Frozen Nowhere

Starting over and learning to love MY life…

I want to change my approach to Spirituality

January13

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.

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Reconnecting the Term

February18
Exactly the situation that I find myself in, right now, asking “where am I? where am I going? where does that leave me now?”…
 
I have decided that for the time being I am going to sit back and just take the time to think about what I want and where I am heading on my Path. I have to do this, because the past few years have really led me to reconsider the words I use in relation to myself, and the way I view myself.
 
Because of the climate that I have discovered in the “new” Pagan community that I resurfaced into, I no longer feel that I am allowed to claim the title “Wiccan” for the practices that I have followed in the past. It seems that the term “Wiccan” has been fully and completely “reclaimed” by those of the British Traditions (Gardinarian, Alexandrian),and once more the pendulum swings back to the “you don’t have training, you don’t have tradition, you don’t have initiaiton, you aren’t one of us” type thing.
 
And you know what?

I do NOT have formal coven training. That is true.

I do NOT have a formal British tradition passed down to me. That is true.
I am NOT formally inititated. That is also true.
 
But the “Us vs. YOU ALL” type attitude does a vast disservice, in my opinion, to those of us on the Pagan Path who do follow a more Wiccan type tradition, be it ecclectic or british formal trad, faery, dianic, radical, reclaiming… what have you, rather than a more open and ecclectic “Paganism”. 
It causes a sense of disconnect, a sense of hierarchical structure in the ranks that make me feel the “this is not for me, its only for THEM” and a feeling of this is not what I thought it was, what called to me in the beginning.
 
The fact of the matter is that although I am not formally trained in a recognized britsh trad, not even really in an area of the country (or continent) where there are many brit-trad covens to begin with, I still follow many of the “Wiccan” rituals and guidelines rather than the more ecclectic Pagan ones. I might not have a true initiation, I may not really have been able to learn the “deeper mysteries” that are only available in a brit-trad coven setting…
 
But I still chafe at the idea of being “just” a Pagan.
 
And yet…
 
Maybe I AM just an Ecclectic Pagan, after all?
 
I need to determine WHY I have so much resistance to the term “Pagan” rather than “Wiccan” when it comes to my particular path. I really think that it has a lot to do with the way I see myself, and the way I view the various terms and meanings.
 
Pagans
 
Its not that I don’t see myself as PAGAN, its that I see the Paganism as a more broadly defined term. In the same way that there are Christians (broad term) who are also Lutherans (specific denomination), or Jews (broad term) who are Hassidic (specific group), I have always narrowed my terminology down from Pagan (broad) to Ecclectic Wiccan (specific variety).
 
Maybe its a conceptual thing.
 
To me “Pagan” is the umbrella term for people who may have similar interests and beliefs as I do — they may or may not be polytheistic (as I am), they may or may not celebrate the seasons (as I do), they may or may not have altars (I do not yet) or preform rites (I do), they may or may not cast spells (I do), they may or may not revere nature or mark the changes and passages of time. We may have things in common, but we do not necessarily share a framework in which we can practice together.
 
Wiccans
 
I do not deny that Wicca was started as a British Tradition and a term used for the members of that tradition. I do not deny that many groups that use the term are what would be defined as “Mystery” religion, the specific mysteries of which you are only able to get from being involved with those who know the mysteries. But I do not see “Wicca” as ONLY being a traditional based, coven led, mystery religion either.
 
I see “Wicca” as more of a set of guidelines for practices – the correspondences for the directions, the altar tools, the seasonal celebrations, circle casting, ritual formats, spellwork guidelines, and the basic underlying structures. Not every Pagan group follows the Wiccan Rede, not all use the Charge of the Goddess, not all of them cast circles, not all celebrate the Sabbats. 
 
To me, THESE, rather than lineage, are the determiners of the label “Wiccan” for a certain Spritual Path. 
 
I am what I am.
 
The problem is that people want to use terms to define themselves and others around them, and there is often a very subjective meaning in terms.
 
In my view I am a Wiccan — I may not have been formally “trained” in the high rituals of a coven group, I may not have gone through a formal initiation, but I follow basic Wiccan teachings, although I am ecclectic Celtic and not High-Brit-Trad.
 
