Short and sweet

The minutes are slipping away until the in-laws come to visit and I still haven't scooped the cat boxes today! AAAAAAHHHHHH! So for the moment I'm gonna keep things quick then hope I get the chance to spend a bit more time a little later on. I haven't found a new blog to follow in a while so I decided to click a link from one of the blogs I already follow and see what I'd find. Silly me I clicked on...

Have you seen how honkin big this list is??? lol Needless to say I just can't go through all the blogs on this list today so instead I thought why not sign up? Then I can take the rest of my life to browse all these blogs if I really want to, right? I don't want to dash willy-nilly through them! I like to take my time, savor the experience, and delight in the anticipation of the blogs still to read. Plus, hello! Pagan here! lol And on the whole some of the most wonderful people I've ever met have been Pagan. I really think that there's something about a religion that a person can tailor to suit them while still sharing at least some beliefs with the whole, a religion that's positive, loving, and accepting, that really brings together some of the best and most interesting people. So I haven't read your blogs yet but believe me, I'm looking forward to reading them, learning more about everyone, and seeing some friendly faces!

Strip Tease

That's what I consider this whole mad venture of mine to be, a strip tease, with an odd twist. Instead of a rowdy crowd waiting impatiently for the next piece of clothing to drop revealing the secret tidbit of delectable skin beneath I envision a very normal woman up on that stage. She could fit in anywhere, she appears to be your stereotypical soccer mom, and looks like she's got it all under control. She's apple pie, baseball, and red, white and blue all wrapped up in a sweet, comforting mom shaped package! Then she starts shedding bits of clothing that have been covering up the truth beneath...

Why she's not a typical soccer mom at all! She's the cancer hiding inside our society! She's the whole reason our nation is going down the toilet! Monster! Whore! Devil worshipper! And somehow the fact that she had the crowd fooled at first makes it so much worse than if she'd just come out on stage looking like the monster she really is. It makes them even angrier. Maybe they feel cheated out of what they expected to get? Maybe but that's not all of it. No, the bulk of their hatred comes from their fear. If she could look like one of them, if she managed to fool them into thinking for even an instant that she was normal, then deep down they fear that there might be far more of her monstrous kind out there successfully hiding! Why these monsters could be hiding in our government, churches, schools...they could be anyone!

Well I guess I've pussyfooted around it long enough and it's time to give my readers their first, solid peek at what's hiding beneath a bit of the clothes. I'm Pagan.

It happened in my late teens. I couldn't buy enough books to keep up with my voracious appetite for them! Then one day, quite by chance since I was looking in a different section completely, I found a book on Wicca. I sat in that bookstore for almost a half hour, tears pouring down my face, as I quickly scanned through the book to absorb the overall topic and feel. I felt just like that starving, shivering little child standing in the snow staring in the window at a family in a loving, warm home piling the table high with mouth watering delights but some kind soul had opened up the door and said, "Come in, sweetheart. There's plenty for all and we've saved a place just for you."

I studied and meditated, questioned and learned. I branched out to learn all I could about as much as I could in a quest for pure understanding. I learned at least some about Shamanic, Druidic, Buddhism, and more. I remember such good times in those innocent years. I even attended a protest in which people of a different religion came and shouted hateful, hurtful things at us while we sang songs about love and building bridges of understanding between us. The one thing I remember best from that day was seeing their little ones dressed in their (HOT!) Sunday best looking miserable and wilted in the heat. Worried for them I asked one of our leaders if we couldn't at least offer their children a bit of water? She put a hand on my shoulder and sadly said, "We can't. If one of those children got so much as a sniffle afterwards they'd say we put something in the water to harm them." I should've realized then. I should've run my butt into the nearest closet to hide my religion from the world but I was young and naieve. I was made brave on the notion that Wicca is a recognized, legal religion in a land that believes in religious freedom and protected by the Constitution. What a fool.

When I finally divorced my abusive spouse of more than 10 years I knew he'd play dirty because he knew exactly how to keep me under control married or not, through my children. I desperately wanted to snatch that control away from him and protect my babies. I was so idealistic! I really believed that if I marched into court and told the truth that was exactly what I'd get. I'll never forget the pure malice in his lawyer's voice when she sneeringly asked me my religion. I held my head up high as my lawyer objected on the grounds of my Constitutional rights. But it felt like everything inside of me just dropped through the floor leaving me an empty, shocked husk when the judge ordered me to answer the question.

People say that time heals all wounds. I say those that truly think so have never been wounded bad enough. Oh I share custody with my husband and have even managed to mostly fight my way free of him controlling me through the children after a few years! But nothing can ever replace the precious time I've lost with them. It's one wound that will never heal in me. You only get so many years, a limited number of hours to spend with your children and every minute is so precious! Every bit of time that slips away is time that can never be replaced! How do you cope when approximately half of even that limited amount of time has been torn away from you? Nothing can ever fix that!

The other is the wound they gave me when I stood up proud and true, innocent of any wrongdoing, but still they spat on me, ripped away my rights, shredded my confidence in people, my feelings of security in doing what's right. And one of the scariest things to me is they did it so easily! There were no courtroom dramatics, no great fuss, just a few words spoken and it was over. I sat there in front of all of them bleeding inside in shock, not understanding how it all happened.

So there's one of my secrets for you, as promised, but there's plenty more of them to come! Even more, there's worse to come still so keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times, please secure any loose items, and hold each other tight!

Happy Halloween

Halloween is one of my two all time favorite holidays of the year. I don't have any particular fond memories of Halloween's past but I don't have any specific bad memories either. No, one reason I love Halloween so much is I'm able to act a bit more like a child with some of my favorite people in the world, my children. When I was young I did miss out on a lot of being a child being the oldest with two alcoholic parents. I've really worked out that issue from my past more or less but it is a marvelous treat for me when I can retrieve a bit of that lost childhood.

Our neighborhood does an extra special Halloween too! We live out in the country in a kind of big circle. The day before Halloween we all get together at one house to socialize and eat pot luck dinner then we all load up in little flatboard trailers for a hay ride around the circle. Since most of our driveways are so long everyone who wants to participate puts a little table out by the road with a big bowl full of goodies. We slowly go from one table to the next laughing as the stampede of children leap from the hay and their excited crows of delight as they discover what's in each bowl. They get plenty of candy but then they still have the option of going elsewhere on Halloween proper to trick or treat if they wish.

On the one hand I truly love our neighborhood but I also dread the pot luck part of the evening. I don't really know anyone there, though I've met a few of them two or three times briefly now, and feel horribly shy, scared, and awkward. But the hayride part of the evening and seeing the children's bright eyes and huge grins make it all worth any discomfort. I really work at these special times of year to make sure that my children will have fond holiday memories to look back on. Hmm, not that I don't work to make every day special but...you know what I mean!

Another reason this holiday is so special to me is because it's the day we call Samhain. For us this is a day when the division that normally seperates the dead from the living is at it's thinnest so that there's a greater chance of contact between us. It's a day for remembering and honoring those that have passed on like my brother and child (RIP my dear ones). Likewise it is a time to remember that the wheel of life is always turning and so to are the seasons as Winter comes like death to the world. This is the time when the Crone rules all. Her ways seem unbearably cruel sometimes, she's responsible for culling the weak and old, but she also teaches us that the old must make way for the new. She is the end all, be all of true tough love! Samhain is also the very best time of year to "kill" our vices, bad habits, negative feelings, and all within us that is not based and motivated by love.

This is why this is a truly blessed, magickal holiday and very dear to me. Happy Halloween and a blessed Samhain to you all!