Tag Archives: autumn

Imbolc With My Family

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As I think I have stated before, we are trying to celebrate the Pagan sabbats (holidays) more as cultural holidays. For Imbolc, we planned to do a thorough cleaning of the house, to purify it, and have a dinner with my family with Imbolc-appropriate foods. My husband and I spent the first half of the day dusting, sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping our house. Even though there were still several areas that needed work, the areas that had been attended to (clothes, books, and papers) were starting to be happy areas amid the rest of the chaos. I was actually starting to be happy with how our house was looking!

Afterwards, we all went to go see two houses that were for sale in our area in our price range. Our price range was low and everything was in a “fixer-upper” category. We’ll see how the process goes!

We got back later than expected. I was going to make cheese pull-apart bread and my husband was going to make sugar-free brownies. He was also going to make homemade cheese curds for poutine (french fries with gravy and cheese curds). He did make the fries from scratch though. They were delicious! Everyone but me had iced cream for dessert.

In talking over the holiday with my mom and step-dad, they seemed to think that there should be something more to the holiday than they saw. Not being Pagan, I expected them to just want to eat dinner with us. However, I guess they wanted some weird Pagany stuff. I told them that divination was common and I could get out my tarot cards if they wanted (I’m really very bad at them, but I’m working to get better). Luckily for me they declined. Lighting candles is a big part of Imbolc, but I couldn’t figure out what we were going to do after those candles were lit! Although at the end of the evening, I realized story telling was also a good idea, so maybe we will try that next year!

Recovery – 33 Days of Abstinence

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I got started with a new sponsor. She seemed to be very thorough and to-the-point (which I like). She gave me a list of eating behaviors and asked which ones I did. She then gave me a bunch of rules that I needed to follow in addition to abstaining from sugar. I don’t remember all of them because many were non-issues for me. The ones I do remember are: don’t eat standing up, eat slowly, do not do anything else while eating (like play on your phone or watch tv), do not take seconds, do not hide your eating, do not eat in the car, and only weigh yourself once a week. I argued for weighing daily and for our movie night once a week where we share a big bowl of popcorn. She was willing to allow movie night, but not weighing more often than once a week. She did not ask that I provide her with my food ahead of time and seemed to trust that I was following the guidelines, which I was. There was one exception, but I figured it wouldn’t count. I wanted a banana for a snack. However, my son loves bananas and would want one if he saw me eat it. We only allow him one banana a day because they make him constipated and he already had one that day. So I ate a banana while standing and hiding so my son wouldn’t put up a fuss (he’s only one and a half).

With this new sponsor, I was flying through the steps. She had me read each step in the book and then discuss the step with her. There seemed to be some pivotal questions to answer and then I was onto the next step. Today I reached step 3: “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.”  I knew I would have to deal with this eventually. I prayed and meditated for weeks hoping to find a deity willing to take on me and my recovery. Instead, I was met with silence. I finally decided to use “my-best-and-highest-self” or “Goddess-within-me” as my higher power. I’m glad I did, because when I thought about turning my will and life into the care of an outside deity, I think I would have had a more difficult time doing it. Instead, I could definitely turn my will and life over the best version of myself. Gods know, I am certainly not the best version of myself right now, but she is in there somewhere.

I attended my fourth meeting today. I had even convinced my husband to attend (albeit in the back). He has eating issues but is still convinced he can handle them on his own. Even so, he was curious about what happened at these meetings. He was called out at the beginning of the meeting for not being part of it. The woman who did this was the only sponsor in the room (what a great example). She claimed she was concerned about anonymity (even though this was an open meeting) and told him to go sit in another room. I was annoyed but stayed because I am abstinent for 33 days today and was looking forward to getting my coin for 30 days of abstinence.

The meeting continued with their usual announcements at the beginning, including “children are welcome so long as they are supervised”. My 1.5 year old son was there, giggling, running around and smiling at everyone. He was never an issue before. In fact, I was told to bring him back because he was a sweet boy. Now I am not one of those parents who is deluded in thinking that my terror of a son is a sweet boy. My son did not scream or cry. He didn’t even babble much and when he did it wasn’t that loud. They asked if my husband could look after my son. I said he could for today, but that there were days when I would have to bring him. I brought my son to my husband in the other room who suggested we leave. I agreed with him and started crying because I really felt unwelcome. One woman came out and apologized for the others and begged me not to give up OA because of it. I told her I didn’t intend to, but that I wasn’t going to drive an hour to go to that meeting again either. I was livid. There were no other meetings within an hour drive of me (except for the ones that met when I was at work). I never did get my coin.