To a Brit-Trad or Traditionalist Wiccan, I am NOT “of the Wicca” because to be considered “of the Wicca” I would have to:
  1. be involved in British Traditionalist Witchcraft such as Gardinarian or Alexandrian or a spin off from one of those
  2. be able to trace the high priest and priestess back to someone who were originally intiated by someone who was inititated by someone who was initiated by Gardner
  3. go through the dedicant and initiation phases
  4. be part of a coven that is recognized by them
 
Maybe my problem isn’t the definition, but the OPINION…
 
At the end of the day, does it HURT the Brit-Trads when someone outside of their circle (laugh) calls themselves “Wiccan”? I don’t think so, but maybe THEY do. To me the fact that they are trying to co-opt the title “Wiccan” is like the Pentacostals trying to keep the label “Christian” to themselves and away from anyone outside of their churches.
 
Its true that they may not like it. After all, it spoils their sense of being special. 

So what’s my point?

Well… really, just to determine if I CARE, really, what someone of the Brit-Trad Society THINKS of me calling myself Wiccan. Does their protestations of the use of the term outside of their covens and circles of influence REALLY matter to those OUTSIDE of their circles of influence?

 
In the end… ?  Not really.
 
Which comes to the point that I had… 
When I cannot connect to the concept of myself as a generalist Pagan, wandering the world in search of meanings, Seeking out the mysteries and picking and choosing what it is that I will incorporate into my spiritual path, then maybe there is validity to the labels and terms. 
The term “Celtic Wiccan” has been a huge part of my identity, so much so that I have been struggling, this past year, with the fact that people I have respected have stated that I am not qualified to call myself Wiccan — of any variety. 
Where I am, where I am from, and where I am headed, were thrown into question because I had NO RIGHT to feel connected to Wicca as I wasn’t an dedicant or initiate from one of the brit-trads or brit-trad-spinoffs who were allowed to use the term. I couldn’t point to any formal teaching in the mysteries, because I have no access to formal teachings… and my experiences are not validation without the lineages of the brit-trad groups who have the moral and spiritual rights to call themselves Wiccan.
And you know what? 
BULLSHIT.
Seriously. Bullshit.
I left this kind of pettiness behind when I left Christianity, or at least I intended to. I left the idea that in order to call yourself a Christian you had to jump through these hoops and contribute to these causes and volunteer for these organizations and only talk to these kinds of people and only do business with other validated Christians… and on and on. BULL. SHIT.
I don’t want that for my spirituality NOW, anymore than I wanted it then. 
I am foregoing the belief that in order to call myself a Wiccan, I have to go through certain rituals and rights from the RIGHT PEOPLE. I don’t have the right people. I don’t have ANY people. I have myself. I have the small voice in my soul that tells me, in its subtle ways, which ways to go. I have the deep peace, the small electric fizzles that make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, I have the whirling excitement, I have the feeling that this is MAGICKAL when something IS magickal…. 
I am an ECCLECTIC Wiccan. 
There. I said it.
I am no less a Wiccan, in my own mind, than someone who is in a coven, although I will acknowledge that coven work offers more teaching and learning experiences, as well as a sense of shared work and community than solitary work does. But coven working is not the ONLY way to be Wiccan.
I am no less Wiccan for not having one formal teacher. I am fluid in that I learn and grow from various sources –books, people, conversations, meditations, trial an error… 
I am no less Wiccan for the fact that I don’t have the formal introduction to the Wiccan Mysteries. I know that when I get to the point where I can seek these out I will find them. I know that when I can find a coven group and feel right dedicating myself to that work I will find the experience powerful. But the power I have felt in my own experiences is no less valid for the lack of formal tradition.
  • I am no less Wiccan for being solitary.
  • I am no less Wiccan for having no name for my Tradition
  • I am no less Wiccan for not being initiated 
  • I am no less Wiccan for following my own heart and soul.
And I will no longer allow those who feel to be Wiccan I need to be something specific and traditional and validated to tell me that I cannot use the term. 
I am Wiccan. The term is a connection of the soul I need to reconnect my mind to my spirituality…
And I am RECLAIMING it… 
 
 
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Walking the Pagan Path…

February13
For the first few months after I realized that there were other people who felt the “prescence” in the forests and trees, communed with the natural world, and seriously felt a spiritual connection to nature… I started reading. Voraciously (or more voraciously than I had previously).
 
