Tag Archives: autumn

Why is it so difficult to be body positive?

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When you are a baby, fat is good. People look at the rolls and comment on how cute the “chunky thighs”. A chubby toddler is cute too because they are still growing out of their baby fat. Once a child gets school age, the negative comments tend to roll in, especially if the chubby child is a female. Working in schools, I have heard adults refer to chubby girls just starting school as a “little meatball” or “little chunker”. That’s where it starts. As young as kindergarten. I remember inviting the “fat girl” to my birthday party as a child. I didn’t actually know her all that well, but knew her as the fat girl. As we got older, she got bigger and bigger. She smelled bad, so nobody wanted to be around her. People made fun of her. I didn’t understand why, but saw that apparently fat was something you made fun of.

As you grow up, especially as a woman, you are constantly told by advertisements and media that you are not good enough. Your face isn’t shaped right, so you should fix it with makeup. You have pimples or blackheads, so you should use special products to make them go away. Buy hair products so your hair can be right. Your body isn’t shaped right, so you must eat a specific diet or work out so you can fit the right mold. Buy body shapers. Buy clothes to flatter your figure. Buy. Buy. Buy.

What nobody every told me was that these images were unattainable. These photographs were altered or they were taken of someone who was a winner of the genetic lottery. No amount of make-up, cleansers, dieting, or exercising is going to get you to look like these people in advertisements. There are several billion-dollar industries telling you how you should look.

Opposing that is the multi-billion dollar industry selling you food that will undo all of that. They do research into how much it takes you to be satiated and make their bags slightly smaller so you have to buy two. They do research into what tastes good and bombard your taste buds with those flavors. They add fillers and preservatives so it will have a longer shelf life. And none of it is good for your body. They won’t tell you that. Those chips are gluten free. Those cookies are low-fat. They will find some way to spin everything. And to top it all off, this food is somehow cheaper than buying fruits and vegetables that have had no modifications done to it! This is how our nation has become plus-sized. They offer cheaper, convenient food that tastes good that you can fit into your busy schedule.

The average woman in the U.S.A. is between a size 16 and 18. Anyone who has shopped in these sizes should know that these sizes vary widely. According to Wikipedia, the average size 18 is bust: 43 “, waist: 34″, and hips: 44.5”. With all my weight-loss, I bought a pair of sized 18 jeans last week, even though my measurements were larger than that. It was the first time in years I was able to buy jeans from the “regular” section. That’s good because the same pair of jeans from the same brand that was a size 20 was $50. The pair I bought were $24.50.

In addition to it still being okay to make fun of fat people, those who are overweight are being screwed over in other ways as well. As I mentioned earlier, clothes cost disproportionately more when you are in plus sizes. There are less brand names that carry your sizes, so you have less to choose from and it’s less likely you will look good in what you buy. Larger butts don’t fit in regular sized seats. When I was pregnant, I had to stop going to certain movie theaters because my hips swelled up too wide and I couldn’t fit in the seats. Airlines charge extra for larger seats for larger passengers. If someone in a wheelchair needed to fly, do you think they would be charged extra!? No. But it’s still okay to discriminate against fat people.

Nobody actually calls it discrimination, but that’s what it is. Before I got pregnant, I was the picture of health — on paper, except for my weight. But I had rolls and stretch marks, so I couldn’t actually be healthy. My doctors couldn’t figure out how I could be large and still healthy. That’s where this discrimination comes from, the idea that it’s okay to discriminate against people, because we did this to ourselves. We made ourselves fat by eating too much or the wrong things or not exercising. When, in reality, these companies are marketing all of these foods that not only make you fat, but are addictive. And they get away with it because everyone can still discriminate against fat people. They claim they are worried for their health. If they were really concerned about our health, there would be body-positive ads on tv. There would be as many commercials about vegetables as for junk food. Food lobbyists wouldn’t be allowed to influence the national food pyramid (or whatever it is they’re calling it this year).