I received a phone call from one of the members of the meeting about an hour later. Apparently after I left, they were all discussing how they could have handled it better. They decided to add language at the beginning of the meeting to mention that all who were interested in OA were welcome at the meeting. Unfortunately, they also changed the language at the beginning of the meeting from “all children are welcome if they are supervised” to “all children are welcome, but they must be in a different room from the meeting.” There is no way in hell I’m putting my one and a half year old in another room by himself (or with another child). So basically I can only go when I had child care, meaning my husband would stay at home with him when he could. That also meant that he could not come to meetings with me. I am very angry that this happened. I resent them for the way they treated my family today. I also resent them for changing the rules so I could no longer attend regularly. I am told that the next step is all about resentments, so this next step should be fun.

Tidying Up: Step 3: Papers

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I didn’t expect to have any problems with this step. I would be separating out any sentimental papers, so I really didn’t expect to have any issues. One thing Marie Kondo says is that you have to take ALL of the papers throughout the house and pile them in one place. I did not realize I had that many papers to go through. I also didn’t expect how long it would take me to go through all of these papers. I managed to do all of the books in a few hours. It took about 6 hours just to finish the first half of the sorting. By the time I had finished, I was left with only three smaller piles of papers, I was sick of looking at papers, so I took a break.

I resumed working on the papers a few days later and that took a few hours as well! While Marie Kondo is able to really only have three folders (important papers, warranties, and stuff that needs to be done), I was pretty pleased with how few papers I had left. There is also another folder I keep upstairs of spiritual papers that I wanted to keep. Some of them were from classes I took or rituals that I liked, but there weren’t that many of them.


Recovery – 21 Days of Abstinence

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I have now been abstinent from sugary foods for 21 days now. It has been one hell of a journey so far. For the first two weeks, I was detoxing from all of the sugar. I wanted it. I craved it. Because I couldn’t have it, I overindulged on other foods. I was concerned for a time that it might be another food issue I have, but then after about day 15, I stopped wanting extra foods at meals.

That was around the first time that I managed to make it to an OA (overeaters anonymous) meeting. I had tried a few times, but due to the holidays and meetings that were no longer active, I finally found this meeting (and made sure to call first). It started with the serenity prayer and a bunch of other stuff that was read. It seemed like a ritual, so I guessed it was said every time. The best part was when people shared. One of them mentioned that after the physical detox was over, I would have emotional issues to contend with. She said that all of the feelings and issues that you ate to cover up would now show up and need to be dealt with. I had no idea how right she would be.

For the past week, I was angry, sad, depressed, but most of all I was distracted. My work started to suffer because I was having problems planning my lessons and getting things done that needed doing. It was a struggle, but I think the idea of having made it so far that I didn’t want to start over again helped.

I also had problems with my first sponsor. She wanted me to tell her what I was going to eat each day before I ate it. I really struggled with this for a few reasons. First, there are so many different resources out there with conflicting statements about “good” and “bad” foods, so I found myself in a state of chronic indecision about what to eat. Second, not knowing what to eat, we didn’t end up picking up any foods for me for lunch and so I didn’t have anything to eat, so I never knew what I was going to have. I found out later that this is a common tool for people to tend to overeat in general, but since my issue is with a specific food, it really didn’t apply to my situation. She also wanted me to fill out this checklist every day. I found out later that it was part of the 10th step and I was on step 1. I thought. I wasn’t sure because she sent me these lengthy emails with a ton of reading to do and questions to answer. She contacted me and said I needed to start doing those things on a daily basis (which I really struggled with doing) or she would drop me as a sponsee. She was doubtless doing what she thought was best for me. Some people need the “tough love” approach, but I was doing fine, so I found another temporary sponsor online.