But I read a lot, and I explored a lot, and I took a lot of time out to think and feel and experience what it was that I was needing from my spirituality and what I was getting from this new realization that there was a path out there where I could find what I needed FOR MYSELF without needing to beg others for information of the deeper mysteries, where my experiences were just as valid and powerful as they felt, and in which I would not be forced or expected to promote a certian idea or moral code or push anything onto ANYONE ELSE…
 
It was good…
 
I made my official break from the confines of Christianity with very little pomp and circumstance and no screaming, fighting or gnashing of teeth, and absolutely no drama whatsoever from ANYONE (least of all me). My parents, having no real religious dedication themselves, were not at all unhappy that I had walked away from the church. My friends were of the belief that either I was meant to be this way, or there was little use in badgering me about my choices, and were pretty happy to live and let live (on both sides of the fence).
 
And so I set off walking down my Path.
 
And I was happily reading and exploring and experiencing and engaging in conversation and community with other Pagans. I identified myself as an Ecclectic Solitary Wiccan — not a Pagan, not a Witch, but a Wiccan. And that was perfectly acceptable then… there were those who had issue with the term “Wiccan” then, but it was more because they saw the term as deeply entrenched in the “fluffy bunny” stage of spiritual growth and not because, as it tends to happen today, the term has been dedicated to a certain segment of the Pagan Witchcraft community.
 
 I was accepted as a Wiccan. I studied what I could, experienced what I could, and had dedicated myself to deep and further ongoing studies. I had determined after a year and a half that I wanted to honour my Gods on this path, and so like many a good and honest others who had no access to formal training, I stood before myself and my Gods and formally stated that I was a Witch.
 
Where I was naive
 
Because I had had such an easy transition to my new religious path, because I didn’t get the shame and fear and horrified reactions to it when I made the announcements initially, I believed that doing what was right and best for myself would not be barred.
 
I was wrong.
 
A few years after I had started out as a Wiccan I met the person who will soon be my ex-husband. I was very up front with him, letting him know right away that I was not Christian and I was not interested in being converted, but that if that was okay we could try it out. He was intrigued enough to start dating me, but not honest enough to let me know what his family situation was.
 
His father is a fundamentalist (pentecostal, “fall on the floor twitching, speaking in tongues, flame of the holy spirit”, holy roller) christian minister.
 
It was pretty evident, by the time we were engaged, that my spirituality was certainly NOT going to be “okay” with the in-laws, that living together was bad enough , but that theEx was sufficiently uncomfortable with anything “different” being viewed by his family that all spiritual belongings had to be hidden away. And it wasn’t just COMMON areas of the home that things had to be hidden from view, things had to be locked up tight in case anyone went into the closet or bedroom looking for something and accidentally came across something that they might potentially not completely agree with.
 
I conceeded.
 
For whatever reason I had, I went along with the requirement that, if I lived with him, I had to hide all aspects of my religious leanings, never question his father, never let anyone know that I was Pagan, and keep all my books and things safely stored away. He grew ever more uncomfortable with the things that I used to express my spirituality, the community of like minded people that I went to seasonal celebrations with, the jewlry I wore, the words I used, the books I wrote in, and even the crafts that I did…
 
It was an ever enclosing circle, but not in a good way.
 
I realized, maybe too late, maybe just in time, that he was mortified by the thing that he had actually admired (or so he said) of me, that I had had the ability to step beyond my parents to determine what I really felt, thought, and believed. But in the end, how strong was I, since I allowed my husband to take and lock that away from me…
 
When we had our son it was very evident that theEx was still stuck in the cycle of trying to gain his father’s respect, and that I was nothing more than a pawn in that game — my religion was an embarassment, because in the end theEx wanted a woman to marry and have kids with, he wanted to prove to his father that he was a grown up.  
 
My religion was an embarassing secret from the moment my children were born, and served as a way to keep me in line until I had decided that enough was enough.
 
When I decided I couldn’t take it anymore, I walked out.
 
Let’s be clear, though. My leaving theEx was not 100% about me feeling a lacking spiritually. What it was about was a lack of support, connection, and quality time spent together. It was about the pervasive feeling that theEx cared more about how he looked to his family, friends and coworkers, than he cared about his wife and children. It was about how he ignored me and refused to socialize with me at his side. It was about issues surrounding his weight gain, his spending habits, and his loss of interest in me as human being. It was about his ambivilance in pushing me back into the workforce and then being pissy because I wasn’t home taking care of everything or earning enough.
 
It was about a huge lack of love, trust and communication.
 
But getting back to Paganism wasn’t my first priority, nor really did it need to be.
 
What I needed, first and foremost, was to start to feel comfortable with first of all, who I was now, and secondly, where I was in my life. I needed to realize what I had gone through, cull out the lessons, set myself squarely back into a healthy frame of mind, and see what had shaken loose.
 
