Last week things sorta seemed to come to a head of sorts.

I spent my days at work barely functioning, feeling panicked and fighting off tears. I spent my nights at home alone crying, trying to pull my thoughts together enough to come up with a concrete set of GOALS, a PLAN I could set in place to keep myself above water long enough to get out of the space of overwhelm. So many things seemed important and worthy goals and yet not quite the right thing to do… there were things that were more calming, which made a space out of the chaos, and yet they were not things that I knew would be worthy lifetime goals. 

I threw myself into chaos, not knowing what the answers were… and as a consequence my systems failed me. 

I failed to be able to keep up with eating regularly. I couldn’t sleep normally. I had painful, frightening panic attacks…

And yet…

I’m still standing. And that’s all I can do sometimes. 

I know that there are answers. I know that I need to rely only on myself for the answers. I need space from the chaos of Everpresent and I need to focus on what I need to nourish MY soul and the lives of myself and my children.

I need love. I need support. I need words. I need care. I need experiences. I need quiet. I need time. I need distance. I need closure. I need familiarity.

• Things I can DO to get through


• Things I want to do in my lifetime


• Things I want to CHANGE


• Things to read, things to learn, things to evaluate…

Another week of declutter-ish-ness Stuff

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  I have stopped buying magazines
  
  
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   reusable shopping bags
  
  
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  I go through the kids’ clothes every season (we have 4 here) and donate things they no longer wear (and that I no longer wear)
  
  
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  I am trying to find a way to get more books in eBook format, rather than print. I would LOVE a kindle (which unfortunately is not available here)
  
  
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  I have put a moratorium on purchase of blank books (sorta) and pens for myself and craft supplies for my daughter and cards (Yu-gi-oh, Pokemon) for my son
  
  
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  I got a cable package that includes movies, so I watch movies on tv rather than buying them

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   I would have 2 couches, not 3 loveseats, and they would be either leather or pleather not because I’m into wholesale slaughter of animals, but for more practical reasons — when you have children, you need furniture where you can wipe off crayon, sticky stuff, unmentionable stuff — and having 2 fabric love seats that have been stained in EVERY concievable way, I have vowed “never again” with fabric covered furniture


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  Wooden kitchen table (dark stain) that seats 6 with solid wooden chairs – right now I have a small, cheap light wood table that seats 4, isn’t expandable, and the chairs are all falling apart. This was (shock-of-shocks) a cast off from my marriage, something that theEx felt was beneath him so he bequeathed (dumped so he didn’t have to pay dump fees or haul it to his father’s church for disposal/sale). It is passable, but not ideal, for me right now.


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   the kids would have simpler beds. Right now they each have pieces from theBoy’s bunkbed set. The problem is that this is falling apart, cheap and ugly. I would prefer simpler wooden frames, sturdy things that will last them through highschool, with well made dressers, bedside table, and book shelves for their stuff. I would like each of the kids to have a place to create their own personal altar space in their rooms.  


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  Book shelves. I currently do not have real book shelves in my home. I have borrowed some storage shelving (that I will have to replace now that its kinda locked into place in my bedroom) but I do not have any shelves that are fuctional AND beautiful. I would like shelving that could hold not only books, but DVDs and CDs and BASKETS with theGirl’s craft supplies.


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  Area rug for living room. I used to have one, but the fact that I have kids and cats (and no vacuum) meant that this already half-destroyed cast off became more of a trouble than it was worth and go unceremoniously DUMPED. I need something that fits my decore (which right now is divorcee trashbin chic) — greens, neutrals (maybe BLACK so a lesser percentage of cat hairs show??), easy to clean.

It’s Week 5 (out of 6 weeks) for the Decluttering Goddesses eCourse that I have decided to take… and I have to admit, I’m TORN.

The course is made up of 2 parts — decluttering your space and reinventing your relationship to your STUFF, and a more spiritual aspect where the participants are encouraged to create space withing their homes that nourish their souls.

I am working through week 5 on the decluttering part (after a brief period of time where, because of the kids and work and social obligations I was unable to really unload my stuff or go through parts of the apartment), I’m revising my lifestyle and reviewing the way I shop and what I am trying to accomplish with the shopping thing. I feel good about this part.

But the spiritual stuff? OOOOH… stuck stuck stuck!! SOOOO stuck.

Why am I stuck? Well… simply? I don’t feel SAFE with my spirituality.

And about now people will be thinking I’m cracked (as I hedge, and realize I am doing so and that its not necessarily BENEFICIAL to assume what other people are thinking… sigh) or that maybe what the course is asking me to do is something so against my personal spiritual beliefs that I might feel like doing so was putting my very soul in jeopardy.

Absolutely not.