Tidying Up: Step 2: Books

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I LOVE books! I thought this step was going to be very difficult. Our bookshelves were overflowing with books. There also was no room on them for my husband’s small collection of books. I know Marie Kondo disapproves of keeping the same classification of items in different places, but I keep my spiritual (a.k.a. Pagan) books upstairs near my altar. I do this for many reasons. First, when I am at my altar is when I will likely be reading or using these books. Second, I don’t like to display my Pagan books when it’s possible that people will stop by who won’t know I’m Pagan and I don’t want them to know that I’m Pagan. I also keep our cookbooks in the kitchen, for obvious reasons.

Also I have seen a lot of memes on various social media sites poo-pooing Marie Kondo because they took a quote from her out of context, so I thought I should address it. She says that she has managed to pare down her own personal book collection to 30 books. People took that to mean that you should only have 30 books. On the contrary, she does not tell people how many books they should have. In fact, she just wants us book-lovers to have a bookshelf full of books that we absolutely love and gives us joy. Who wouldn’t want to love every book they have on their shelf!?

So, according to the directions for this step, I took all the books and piled them up in the middle of the room. I did get rid of a large box of books, as did my husband. I also had a number of books that I was “undecided” about. After the first round, there were two boxes filled with books and a few piles that I didn’t know what to do with.

I sorted those books into the following piles: sentimental books (books that belonged to my now deceased grandmother about Norway or teaching Norwegian), spiritual books that I might like to review on my blog before I get rid of them, books that I would like to keep for my son one day, books related to a hobby that I quit that I may start again, but that I am very emotional about (long story), and books that I might like to read again someday, and books I will probably need for work.

Before
After

I took the sentimental books and put them in a place to be sorted with my sentimental items at a later date. I separated the spiritual books I wanted to review for my blog from the ones I actually liked and resolved to get rid of them in a year if I didn’t get to them by then. I kept the books for my son until he’s old enough to decide what to do with them (there were only 4 of them). I also kept the books related to the hobby until I can come to a definitive decision whether or not to give up that hobby permanently. I separated the books that I might like to read again and resolved to throw out any that I did not read within the next year. The books for work went to work where I have bookshelf space for them.

Before
After
Before
After (but the top section has sentimental and craft items that need to be sorted)

Tidying Up with Marie Kondo

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I started watching this show on Netflix one day to help me get some motivation to tidy up our house. I found Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. I binge-watched these over a matter of days (I know there are only 8 episodes, but I have a job and a toddler). I started to work on my clothes first. Clothes weren’t that big a deal for me. Since I had given birth, I was a larger size than before I got pregnant, so I needed new clothes. As such, I only had a few clothes that actually fit me. I did end up getting rid of stained clothes and a few pieces that I just don’t wear. Then I folded them up in the special way she insists on folding them. It was funny because as I ran my hand along the clothing to fold them in the right way, I felt a small energy exchange between my hand and the clothing. I actually enjoyed folding my clothes this way. I also liked how they looked when I opened the drawers.

Yes, I had officially drunk the Marie Kondo Kool-Aid. I visited my local library and took out her book since the shows really don’t address Step 2: Books or Step 3: Papers. It was a quick and satisfying read. I took a “before” video to show how our house looks on the average day. While I was reviewing this video I realized two things: this house is nowhere near as bad as some of the ones I have seen, but this house is worse than I thought it was in other respects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ5TXZarLcI
My house before tidying up the Marie Kondo way (to be fair, I already did the clothes at this point)

Freedom of Religion?

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I’m going to start this post by stating that I live in the U.S.A..  This is relevant because here we supposedly have freedom of religion.  Basically, The First Amendment to the “United States Constitution prevents the government from making laws which respect an establishment of religion, prohibit the free exercise of religion….”  There is also a clause preventing workplaces from discriminating on a number of factors, one being religion.  The exception is if the employer is a religious institution. 

Just because the laws say there shouldn’t be any discrimination against religions, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.  It just means that employers can’t mention your religion when they fire you for it.  I’m pretty sure I have been fired for my religion at least twice in my life.  It could have been more than that, but when I get fired because I’m “not a good fit” with a school district, yet they kept a teacher who literally held a student forcibly against a wall and lied about his knowledge of the subject matter he was supposed to be teaching, it’s pretty clear there was something off about their explanation of my firing. 