And I have done that now.
 
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From “Attempted Christian” to Dedicatant Seeker

February13
Because I had been raised Christian it was very hard to view relgion as anything BUT Christianity. I didn’t have the exposure to other forms of spirituality or relgion, and everything that didn’t fit into the small box that was labelled “Christian Faith” was assumed to be evil, wrong, misguided, tempation, or demonic. 

Which made for a very hard decision on my part, especially as a 16 year old girl…
 
What is a child to do, when they have only ever been exposed to the idea that religion=christianity and no religion=satanism? Well… if they are like me, they start to do some RESEARCH into what religion IS and what different views of religion are out there.
 
I certainly have never been the kind of person to take things at “face value” after all… since I had learned that different christian denominations had different ideas and practices, I had some inkling that there might be other ideas out there that were not “christ-centered”. I had heard and learned a little about Judiaism, and knew that it was not Christianity… and so I started there…
 
From the Judaic-Christo-Islamic religions on…
 

My first step into the exploration of all things religious was to look where I had found interest before, GREEK MYTHOLOGY. I had been exposed to mythology of different cultures in school in the “see how pathetic and backward they were, trying to explain their lives without true religion and civilzation” mentality that was the general upbringing in my youth.
 
From there I realized that almost all cultures had myths, and these myths had been useful to those cultures (and in some cases still were) in explaining the world around us. And even more, I realized that the BIBLE was just another set of myths and legends, passed down as wisdom from the ages as to how to live our lives to please the dieties, and that their explaination was no better or worse than the explainations from other religions.
 
And, seeing THAT, I started to explore into how different cultures have viewed the divine, and how cultures, especially those that I feel a connection with (Irish, Scottish, English) have sought out spiritual answers from both Christianity and outside of it.
 
I learned about the mythology of the pre-Christian Irish, Scottish and English cultures. I learned about the Dieties and the Druids and the different ways in which they served their Gods. I learned about ley lines and sceances and tarot cards and oujia/spirit boards and the things that were most commonly assumed to be occult and new age expressions of spirituality. And I realized that there was more to spirituality than the set of religion.
 
Tarot studies
I have always been intrigued by the tarot cards, it was just until I was about 18 years old I didn’t not feel that I was allowed to own them myself. But really, the “gateway” for me into the previously unknown world of the Pagan was my introduction to tarot reading and tarot studies.
 
It was through a book that was NEAR the tarot section that really changed my view on occult practices and how they could be actually integrated into a spiritual path/religion.
 
It was in that book that I first learned the term “Wiccan” as a reference to a specific person’s spiritual path. It was that book that started me off discovering what it was to be Pagan, to actually LOOK at the things around me that I did connect to, to walk down a path less likely to be taken (at that time) and to really explore what it was that I believed and FELT when it came to spirituality and worship.
 
Walking the “Wiccan” Path…
 
Now, I was only 18 when I realized that there was more out there, that the connection I had to the woods and how disconnected I was to the “traditional” types of religion, and how many different ways there were to worship the Old Gods.
 
And I started to look further and deeper into Wicca. I was young, I was disconnected from traditional religion, I was not able to find other Wiccans to commune with, and certainly there were no public “covens” to join and so I learned, like many other young people unable to get into communities, from books.
 
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Sing a song of Spirituality

January9
One thing that I have, in the recent past, been accused (or, rather, verbally assaulted) about is the fact that I haven’t been practicing my spirituality.
 
Or, rather, that I am not doing what OTHER people think that I need to do.
 
Which, although they may be correct in stating that I haven’t been picking up on a spiritual practice yet, makes me wonder…
 
What the hell does it matter to ANYONE else how I feed my soul?
 
And I have come to the natural and perfectly acceptable conclusion:   

MY SPIRITUALITY IS NONE OF ANYONE ELSE’S BUSINESS UNTIL OR UNLESS I MAKE IT THEIR BUSINESS.

 
Phew. Glad I got that off my chest.
 
I have always been one that has been relatively QUIET about my spirituality. Even before I started dating STBX I was a solitary Pagan. True that I had attended Pagan meetings and had some sense of community at that time (and partially into my marriage, prior to having children) that had been essential to me as a Pagan, but I didn’t REQUIRE a working group or even another person to really be spiritual. 
 