And then social media tells me to love my body. Even though it’s 39 years old, has several surgery scars, a large pooch from where my son lived for 10 months, some whiteheads on my cheeks, some stretchmarks on my belly, too much hair on some areas, mis-matched boobs, hair that won’t do what I want it to, joints that tell me that I am either too heavy or getting old, muscles that won’t do what I want them to anymore, fat rolls, and not enough energy to get me through the day. I am supposed to suddenly love all of that? After being told my whole life that I am not good enough, that I must pay extra because I’m fat, that I will never live up to the ideal beauty, that because of my sex I am often defined and judged by my looks, but I am supposed to forget all of the conditioning and just suddenly love myself!? I have seen through that false advertising long ago, but it’s still a whole lot to swallow. I would love to love my body, but I’m just not sure I can.

To Those Who Discriminate Against Pagans

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Dear Discriminator:
If you ever dropped a friendship because you found out your friend was Pagan, if you ever fired someone (or encouraged someone else to fire someone) because they wore a pentacle to work, if you ever told your kid not to play with someone because your family were witches, if you ever yelled at a stranger for worshipping the devil because they had a “my other car is a broomstick” sticker on their car, if you every called someone a witch, this letter is for you.

I don’t know what it is that you believe and I don’t care, because it is my opinion that religion does not make a person a good person. That seems to be where my beliefs differ from yours. Many folks seem to believe that your religion makes you a good person and if you are in the wrong religion, you are a bad person. That, and I expect that you don’t know or understand anything about Paganism. You probably just heard “pagan” as a bad word priests and pastors tend to use for non-believers. You probably heard the section of the bible that reads “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”. So all you knew from this was that Pagans and witches were bad. They were people to avoid.

Most Pagans are not like you. They just want to worship how they want to worship and be left alone about it. They don’t want to convert you. They aren’t interested in anything other than acceptance. Unfortunately, acceptance is difficult to come by. There are so many Pagans, myself included, who have to hide what we are from the world because we are afraid of some very real repercussions. I have been fired twice for being Pagan. I know parents who have had their kids dropped by friends whose parents don’t want them playing with a Pagan. I have had strangers see my pentacle and yell at me for being a devil worshipper (back when I used to wear it in public). I just want to be myself and be left in peace. I don’t know why, but that doesn’t seem to be possible for people like me.

Pagans, in general, believe in multiple deities and are nature worshippers. The deities vary from one generic Goddess and one generic God to all of the gods from a pantheon (such as Greek, Norse, Celtic, Egyptian, etc.) Is that really that scary? Sure, some cast spells, but it’s really just focused prayer. We can’t turn people into toads. We just feel like a prayer is more likely to manifest if we do it with candles, incense, and crystals.

Pagans, in general, arrange their own worship. We are our own priests and priestesses. We don’t have churches and prefer to be out in nature. We are really very harmless. Most believe in the rule of three (everything you do comes back to you times three), similar to the Golden Rule (do unto others what you would like others to do unto you).

A lot of modern holidays were based on Pagan ones. Halloween was based off of Samhain, the Pagan celebration of the dead. At Christmas the wreaths, decorated tree, the jingle bells, the candles, and the gift-giving came from a number of Pagan holidays from Yule to Saternalia. Easter egg dying and chicks and bunnies came from Pagan holidays welcoming the spring. Sure, most modern Pagans have a few other holidays that also focus on the seasons of the year, but our holidays focus on what is going in nature at the time. Many also follow the moons and celebrate either the full or new moon.

So in conclusion, Pagans aren’t people to be feared, we are pretty harmless, we just want to be accepted. For those of you who have a faith, please do what your faith would consider to be right. If Jesus could accept and hang out with prostitutes, you can accept and hang out with Pagans.

If you have any questions about a Pagan in your life, please ask them rather than shun them.