Why is this coming up now?  I was chatting with my husband the other day.  He couldn’t understand why I enjoyed watching The Good Witch.  I explained that not only is it the most accurate portrayal of Paganism that I’ve seen on TV, but also that I have a dream of one day of moving somewhere and finally being accepted for who I really am, Paganism and all.  My husband flat out told me that it would never happen.  I held back my tears and told him I needed time to myself.  He assumed it was for another reason and I let him.  When I got there, I cried.  I cried for all of the times that I have had to move.  I cried because he had almost dashed my hopes that it was possible to be accepted in a small town for being Pagan. 

While I have gotten good at hiding it from my employers over the past 5 years or so, my son will be starting pre-K in the district I work in before I get tenure.  I had a choice.  I could hide my religion from my son or I can live my truth at home and hope that when the time comes, I will have been there long enough that they will overlook it.  I refuse to hide who I am from my son, so that’s the option I’m going for right now. 

Having to hide who I am in order to get (and keep) a teaching job really hurts.  It’s not like I would ever teach my students about my religion.  I just want to be able to wear a pentacle to work without worrying about being fired.  I want to be able to take my holidays off of work without fearing that I will lose my family’s sole source of income. 

It really pisses me off when I see some of my Christian friends complain that there is a “war on Christmas” because people say “Happy Holidays”.  Really!?  Christmas is a national fucking holiday!  Or when they complain that they’re being discriminated against because they can’t pray in schools.  Uh, actually, the students can.  They just can’t have it be led or required in any way by the school or any adult.  Not to mention if I had a dollar for the number of times someone on the Pagan Parenting group that I’m part of complained about the promotion of religion by someone at their school, I would be rich. 

I’m just sick of feeling like this.  I’m sick of hiding who I am.  I’m sick of worrying about losing my job if I do anything to even hint at being Pagan.  The gays had their chance at rights.  They’re working on transgender rights now.  I just wish there was something that I could do.  But there’s already a law that’s supposedly protecting me.  It just doesn’t.  Please comment and tell me that there’s hope.  I want to know that there are some open Pagans out there — preferably in small towns and teaching positions, that are actually accepted for who they are. 

Santa Claus Alternatives for Pagan Kids

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I have mentioned before that I am working on starting family traditions while my son is still young.  He’s 16 months old, so I figured now is the perfect time to figure all of this out.  My husband and I both want to celebrate Yule, but our families both celebrate Christmas.  In no other religion that I know of do you have to create new traditions when you join.  One of the things I love about being an Eclectic Pagan is is that I take whatever works from whatever religion I like.  I like it because there are so many good things in so many religions worth “stealing”.  However, when it comes to figuring out how to celebrate holidays, it makes things tough.

My husband and I had the “Santa Claus” talk.  I was in favor of telling not telling our son about Santa, he wasn’t.  His argument had nothing to do with “the truth” or getting to participate in the “magic” of it and everything to do with how our son wouldn’t know about Santa when he entered school.  Because of this, I started researching some options for our family. Here are some options of Santa Claus alternatives for Pagan kids.

 A depiction of the Holly King

The Holly King – In Celtic traditions, there is a story of the Oak King and the Holly King. The Holly King rules the cold part of the year with the height of his power being at Yule. At the equinoxes, the power switches hands. The Holly King also looks quite a bit like Santa Claus.

Mother Berchta –  She rides her goat with a sack on her back full of foods.  She goes to houses, roasts the goat and gives the food.  The bones go back in the bag and out jumps the goat good as new!  One time a child purposely broke one of the goat’s bones and she put the child in the bag and took then away.  So now she brings gifts to good kids and takes the bad ones.  

Odin – Odin had a lot of characteristics of what we think of as Santa Claus now. His name in Old Norse even has the first syllable of “Jul” ( pronounced Yule in English).

Odin on Sleipnir

The Yule Lads –  It’s a Scandinavian tradition (in Scandinavia, they still call Christmas, Jul) where the kids leave their shoe on the windowsill for the last 13 nights before Yule.  If they were good, they get a treat. If not, they get a rotten potato. 

