasps as I fly through the Universe.  My husband needed a tamed woman, my Church demanded that I be respectable, and society itself seemed terrified of my wildness.  And so I let it burn.

But now I feel bereft.  There used to be so many things about myself that I loved.  I used to walk in a room with my shoulders back, knowing that my wildness was a beacon.  I’m not physically attractive and it never used to matter.  There was something in me, some untamed place within that made people look at me, made them want to see what it was that gave that glow to my skin, that sway to my hips, that secret smile resting lightly on my bones that said I had a secret.

 My wedding night, as I was lying there beside my husband, I remember thinking that I had just clipped my own faery wings and traded them for a life more stable.  I decided that I could not have wings and roots.  And the wildness was getting exhausting.  It was hard work to be so intimately connected to my body, to feel the changing of the tides in my bones and to be so empathic that a room full of people was like a mouthful of jalapenos. 

When I was wild-ed, I just knew stuff.  It truly did feel like I was always so aware of everything and everyone.  It still feels like such a primal thing that there are no words.  I lived from a depth of Self that had no language in and of itself.  It was as if the language of me was all in my senses: I knew who was sick because they smelled different to me.  I knew if there was someone dangerous to me because my skin would tremble at the mere mention of there name.  My body knew wisdom that I have no language to explain. 

I’ve written already about the disclaiming of my own body.  That happened when I was un-wilded.  So too did the lethargy and the exhaustion.  My disdain for sex and for food, my desire to curl up inside myself and live there alone forever was birthed during that time as well.

I’m reclaiming that piece now.  I announce to myself and the Divine and the Universe of star dirt that I am done being un-wilded. 

I will be walking barefoot with my head up, reading the earth through the callouses on my heels.  I will be swaying as I walk because She and I are going to dance again.  I will be eating with my fingers so that I can feel the goodness that food is made of.  I will not be going to and coming from my bed because a clock says so.  I will rise up when She calls me and rest when She says goodnight.

 I am joyfully and fearfully rewilding.

Who is She , anyway??

As I put myself here to write this, I choose not to research before I post.  This isn’t about Divinity in history nor is it a story that will include a creation myth.  This isn’t about the various names and forms that Divinity has been known by as humans have struggled and lived throughout time.  This is  about me, where I am right now in this moment.  Tomorrow I could edit the whole thing and call it all hooey.

I’ve labeled myself many things throughout my life.  I’ve been a Quaker and an Episcopalian, a Church of God member and a Pentecostal.  I’ve been atheist and agnostic and an “I don’t give a damn”.   I’ve been a Christian Witch and a Wiccan Christian.  I’ve looked at Voodoo, Hoodoo, Buddhism and Islam.  Through it all, I’ve felt that any and all of those things (as I’ve chosen to try to walk them out) have limited me and left me with pieces of myself missing.

I’ve decided now to dispense with labels internally.  I may at differing times use a label as a way to open a dialog or to acknowledge some common ground but I no longer internalize those labels.

So who is this She that I reference, or at least She as I see Her now?  Where is She and why?  What I do with Her and how is She vital in my life now??  (By the way, these are the same questions that I started asking myself that led me to give up labels in the first place!)

I see Her as more complicated that I can voice and sometimes even as I can experience.  She is not just in everything or with everything, She is everything.  When I feel the breeze on my face and feel, just for a moment, that everything already really is OK, that is Her.  When I stand on the beach and watch the waves roll and tumble, when my skin gets salt-sticky, that is also Her, all of it.  When my daughters say they love me, just because they really do, that is Her.  When I am able to truly connect to another, to see their reality from their perspective instead of my own, that is Her too.  When I am able to be lost and found in the amazing intimacy with my husband, that is Her.  All acts of love and pleasure…

I see Her as Maiden, Mother, and Crone.  I see Her as moonlight and baby giggles.  I see Her as the creation of all and the destruction of that which must be released.

But I also see Her as mine in a way.  Not in the sense that She is not also yours, though.  It’s just that She and I are buddies.  She hangs out with me when I am weeping and wailing at injustice on a grand scale and the smaller injustices that I have experienced.  When I go to the grocery store and see so much food while a family down the street has to eat Bean and Ham soup for the month, She’s there with me, showing me what I can change and what I cannot.  When the flashbacks come, She holds me and weeps with me.  I had a vision once of Her witnessing my terrors with me and Her pain was equal to my own.  And in those moments when the joy is bigger than my body can hold, She dances me.  That’s not a typo.  She doesn’t dance with me, She dances me.  I feel Her passing on and over and around and through every cell of my being.

Sometimes, I’m something of a mess.  My perceptions are skewed and I miss the Truth.  Sometimes I’m too mad or too scared or too ashamed or too stuck in old realities.  She’s there too, reminding me (sometimes gently and sometimes with a Mac truck) that I choose my reality now.  My memories, my traumas and fears and insecurities and worries and issues and body are all just the woodpile; I choose to build a fire in the fireplace that will give me Light and nourishment and warmth or I choose to create a bonfire that will wipe out all that I am trying to create.  My wood, my choice.

 I know that the Divine is neither She nor He nor even both.  I know that Divine IS.  ALL.

But for now, it’s easier to look into the eyes of She who gazes with Love rather than the eyes of He who gazes with Joy.  I do get it that it’s the same, honest I do.  Part of who She is for me is that She allows me to label Her until I can grasp the Wholeness a little more clearly, the same way that I once labeled myself.  As I said, we’re buddies and She makes allowances.  The Truth that I can live a little more fully these days is that it doesn’t matter as much what I call Her as long as I’m willing to call…and be called.