Brightest Blessings,
Autumn Stoneflower

OA Recovery: Day 83 of Abstinence

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I have been a very bad sponsee. I have had so much going on at work, that I haven’t been talking to her. I feel like I haven’t talked to her in a week, maybe more. I have seen her on a website we are both on offering to sponsor other people so I am not seven sure if she still considers herself to be my sponsor. I am still asking my higher power for help remaining abstinent every day, but don’t have the time to meditate and listen to my higher power. Somehow, I have been able to remain abstinent throughout all of this. I catch one phone meeting a week. Does this make me just a low-maintenance sponsee or am I just doing something wrong? I know my trust in others is definitely lacking, so I don’t make phone calls, texts, or message when I am having issues, but I get through them nonetheless. Hell, my sponsor doesn’t even know my real name. This happened with my other sponsor too. Why can’t I rely on them? Why can’t I contact others for support when I am having a shitty time with my overeating? I got my period so I have been wanting to eat chocolate so badly, but I haven’t told anyone but my husband, despite the fact that I have been struggling with it.

Somebody I know has seen my progress and decided to do the same things I did. He also gave up sugar, but hasn’t been seeing the same results. He hasn’t been able to stick with it. I explained that he’s not doing the same things that I am because he’s focusing on weight loss. I am focusing on myself with the steps, even if I am taking a break on step 5. He flat-out refused to attempt to do the program. I don’t know why. Maybe he hasn’t hit the point where he realizes that he has no control over himself.

I also discovered another trigger food for me — fruit leather. There is no added sugars in it. I am usually okay eating fruit and drinking fruit juice, but I bought a box of fruit leather and couldn’t stop eating it. I actually had to ask my husband to hide it until our son had consumed it all.

Oh, and I have only 6 more lbs to lose before I reach my pre-pregnancy weight.

This update really doesn’t read very well and I apologize for that. I have been busy and stressed lately and my thoughts are jumbling together too much to become really well-organized.

OA Recovery: Day 63 of Abstinence

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I started working with my sponsor about letting go of all of my resentments. I know it is part of the process, but frankly, I was getting annoyed with all of it. Most of the things I told her about, she asked why I was holding onto them for so long. I know that was a question designed to help me let go of it, but I started getting annoyed after a while. I got sick halfway through the process and have really been putting off finishing it since then. She also got really judgy about one of my resentments which didn’t help matters.

I also visited a dietitian today. I had been looking forward to this visit for SO LONG! I was hoping that I would go in there, she would see my issues, and create a plan for me. Instead, she plugged my statistics into the computer and came up with a caloric intake number I should be following. Despite common misconceptions, weight loss is NOT a simple case of calories in vs. calories out. She also gave me a copy of the U.S. version of the food pyramid (it’s not a pyramid anymore, but it’s the same basic idea). I could have done that shit myself rather than take a half a sick day to talk to someone who is clearly not abreast with the latest research. I asked her what she thought of the latest research that came out that said that eating some fats is actually good for you. She said that she disagreed with that. When we were discussing dairy (I really don’t eat dairy except for cheese), I made a snarky comment about it just being on the recommendations because of the dairy food lobbying and she looked almost like she agreed with me. But this is her area of expertise. Shouldn’t she know best? I was conflicted. In the end, I was okay with most of her advice, so I decided to follow her plan. I am still disappointed.

I need to eat the following items daily:
1.5-3 cups of fruit
2.5-3 cups of vegetables
6 oz of grains
6 oz of protein
2 cups of dairy

I also need to follow the following stipulations:
– sodium should be under 2,300mg daily
– saturated fat should be less than 20g daily
– added sugars should be less than 45g daily
– avoid trans fats (any kind of hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated oils)
– eat processed meats (salami, hot dogs, pepperoni, etc.) once a month
– eat or drink low-fat dairy options when possible

Gaslighting Recovery: The List

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I have briefly mentioned a few times in this blog that I have been gaslit in the past by my ex-husband. A lot of people have not heard this term before, not even some of the people it actually happens to. A quick Google search says that gaslighting is: to “manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity”. When they put it that way, it sounds insane. Like what kind of person could actually fall for that?