Week 1 was the process of setting up an altar. An ALTAR. Something that I have wanted to set up in my home for YEARS. But yet, without that shove and “love letter” from Goddess Leonie I had avoided and dodged having an altar before this point. And even though I read the course materials the minute they came out, I waited until the last day of the week 1 before I even attempted to set up my altar.

Week 2 I was to smudge and cleanse my space. Umm… totally didn’t do it. I avoided it. I had all sorts of excuses… and yet the excuse of not knowing how to do such a thing? Not at all true. I have incence. I have access to smudge sticks and sweet grass I can burn… In my past life I did house cleansings and clearings and blessings. I have been to sweat lodges where I smudged and was smudged. I have cleared and cleansed my crystals and sacred areas many other times. But I couldn’t bring myself do do it this time. I resisted… I avoided… I HURT…

Week 3 came and I still felt so stuck. I couldn’t concieve of setting up “prayer (spell) spots” in my home. I might not understand Feng Shui, but I know spells, I have done spells (or prayers) in that way before. But looking at the grid and making any attempt to make heads or tails of where my space was in accordance to a grid (okay that is DEFINATELY a difficulty for me, spacial manipulations are extremely difficult for me to do)….

I was resisting. I knew I was resisting. I just couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t do something so SIMPLE… so consistent with my beliefs… and I started to feel broken and tearful whenever I looked at it, and the resistance became a big fat blob of dark, icky, sticky, sappy, GOO that I couldn’t move through and I didn’t know how to get it OFF. And the more I felt it around me, the more scared I was…

I didn’t know what to DO. I was unable to move forward. Here I was, a Witch who couldn’t do the smallest things to clean and clear her space! This feeling of “ickied-stuckness” was what led me to join this course, and yet, here it was again, stopping me from moving forward.

I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to bother anyone with my issues — these are my problems, I shouldn’t be so presumptuous to think that anyone else would want to know about these things, because they were so UNUSUAL — and so I kept silent. I focused on going through the minutia of my STUFF and tossing things out… and I avoided the big scary thing that I couldn’t make eye contact.

But I could FEEL it… the sticky, gummy… STUFF. Like pine sap sticking and clinging and holding me back, making me feel like I’m fighting to pull off stuff and out of stuff, only to be *shmph* right back stuck in the sap again. Every time I braced myself and read through the lovely handwritten love letters from Goddess Leonie it was like combing the pine sap out of my hair (I have a LOT of experience with sap in my hair, being that I practically LIVED in pine and fir trees when I was younger) and every time I became mired in the sappy stuckness I struggled… like a butterfly fearing she was going to be consumed by amber…

But I couldn’t ask for help.

I didn’t know where to turn to, I didn’t know who might UNDERSTAND the stuck. I was afraid. But I did soemthing that was very scary for me…

I reached OUT…

• I tweeted about my stuckness with the feng shui stuff.
• I chatted online to Kyeli
• I emailed Goddess Leonie and Lisa with some of what I could “verbalize” that was sticking me
• I talked to friends (who I don’t think understood why I have such problems with simple things)
• I cried… a LOT.

Eventually I realized that there was something THERE, keeping me from being able to be spiritual.

I did not feel SAFE to be open with my spirituality. I don’t feel safe, even in my own HOME, not yet.

I am afraid that the kids will see my altar and tell their father, and that their father will try to sue for full custody. Yes, I know that he has no legal leg to stand on, because nothing I do is in any way harmful to myself or my children… but after 14 years of being cautioned to fear my fundamentalist Christian in-laws (because they would either a) try to “deprogram” me, b) try to take my children from me, or c) constantly prosteltyze to me or “save” me) I still fear being too open with my beliefs around my children. My ex is too afraid of his father to stand against him (a HUGE reason in his controlling behaviour towards me — a “good husband controls his wife”), and I know that he would do anything to hurt me even if it meant hurting the kids in the process.

I am afraid of being judged by Reg. He knows, conceptually, that I am Pagan. He doesn’t know what that means, but as I don’t really talk much about my spirituality or religious feelings. But I have had bad experiences in the past, and I am afraid of being too “different” too quickly…

I know its all in my head (and heart) and that its not a REAL barrier… it doesn’t exist in the real world. But its still there… I still feel like i need to make my home SAFE for me, to accept ME… to make me a nest so I can start to HEAL from my marriage, where I can learn to accept myself, where I can feel secure enough to dance, draw, sing, create, love, and BE loved…

Its WHY I started this process, its what I blessed and charged my altar for… its just gonna take some work.

But its now week 5, at the end of next week the course is over, and at this rate I will NOT be done getting through the different tasks, and I won’t have anyone I can reach out for for a bit of support or when I can’t bend my mind around the stuckness… I feel like I am too broken to complete this in 6 weeks. I feel the panic of time running out, of what will I do if I still have a question after this is over???

For now? I am going to try and draw out what i *think* my house looks like, and ask for the help that was offered, take a deep breath, and know that its okay to cry if I have to…