About them bad behaviors

Maybe I have been silent too long, maybe I have just let things build up but right now I just cannot let it go anymore, I guess the inner bitch or witch or both have finally had enough and here goes!

I know we all wish we could always only deal with positive and love and light but it just does not happen that way.....let's see just this week in my own life there have been glaring examples of this, as much as I send positivity, love and spend my time with my altars, candles, incense the Fae and the Gods there are still moments where it just cannot be positive, you just simply have to deal with the negative and no amount of glitter or light thrown at it will change that. It is simply a sad truth that we must deal with as humans.

This week for me was a glaring moment of wow, not a good wow moment but a horribly disappointing one, that then lead to feelings of anger eventually at the very clear reality that no matter what I do I will forever have to battle for each step forward. No matter what circles I may move in, no matter how much I give there will always be someone that is not happy about my growth, slightly jealous I guess; although of what I have not quite figured out, but yet they must be in order to go to my fan page on Facebook and report MY status as spam.....let me be totally clear here, my page, my status and yet somehow me posting it made it spam.......yes and they did not do this just once no over a period of 3 days they reported 6 different posts, and followed posts to other pages and reported theirs too......not ugly, vulgar or any other type of maybe offensive posts, just regular posts, just because they felt like being malicious, just because they could and by doing so they created havoc for me and my page, or at least tried to. I will survive it so will the page, and at the end of the day I will be sad for the people that are so empty inside that they must hurt others to make themselves feel better.

Sad truth is though that most witch hunts like the one that I just lived through originate right from within the witch community. There is always one debate or another about how witchy this one is or that one, these are things I refuse to be a part of, we are all witches of our own kind at the end of the day. No matter that we all know the same quarters and call them by different names, we all have our own Gods and call them by different names, and all that is just fine by me, I just wish others could be as accepting, or at the very least if it is not for you then just walk away but why try to hurt others as you do? doing that doesn't make you a very good witch or human for that matter.

Needless to say days later the page is still feeling the effects now thanks to the wonderful way that Facebook does things, which in turn affects my life.....so yay you! you won on this occasion you wanted to hurt me and you did, yay you! hope it makes you feel a tiny bit of joy in that cold heart of yours, me I am going to scrape my knees off and pick up again and keep going......bigger, better and moving on, I have heaps of experience on this subject, not giving up is my specialty!

Blessings, love, hugs and smiles to all those that want them!

Bows of Lace and Stars of Locust

A bit of a glaring look at life within the walls of those that are not so fortunate at this time of year, a play on words, a little of a well known story; with a twist to open the door and let others peer inside. There is a reality that we face living in poverty, all of us, no matter how much we tell ourselves that the spirit of this season, regardless of what religion you are, the spirit of this season is one of good will and giving within humanity; one of miracles and happiness, but for many like us it is a moment of glaring clarity of all that we cannot provide, give or expect in our lives.

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house all the creatures were scurrying, looking for that mouse

The stockings are empty and the chimney is not there, the Yule tree sits bright, lights flashing. It's branches laden with glitter and ornaments placed with care, underneath it completely bare. 

The turkey sits waiting for crisping and cooking, no stuffing or dressing, gravy or cranberries to share.....a simple meal of poultry and potatoes for all who are there. 

Momma sits and leans in Papa's arms, tears glistening; love being all she has to give to her heirs......no matter the work, no matter how hard, the hole was too big to make much repair. 

She snuggles her boy and hugs him tight, a tear spills from her eyes, finding his tiny cheek; he kisses her face; his little voice whispers "Mom, I love you to infinity!" 

Together they lay out the cookies, a glass of milk, and a prayer that next year will be better, this year to be a distant memory, filled with struggle and strain to be replaced with a year born in gain. 

Poverty and Pain are not to remain. 

Last week I shared a link to a post that only the working poor would understand, the lack of dental for one, boy does my family know that one! the vehicle that doesn't always get you where you are going but yet it is not affordable to replace, repair is more likely when possible.....and that hopefully you know how to do yourself or you may just find yourself SOL. The reaction to that post was amazing, so many of us in the same boat, so many of us living just under or straddling that poverty line, and yet we work, most of us quite hard but cannot break through that blasted line, then along comes this season, and us parents we cringe......not looking forward to the disappointed faces of our children, something that was also brought up in that post, it became quite the discussion, will they remember this disappointment? or is it more something that us parents carry around with us......I am inclined to lean towards the latter of the two.