Well, me for one. I went into that relationship a strong, independent, often stubborn woman. I left in a massive depression. I had low self-esteem, emotional issues, trust issues, and an inability to make even the simplest decisions without needing a second opinion. I felt like I lost almost all of my friends along with my favorite hobby. I left that relationship over 5 years ago, but it still affects me today. In working my 4th step in OA, I realized that about half of my grudges were held either against my ex or because of my ex. It has brought the issue back to my mind lately. I joined a gaslighting support group on Facebook. Someone mentioned making a list of all of the things that your gaslighter did so you don’t go back to him. There’s no danger of that for me. But I figured it might be therapeutic for me to make a list of ways my ex used to mess with my mind and the end result.

  • He corrected my manners, often in public. This happened a lot in our early relationship.
  • He told me that I was not behaving like I should, again in public. This also happened a lot in our early relationship.
  • He did things to deliberately make me jealous (like I walked into a party and saw a girl on his lap, for example). He also claimed that he never got jealous.
  • He found ways to make me ashamed for taking joy in whatever made me happy, often the little things. This happened often.
  • He argued with me, told me that things didn’t happen how I remembered them. This happened often.
  • He told me that I would never be good at the things that meant a lot to me.
  • He withheld sex unless it was under circumstances where he would try to bait me with sex instead of going out.
  • I had another blog at the time. He told me how I ended up painting others in a bad light with my wording. He proofread every blog to “help me” prevent this.
  • Just when I was fed up with his shit and contemplated leaving, he would make some grand gesture, apologize, and tell me how much he loved me, couldn’t live without me, etc. This happened several times.
  • I did many things to make him happy. He did very little for me.
  • Whenever I cried, he walked away letting me cry rather than hold me or comfort me in any way.
  • I was bedridden for a few weeks. He wouldn’t even get me a glass of water, much less walk me to the bathroom (which I needed). My mom and sister had to come and help take care of me.
  • He told me the negative things our mutual friends “said” about me.
  • He said mean things to me, then told me he was just kidding. This happened a lot.
  • His actions never matched his words.
  • He rarely kept his promises.
  • He invalidated my emotions.
  • He rarely supported me in anything.
  • He told me I was not attractive to him anymore because I had gained weight (maybe it’s not gaslighting, but it didn’t help matters).
  • He often ignored me when he was home and then told me I was too needy because I wanted to spend time with him.
  • After we split up, he told half of our mutual friends that I cheated on him and the other half that he was concerned about my mental well-being. He seemed to know which ones to tell which.
  • He made me feel unwelcome in a hobby we both enjoyed because when we split up, most of the friends from that hobby believed him and abandoned me.

To the outsider, this might seem like a list of little things. But these “little things” added up a lot — especially after over 7 years together. Also remember that I loved and trusted him to know and do what was best for me. I feel like a sucker now. All of these things resulted in the following long-term problems for me:

  • I don’t react well to being corrected.
  • I second-guess my manners and ability to act correctly in public.
  • I get jealous and now have a fear of being cheated on.
  • I take don’t take joy in the little things anymore. When I do, I tend to keep my pleasure to myself.
  • I get overly bothered and emotional when someone tells me something is not the way I remember it.
  • I got emotional about trying to be good at the things I aspired to. I eventually gave some of them up because the emotions were too much and too embarrassing.
  • I have issues making decisions sometimes. I sometimes call it “chronic indecision”.
  • I had to ask other people to validate my decisions for years. I still have to fight the urge sometimes.
  • When I am fed up with someone’s shit, I just leave and never turn back. It’s not even an option to go back. My brain is now hard-wired to not give second-chances in relationships.
  • I get angry and emotional if I think that my current relationship is lopsided in its affection and in doing things for each other.
  • If someone I am in a relationship with doesn’t comfort me when I am upset, he isn’t worth my time.
  • If I legitimately need help and someone I am in a relationship with doesn’t help me (unless they can’t), he isn’t worth my time.
  • I have serious trust issues about friendships. I also don’t see myself as someone who makes friends easily, but I am unsure if that is due to the gaslighting or not.
  • I “can’t take a joke” now. I don’t appreciate abrasive or mean jokes and get “overly sensitive” about them.
  • I no longer believe people when they say something about themselves.
  • I no longer expect people to keep their promises.
  • I often don’t know what I am feeling because I forget that it’s important
  • I tend not to seek out others for support, even if I really need it.
  • I am overly sensitive about my weight. I also suspect that I was keeping it on to purposely look disgusting to him and keep him away.
  • I am often afraid to ask for time or affection in relationships, even today.
  • I still don’t know who of our mutual friends is actually my friend. I have mostly dropped them all. There are a few I keep in touch with, but I still question their friendship in my mind and hang out with them rarely.
  • I have attempted to return to that hobby multiple times. Each time I feel awkward, emotional, and friend-less, so I have stopped returning. It also doesn’t help that I see him every time. And every time I see him is this pang of emotional rage — at both him for what he did to me and at me for allowing it.

Motherhood: Becoming an Expert in Worrying

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Whenever anyone thinks of any of the mother aspects of the Goddess, people tend to think of the miracle of growing a child into a baby, the miracle of birth, and the warm, loving motherly energy that the ideal mother would give — maybe with some wisdom to go with it.

However, most mothers do not really seem to think or feel that way about ourselves. Frankly, if you’re a mom, you’re probably stressed out and feeling guilty because you don’t have enough time to do all of the things you feel like you should be doing. I know that’s how I feel. I kind of let go of the fact that I created a very awesome human not too long after he was born. I spent the rest of the time worrying and making sure we were doing everything perfectly.

My son, two days old

That didn’t work out so well because nobody’s perfect. Right off the bat, I suffered from baby blues. I was afraid of how fragile he was. One tiny snap or shake or drop, and he could be seriously injured for life! I was so afraid of screwing him up. It didn’t help that I didn’t produce enough milk for my son, so we had to supplement with formula. It turned out he had a tongue and lip tie that nobody checked for until he was 10 months old. By then it was too late to recover my milk supply and he already was a good eater of solid foods.

As he grew, I grew less worried about some things and more worried about others. My son is very good about eating, but I still worry that he’s going to choke on a hotdog or something. Last month he started learning to climb. Since then, he has been climbing on everything and trying to climb up and over the back of the couch. Now I worry about him climbing something, falling, and hurting himself.

Now that he’s almost 19 months old, I found something new to worry about — his development. Now my son is very smart. He has figured out how to get through or around almost every baby gate we have. He can figure out how do things that we have found surprising. Today I took a wooden animal puzzle, dumped it out, and watched him put all of the animals back in the right place, even rotating some of them to do it. But he has yet to really talk.

Yeah, this is the the puzzle he put back together on his own at almost 19 months.

He has learned several signs and uses them regularly. He says “mamamamamama” when he’s upset and wants me to comfort him. Last week he started telling us to “stop”. However, he really only has a handful of words that he uses and maybe three that he uses regularly. He has only just started babbling with any regularity. He was supposed to start pointing at things around a year and he only started doing it 2-3 months ago. He’s supposed to have 20 words by the time he’s 18 months and is supposed to be more interested in talking than signing. but that is not the case.

So now I am wondering, is there something wrong with him? Is there something wrong with what we’re doing? Are we not spending enough time talking to him? Possibly. I work a lot and tend to be too tired when I come home to really attempt to converse with him. I read to him almost every night. At every meal time we try to get him to copy sounds (without success), trying to get him to call something, anything by name. He can eat an entire meal using a fork, but he won’t call the water “wa wa”. I’m sure he’ll figure it out eventually. At least, I hope so!