I don’t think my solitary path was completely in regards to the fact that STBX was intensely uncomfortable with my chosen Path (although that did have a lot to do with my feeling that it was something that had to be hidden from not only HIS family, but him and my children as well — which was an intensely DAMAGING experience, spiritually), but also because I didn’t feel an aching NEED to be intensely involved in a Circle or Coven group at that time. I could have easily been happy with my spiritual connection to the world.
 
Why worry about other people then?
 
This seems to definately be a downfall of mine, in my life, the fact that I put too much stock in what other people think I should or shouldn’t do… and its something that I am very consciously working on in this new year. But to answer the question, I felt very OFFENDED when the Stalker confronted me about my “failure to live up to my spiritual goals” (which is a paraphrase of what he was saying, since he was involved in lecturing me on what he thought I needed to hear, and I was trying to get to sleep) and it got me thinking. 
 
First of all I thought to myself, “how dare this person, someone who I no longer feel intimately close with, give me a lecture on one of the MOST initimate things in my life?” And that made me step back and reflect on what part my spirituality plays in my life, and how I have dealth with my spirituality in the past and present and how I present myself in the world as a spritual person. 
 
And I have realized that I have ALWAYS been one to whom my spirituality is of the utmostly private matter. This is “inner sanctum” type stuff for me, my spiritual feelings, my practice, my connection to the Greater Divinity(s) is, truth be told, something reserved for ME and MY DIETY/IES… and not something I feel terribly comfortable dragging out and placing right on my front lawn in 30 foot blazing LED lights stating “HEREIN LIES A WITCH”… 
 
Nope… not my style… 
 
Paganism… Pam style…
 
So what do I feel, spiritually speaking, since I have openned myself up for this discussion (even in the limited amount that I have done so here)?
 
Well… to me my spirituality is private, and it deserves quite respect and reflection. I wear a pentacle, given to me by one of my best friends in the world. It is a golden pentacle with a cresent moon in silver, with a moonstone in the center. I wear it every day on a long (26″) silver chain. I would bet you that 90% of the people who know me, including RGG whom I have been initimate with, have actually never seen this symbol of my spirituality, despite the fact that I rarely leave it off. My best friends, my children, and a few others of like mind would have seen it… and yet I do not consider the fact that it isn’t “out there” to be a statement on the hiddenness of my spirituality or even a symbol that I am somehow embarassed of my religion.
 
It is simply something INTIMATE, worn close to my heart and next to my skin, something ever present that reminds me of my connection to the Greater Divine in the world, and keeps me conscious of the way I interact with the world around me. It reminds me to be aware of the differences in people, in their essential freedoms to be whom they want to be, and to be aware of what I say and how I speak to people. It reminds me of the need to respect all life, and yet is a reminder that I have a right to defend my consciousness and being (including my psyche and spirit)… In this I act as my own altar to my own vision of Diety.
 
Is that wrong?
 
Well… no. That’s the glory of Paganism, for me. There is no set doctrine or dogma. I do not NEED to be a full out decked in gothic makeup, black clothes and big public pentacle jewlry in order to be Pagan… I can CHOOSE to do so, and some do, or I can choose to dress casually, not wear makeup, and not wear my pentacle on the outside of my clothes. Neither style is better, just like no religions is better than another (IMHO), its just different ways that we look at ourselves and interact with our worlds.
 
But it seems, given the amount of passion Stalker was putting into trying to break into this topic with me, that some people have more of a need to SEE spirituality exhibited than others do. And Stalker seems to have been ONE of those people. You see, he couldn’t understand that I didn’t necessarily WANT to have him involved in my spiritual practices or feelings, that I didn’t necessarily DESIRE having discussions on why and how and for what reason I did this or that or the next thing – I liked the ability to just FEEL and know that it was somehow RIGHT for me. I had resisted, either consciously or unconsciously, allowing him to get involved in my spiritual life and spiritual practices, and very rarely even discussed this part of my life with him. I was happy with that… I didn’t want him in my spiritual life at that time (who knows if I would have ever wanted to share that aspect of myself with him?), but he felt that it was a critical part of “us”…
 
Communication Breakdown…
 
Does my choosing to keep my spirituality more private necessarily mean that I am not living up to my spiritual “potential”? Does it necessarily negate my feelings, within my marriage, of being spiritually stiffled by the oppressive form of Christianity that would never have allowed me to express myself outside their narrow vision of “God”? Does it mean that I have no right to have been upset at having to be quiet about my spirituality for those years? Does it mean that I should shut up about not being allowed to have my Pagan books out or have to bite my tongue whenever xFIL ranted about how “evil” non-Christian spiritual practices were? Would it mean that I had no right to have felt that there would have been trouble should I have been open with my children about the various different spiritual paths out there, or if I had dared to tell my in-laws that I didn’t want to attend their church services and that I DEFINATELY did not want my children involved in their particular flavour of Christian faith???
 