A depiction of some of the Yule Lads on a Scandinavian milk carton

This is also a great article about some lesser-known festive traditions!

What does your family do? Tell us in the comments below!


Healthy Living – Day 25

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I spent the better part of this week either traveling or at my in-laws house for Thanksgiving.  Other than a big fast-food meal on the 5-hour drive, I ate pretty responsibly at meals.  In between the meals, however, I have done horrible.  From afar, it would look to my in-laws or my husband like I was being responsible with my eating.  However, I had candy stashed away in my purse.  When I went alone to go buy gas and a few groceries, I bought cookies too and ate them before I returned.  What is wrong with me?  Why can’t I just stop eating them?

I did also get together a shopping list and menu together for my Mediterranean diet and now that I got paid, I can actually go food shopping.  The down-side is that my husband is making me be the one to cook the meals, so that means I have even less time when I get home to get stuff done or spend with my son.  He said it was only for two weeks until he gets an idea of how the diet works.  I have two options for breakfasts and lunches for myself and different dinners every day.   Each week I have fish scheduled once (the husband objected to any fish, so this is a first step for him), chicken scheduled twice, red meat scheduled once, and the remaining three meals were some variety of vegetarian.  I told my husband he is welcome to cook meat for himself on those nights since he is the type to “need” meat at every meal.  For me, it doesn’t matter all that much.  I don’t LOVE meat, it’s just that it’s the most convenient way for me to get my protein.  We’ll see how this goes.

I also did a poor job exercising this week, but it was not for lack of desire or motivation.  I woke up on Monday feeling really “off”.  It turned out that I had a UTI.  Once they treated it, my bladder was in pain for a few days.  I made myself walk when I wanted to do no exercise.  Then on Wednesday, I fell down my stairs and dislocated my tailbone.  It kept popping painfully in and out of place for the rest of the week.  It’s still sore today, but it’s slowly becoming more manageable.  I hope I can get back on track again next week.  Hell, I just want the pain to be gone so I can exercise and at least feel like I’m doing something right with my lifestyle choices.

Also, something odd happened after eating that big fast food meal and after my “cheat day” on Saturday.  I felt “off” again maybe an hour after eating.  I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong.  Maybe it was in my head.  Or maybe it was me feeling the effects of that unhealthy food on my body.  Either way, I need to remember that foods can have real consequences, including the painful abdominal cramps I got while my body was processing the fast food.  There are so many reasons why I shouldn’t be eating these foods and yet I consume them anyway.   I’m starting to wonder if I have a problem with food.  If so, what can I even do about it?  I’m familiar with how OA (Over-eaters Anonymous) and how they handle things.  I’m not terribly interested in following their program.  I wish there were other options.  I haven’t even filled out my food journals.  I need to find a way of being more accountable for what I put into my body.  I don’t need to declare myself powerless over food and as the Goddess to do it for me.  Although asking for help might not be a bad idea….  hmmm…..

Anyway, I’m just feeling frustrated and lost in all of this.  Sigh.


Ways to Practice Paganism Every Day

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With my latest spiritual crisis and in thinking about how I’m not a good Pagan, I asked some advice, did some research, and asked for some guidance.  I don’t have a lot of time, so I had to find some way that I could easily include things in my daily life.  Here is the list of things I came up with. 

  •  Read a bit of a book on Paganism
  • Draw or do other art with Pagan themes
  • Add something from nature to your home decor
  • Practice energy work
  • Meditate
  • Scry
  • Do divination
  • Cook and put energy into the food or bless the food
  • Clean with the intention of cleansing or protecting the home
  • Light a candle
  • Light incense
  • Diffuse essential oils (be careful of this if you have pets)
  • Take a walk in nature
  • Play some Pagany music and sing, play or dance with the music
  • Try something new (i.e. energy work from a book, a craft from an article)
  • Garden
  • Ground
  • Make an offering to a God or Goddess
  • Get to know and leave offerings to the spirits (wights) of the land around you
  • Dress in clothes that you think are Pagany
  • Make a sachel
  • Make ritual jewelry
  • Make ritual foods
  • Tell stories about a God or Goddess
  • Make Pagan crafts