Anyway, while there are many magical aspects of motherhood, including watching the amazing changes as kids grow from babies to toddlers. No doubt there will be many more magical things to come. However, the worrying is SO TOUGH!

Tidying Up: Step 4 – Komono – Bathrooms

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We have two bathrooms with a decent amount of storage space. There are two cupboards in our downstairs bathroom. Upstairs there is a shelving unit, medicine cabinet, and a dresser. The dresser holds blankets and such, but the top of it has been a dumping ground for bathroom items that we don’t have room for.

Our bathrooms don’t look that horrible, but we have already had to go out of our way to buy items we thought we had but couldn’t find, only to find them a month later. We have to get rid of some things in order to make room for the the items that we will use. I know the whole Marie Kondo thing is all about loving items. Most bathroom items I don’t really “love”, so it’s mostly an assessment of usefulness here. There are a few items I do love though. My cousin gave us skincare products to pamper ourselves with for our wedding. However, we have yet to open a single bottle, but I would love to do it one day!

Before
After

I was surprised how much stuff we had from the bathrooms. Neither of us is really big into primping. My “personal care routine” consists of brushing my teeth (sometimes) and showering a few times a week. I wear make-up maybe 3 times a year. The first thing to go was all of the expired pills. Almost all of the pills were expired. We had multiples of a lot of things. We had 7 pairs of nail clippers. Also, hydrogen peroxide apparently expires! After we sorted through what we wanted to keep, we sorted through which items would be useful in which bathroom.

Before
After
Before
After

Learning Tarot

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I had gotten my first degree of Correllian Wicca from witchschool.com back in the day. Since I was trying to improve my spirituality, I decided to go for my second degree. I was a little disappointed to find that the first lesson after the introduction (which I failed) was on tarot. I was hoping for maybe some advanced techniques in energy use, improving the chakras, how to do advanced things like draw down the moon, learn more about the Gods or Pantheons, etc. However, there was just this lesson about the history of tarot and how to use them for divination. I was disappointed, but decided to go with it.

As someone who owned one set of tarot cards that have maybe been used 5 times in the past 10 years, I decided to do what I could. I always understood tarot to give pictorial messages, so I went with it. However, there were specific meanings given to each card by witchschool, which I was trying to learn. So I did a spread like this, read through the witchschool version, read through the booklet that came with the cards, and then attempted to read the pictures to see what stood out at me. The witchschool versions were difficult to decipher. The booklet seemed to indicate that things would go well with buying our house. However, my brain was too muddled from the first two, I really couldn’t concentrate on figuring out what my intuition told me. I will keep working on the tarot cards, but these are not my strength. I suppose it doesn’t hurt to get better though!

Does anyone have any hints about learning tarot?

OA Recovery: 40 Days of Abstinence

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I have decided not to return to that face to face meeting. I believe that it’s a really low-level meeting since only one person seems to have abstinence for any length of time and she was the one who told my husband to leave — at an open meeting. Some people argued that I should go and help raise up the level of the meeting. Some people thought I was not far enough along in my recovery to do something beneficial for that meeting. I thought that I didn’t have the time or energy to waste on a meeting with toxic people.

I am no longer really concerned about losing weight. Yes, I want to lose it, but focusing on the steps has kind of shifted my focus away from losing weight. I have lost 8.5lbs since January 1st, only by cutting out sugar. It’s kind of funny, this past week, my meals have kind of sorted themselves out. I have been finding regular foods to eat, I have mostly been packing my lunch, and I mostly know what foods I will be eating each day. I think it’s kind of ironic because I couldn’t really do it before. I guess I have just reached the right part of my recovery where it’s become easier for me!