NO… no to all the questions.
 
Again, the comments were born not out of genuine CONCERN about MY well being, but rather as more of a pointing out of things that hadn’t gone as per Stalker’s expectations of what it was he decided it meant for ME to reconnect to my spirituality. And, it seems, there was hurt because (and maybe rightly so) he felt that it was something that would have been necessary for us to build a foundation of a life together. And my reluctance to really share this with him (and the red flags that I felt surrounding sharing these things with him) was a clear indication to both of us that I had not shared his feelings about the “us” that he saw. And he admitted, in the dying gasp of the death throes of our “friendship”, that he had wanted to be part of my spirituality in order to not be separated from me in the afterlife…
 
That is just creepy on SO many levels for me…
 

Spirituality as an ongoing goal…
 
Now… as I have stated, my spirituality has always been of a rather private nature, even when I was free to have my books and cards and things out in my own home, as now, I have always opted to treat it as a part of me that is just accepted but not necessarily something I feel the need to share with EVERYONE.
 
But I have also noticed that my spirituality has been changing through the years as well. I no longer feel quite “right” calling myself a “Wiccan” because I feel that as a solitary practitioner of no set Tradition it is hard to justify my “training”. In point of fact, I do not have any formal “training” in the priesthood of the Wiccan Traditions, and have fallen more into the category of layperson. I feel that, having felt so spiritually unwelcome in my own home for so long, I am now in need of really and truely revisiting the deeper site of my spirituality.
 
Rather than starting off as if nothing had happened, as if I could just pick up my Book of Shadows from where, as a 21 year old girl, I had left off, I decided to start on a Seeker’s Path to discover what it is that I NOW, at age 34, feel CONNECTION with. And I am fully aware that to do this means setting down some of the old familar patterns of “practice” and openning myself up, fully, to looking at figuring out what works for ME. Not worrying about creating a Tradition of my own, not worrying (right now) about fitting into an already established Tradition, not worrying (right now) about joining a formalized Coven… but just truely SEEKING.
 
Part of this is my ongoing wish to create a piece of sacred space for myself within my home. It is ongoing, right now, because I am still very much in the process of unpacking the things that I have taken from my old life and sifting through those things to make space for what is truely NECESSARY for me. So, its slower going than, it seems, those who feel free to judge these types of things for others might necessarily be happy with. But its not forgotten. There are plans in the works… but there are many plans in the works and they are all intertwined physical-emotional-psychological-spiritual-theoretical and just because I might not have quite gotten through the cleaning out (physcial/psychological/emotional) phase in order to cleanse (spiritual) and create (physical) and dedicate (spiritual) my own sacred altar.
 
Pam’s Life Lessons:
  • my spirituality is MINE and I have every right to share or not share this aspect of myself as I see fit
  • I have no real NEED for my potential partners in life to be PAGAN, as long as they can accept that I am
  • I can be happy SEEKING my own Path as long as I have the freedom to connect to the Greater Divine on my own terms
  • I accept that things will happen when the time is best, and I will get up an altar when everything comes together to make it right.
  • I can be a spiritual person without having to necessarily have everyone around me share my spirituality
  • I can be a spiritual person and enjoy my connection to the Greater Divine in the small things in life and be quite happy
  • I have the inalienable right to choose who I share my spirituality with, how I share it, and how much I celebrate my spirit, and no one has the right to question ME on what I might NEED or WANT out of my PERSONAL and PRIVATE spiritual journey
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This is the blog of a 30-something woman. I am a single mother of 2 children (7 year old son, 5 year old daughter). I am a Solitary Wiccan. I am walking a Pagan Path. I am separated and going through a divorce. I am a geek girl. I am a nature’s child. I am a seeker. I am a talker. I am sometimes jubilant, sometimes creative, sometimes anxious, sometimes bitter… I run the gamut of emotions as I go through walking not only my Pagan Path but my everyday daily LIFE Path. 

My interests include creativity, art, crafts, magick, nature, spirituality, writing, collecting blank books, pens and office supplies, technology, myths, massive multi-user online role playing games (WOW, Second Life), kids, colours… hell… I might write on ANYTHING that strikes my fancy.


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