What I feel needs to be changed: I want to change my approach to Spirituality

What I realized was hurting me:

In the most basic sense of the word I have isolated myself from my spirituality, and I feel the keen loss and the “calling home” sense. I have to admit that it has been a LONG time since I was an active participant in my spiritual path…

I have never felt anything profound and glorious and sparkly from the “Status Quo” religions of my life –The traditional churches left me feeling… empty. At 17 I started reading everything I could find on Wicca and started putting things into practice on my own. I dedicated myself, found others of like mind, joined a local coffee meet, and started writing for a Canadian Pagan publication. I continued to celebrate on my own and with the Pagan community from the age of 17 through 23, when I got married…

to the eldest son of a FUNDAMENTALIST PENTACOSTAL Christian Minister

I thought that theEx was okay with my religion but as soon as we got engaged and started to outwardly live together it became clear that he wasn’t comfortable with me being “different. My altars were put away, my statues were taken off the mantel, all books were hidden, my pentacle necklace and earrings were replaced by crosses, and none of my friends from the Pagan community were to invited to the wedding or reception.

 TheEx slowly tried to change me by a steady formula of ridicule, humiliation, guilt, and family obligations. He was forever telling me that I would grow to see the error of my “ways”, or at least give up “this childish belief” in Wicca.

How it hurt me:

It hurt to be made to feel like a dirty little secret in my own home. I believed that this man loved me, that we were going to be partners in life, but I couldn’t stop feeling connected to Wiccan/Pagan things.

I hid my ongoing interest and participation in the Pagan community from theEx. But inevitably theEx found me out and was FURIOUS that I hadn’t really “given it up” with the threat of “when we have kids my father will use this to try and get custody if he finds out” .

I stopped going to coffees and talking to other Pagans as the pressure to be “normal” for my husband’s sake increased upon me. His career started to take off, he started to socialize more with people from work, and he didn’t want anyone to know I wasn’t “normal”.

Then I got pregnant with BoyChild. The pressure increased a hundredfold. Now, instead of ignoring me, XFIL expected me to start “towing the line” for a typical Christian wife and mother. I was no longer outside of the family structure, just a hanger-on to his son, I was now the mother of his first grandchild. I was to uphold the honor of the entire family by setting a good example attending services and being prayed over and coming into the church. TheEx continually snapped at me and threatened that if his father “found out” he had married a witch he would leave me and they would take my child from me… relying on my maternal instincts and terror in the face of someone who COULD and WOULD do anything he could to get his way…

 I fell into a deep depression. I was expected not only to attend services and rituals in a church that hurt my SOUL. I felt hopeless…

Hopeless hurts too.

I was hidden in my own home, and it was no way to live. I knew as long as I stayed I would never be free to decorate my home my own way. I would never be able to have an altar ANYWHERE in my home. I would never be free to wear personal symbols. I would not be free to discuss my opinions on religion or spirituality. I would not be free to share WHO I was and WHAT I believed with my children. I was locked inside my soul, trapped by fear of my hate-mongering xFIL coming down on me.

My Ex tried to break my spirit, but he broke our vows instead.

This 10 years of atrophied spirituality left me feeling uncertain when I was free to celebrate again. Consequently I was unable to jump right back into “Wicca” or “Paganism” and I went through a period of questioning. I had experiences with the Stalker of being pressured to be MORE Pagan and MORE open than I was ready to be, which further injured my soul, and made me further question myself. He didn’t understand, I needed to HEAL and learn to feel SAFE again.

Now I am more ready to explore what was so scary and painful for so long.

How am I going to start making changes?

Connection connection connection!!

• Reading – books, magazines, blogs. Learning what sparks my interests and what does nothing for me.
• Writing – getting my blog on over in my spiritual blog, Facing East Again, journaling
• Soul Listening – spending time listening to what resonates with me and what causes dissonance, listening to why I am uncomfortable with this or drawn to that
• Listening – to podcasts, music, interviews… finding out what draws people to something and why
• DOING – spending time creating and using traditions and rituals in my own life, podcasting again, being PRESENT in my own life, giving myself feedback on what does and does not work for me
• Joining – online groups, classes, discussions, meetups, coffees, checking out local groups, searching about national or international groups, maybe even joining the Unitarian church

I’m committing to feeling my way through this. Rather than get caught up in traditions and Paths, I am going to take a more eclectic approach and discerning what works for ME on a spiritual level. I will feed my soul what IT needs, not what makes other people happy.
 