I have now reached step 4 in my journey of overeating recovery. It requires that we make a moral inventory. I read through the chapter on step 4, which just gave a lot of reasons why this moral inventory was necessary. My sponsor also said that this is the point where people tend to disappear from OA. When I asked her why, she said it was because it’s too tough and too emotional and people tend to overeat as a result. It was a good reminder for me.

They call it a “fearless” moral inventory and stated that a lot of people are dishonest with themselves. I knew that the only real way I tend to be dishonest with myself was about food, so I assumed that this step would be easier for me. The OA book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions has a laundry list of questions that seemed quite daunting. My sponsor said she preferred the AA forms for that and e-mailed me three forms — one about resentment, one about sexual conduct, and one about fears.

My resentments took up two whole pages. I had a lot of people and institutions I held resentment towards. My gaslighting, emotional-abusing ex-husband took up almost half a page on his own. Other fall-out from that divorce, the friends I have lost over it, and things I stopped doing because he “ruined” the experience took up another half page. The rest were other times where I had mostly believed that I was wronged by other people. After writing in why I was angry, I had to “own” the resentment and figure out why it was my fault. I had some issues with this. I complained to my sponsor: how can I take responsibility for a gaslighting, emotional-abusing ex-husband and the friends that believed the lies he told them about our breakup!? I didn’t even realize that I was emotionally abused or gaslighted until over a year after our split. She said I should just write that I am at fault for holding onto it for too long. I did that for a while. Then I realized that I trusted people too blindly and expected too much of these people who were clearly not my friends. Then I re-read the chapter saying that this step is supposed to help me trust people again. Wait, what!? I had just come to the conclusion that I had trusted people too much.

The rest of my resentments were a mish-mash of issues — everything from being upset that my sister wants to live across the country (because I love her and I miss her), someone who denied me a scholarship even though I was the only one who met the requirements for it, a friend who was a pathological liar, a friend who broke off the friendship claiming that I was using her, all of the schools that fired me for being Pagan, etc. Anyway, I was hurting inside to relive all of these episodes where people and institutions made me angry. I didn’t overeat or eat any sugary foods, but once my husband knew I was upset and he was very helpful about trying to make me feel better.

The remaining two lists were comparatively easier. One great thing about being Pagan is that sex is part of the religion (“all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals”), so we don’t get shamed for having sex. I feel no shame for it. However, there were a few times where I didn’t say “no” with enough conviction when I was still healing from the emotional abuse. There were sometimes when I used my sex appeal to help me feel better about myself significantly earlier in my life, sometimes giving guys the wrong idea. Honestly, the sex section really only had 6 entries.

I was glad that I saved the fear section until last. Thinking about my resentments, I have a lot of fears due to them. A fear of not being good enough. A fear of rejection. A fear that no community would ever accept me being Pagan. I pushed to get these all done in one day so I didn’t have to feel bad for two days in a row. I asked what was next and my sponsor said I had to read step 5 and discuss my answers with her. I read chapter 5, which seemed to outline why it was important to share my lists with another human being. Both my sponsor and I agreed that we would save that for next weekend.

Tidying Up: Step 4 – Komono – Spiritual Items

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Since I started this blog as a spiritual journey, I figured I would tackle the spiritual items first. Since I moved, these were scattered in various locations throughout my bedroom, cluttering up everything. I made a pile intending to take care of it right away. However, I ended up letting it sit for a week instead. My altar is an old TV stand, so it just has two shelves to hold everything. In the past, I had a whole drawer elsewhere dedicated to divination items. I had my drum, incense, and various other articles located on my bedroom bookshelves.

My pile of spiritual stuff. I daresay many people would have a bigger pile than I do!

I made three piles: one of items that I LOVED. One was stuff to give away or throw away. The third had items I wasn’t sure about. I was thorough. I took all of my seashells out of their container and went though them. I took all of my gemstones out of their container and went through them. The majority of the items I wasn’t sure about ended up being kept, but I am happy and proud to say that everything now fits underneath my altar now, even my drum!