My AFFIRMATION

 I want to become more spiritually aware. I WILL start communing with myself through daily meditations in which I don’t automatically fall asleep. I WILL consult the tarot. I WILL join with other people who are seeking spirituality, but avoid the ones who tell me what I HAVE TO DO. I WILL read about spirituality. I WILL share spirituality with my children. I WILL create rituals for myself that connect me to what is important to me, not worrying so much about a specific tradition base. I WILL start TRADITIONS for my children that we can carry forward. I WILL write in my spirituality blog, Facing East Again, and to start doing my podcast again.So I will.

1. what I feel needs to be changed,
2. what I realized was hurting me
3. how it was hurting me
4. how I am going to start making changes
5. why I need to change
6. Affirmations for change to happen

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…

I am a cusp person.

Astrologically I am considered an Aries/Taurus cusp, being that my birthday is on the day when it switches over from Aries to Taurus. I have been told that I am definitivly an Aries, based on the time and date of my birth… but I still tend to have quite a few Taurean traits as well.

Personality wise, I cusp between introvert and extrovert. No matter how many times I take the MBTI test I cannot get a consistent reading of introversion/extroversion. And for that matter, I can’t make up my OWN mind, which causes me a lot of weird feelings when I’m with groups of people.

You see… I LIKE being involved. I thrive on it. I like being part of something with a group of people.

But I’m also shy.

So I LIKE being involved, and will volunteer and likely take up almost any opportunity to go out and join a group… but I put things off when I go to join groups because I am not entirely comfortable making new friends.

I get recharged from being around groups of people. I don’t like to be alone all the time. But I also find it draining to try and get out and meet new people too… and when I am newly in a group I feel very tongue tied and nervous.

And so, despite the fact that I have extroverted tendancies (like group activities, like social gatherings, like to talk to other adults, feel recharged when in groups) I fade into introversion because I feel socially awkward with new people.

I want to be noticed, I want to be talked to… but I don’t know how to go about breaking the ice with new people!

I am almost afraid to talk to people, to be noticed. Its a throw back attitude from my marriage, where I had to always be afraid of what I was saying and to whom, lest even the smallest hint of my spirituality and the “liberal” non-christian views I held, different from those of my (thankfully SOON now) Ex might escape and embarass him in some way. Its the constant vigilance against who I really am, my REAL interests or feelings, that gets me.

Do you KNOW how hard it is to make friends if you still have that gremlin sitting on your shoulder asking you “Are you ALLOWED to say that?” every time to start a conversation with someone?

It’s HARD.

I FEEL like a friendly person. I THINK I get along well with others.

But I always feel like the outsider, that there are things that are best left hidden from view, that are deep and dark and not-at-all chocolately goodness about me.

I have struggled in the recent past to get past the shyness. I have TRIED to join in more activity… albeit only online. And yet I can’t get to the point of making my prescence known…

The thing is… I don’t know HOW to be noticed anymore.

I write in obscurity, despite the fact that a lot of the things that I write about are directly in response to what I read in some of the blogs that I read every day or the podcasts that I listen to or the online groups in which I lurk. And I don’t know how to get feedback from these people who I respect, whom I am TRYING to figure out how to engage in dialog.

I leave comments, I twitter when I have a thoughtful response, I link my blog in comment fields, I put up banners for things I get involved in (when I can figure out how to do it, I’ve been having difficulty with that lately)… where are the lines?

Its not that I want someone to PRAISE me… I would like to enter a dialog with others and open myself up (not to attack) to different points of view and different ways to look at similar situations. I want to know if I am on the right track, if anyone has ever gone through something like this before and have advice. I want to know that there are other people OUT there…

But how does one go about doing this? I know I should comment more, and I’m trying. I know I should WRITE more. I should find a way to get things OUT to people who would read, who would give feedback or spark a new direction in which to think of things. I tweet when I post on the blog. I post on both my blog and my open diary. Can I email people directly? Is that allowed? Can I ask for feedback to people whom I respect? What is allowed and what is going to come across as “teen angst” or as creepy/whiny/stalkerish?

I just don’t know…

What do you do when you need encouragement from an online group in which you “belong”?