When I was child I wanted Fashion Plates, so so badly, I hounded my father for this particular toy! begged him constantly and asked him please could I have this for Christmas, he of course agreed that yes I could. Days later he came to me and handed me a small piece of paper, I remember looking at it and wondering what is this, well it was a picture of my beloved Fashion Plates and he said to me "here now you have it, I told you you could have it" big smile on his face, and he walked away chuckling......of course I was so upset thinking this was the closest I was going to get to my beloved toy, only to open it excitedly the next week.........I played with them for a short time, and like many other of my toys I would have forgotten all about them if it had not been for the little slip from the catalogue that my dad had cut out, that I kept much longer.......I hope with my children that they have these little stories to remember too, to make up for the lean times there is only one way to ever make up for them......Love.

It may be cliche, or polyanna, or who knows whatever the hell else anyone wants to say, but when you live this life, and you struggle to keep it all going, then hanging onto love and kindness is sometimes all you have....not the type of kindness that is shown with the idea of gain, but genuine from the heart, give you my last morsel of food type of kindness....the kindness stories of this time regale us with.....miracles in time.....magic

As the boy sleeps, the stockings will dance, taking their place under bows of lace, and stars of black locust, filled with dreams, hearts, love and grace. 

From our family to yours, may you find all the blessings of the season have made it to your stockings as well!

My Yule letter

I'm older now but I am more me than I have ever been, at times the reality of this brings tears of emotion to my eyes spontaneously, suddenly overwhelmed by the sheer expanse of who I used to be to who I am now. I was digging around in my heart this last bit, thinking that now there were no more corners left in it that I had not explored when I realized that no there was one little bit STILL left hidden, locked away too painful to deal with...this last year, well since February it has been one hell of a ride, of clearing, and dropping old luggage, things that had taken residence in the darkest corners of my heart, long since now covered with so many cobwebs I barely knew they were there, but they were still leaching out their venom every so often. I have to say for years I like most people read horoscopes but didn't pay much attention to anything much about the actual planets and where they were in the sky other than the Moon I wasn't much interested in Astrology, but after this year and following the cardinal cross, the alignments through the time since and seeing how it has played out in my own life I must give it a ton of respect....some days through this year it was the warning in the planets combined with my prophetic visions that prepared me for the hard shit I have dealt with.

This has been one of the hardest stretches of inner work ever for me! Control, yes with kids every mother knows that they have to take care of everything....know everything, and be prepared for every moment! hardest thing in the world to step away from that and do as Yemaya tells me; Ride your wave my child......the wave that has now taken me to to the bottom of Hecate's cauldron, conversations and moments that run deep as I stand between the two that walk with me and guide me on my passages, my transitions and faced my own shadow and light. A lifetime ago is now almost forgotten, the person I was is like someone that you vaguely remember but can't place their name....the sadness that used to be there for that little girl is now thankful for that pain that brought release, freedom from shackles of convention, and very necessary growth, the alternative very clearly a death of my spirit, a life in a shell of nothingness. That pain set me on the road to me.

On Monday I decided it was time to slash and burn, let it all go, all the things that I have worked on so hard to understand this entire year, one of those things with me I do not necessarily have to agree with people I just need to understand their motives, if I can do that then it stops being an issue for me. This is not a small undertaking, and me well I am like that Ironman runner you know, gone through so many of the different parts of the course and now is at the virtual end, the finish line in sight the excitement comes and you cross it on a high......then the exhaustion kicks in and although in your mind you know how great this is, the prep, the work, the reality of what you just put yourself through still leaves your emotions slightly red and raw, and your muscles numb needing to rest to regroup. I imagine standing at a window looking out and wondering what is next on the circuit, what is the next step on the path? then my heart says it matters not you know to just step and the path will materialize under your feet......trust, believe, have faith the real lesson of your life, to stop, to trust and to let go.

So here is me letting go; To all those that have hurt me, to those that I have hurt, to one and all.....I send love, I send forgiveness and I apologize for the ways in which my life may have caused hardships in yours. I wish you the best, blessings, abundance and much love.

To the Gods and the Ancestors I say; I seek no earthly leaders for my faith, trust and love is in the ones that have always walked alongside me long before my birth. Thank you for all you have given me in my life, my heart overflows with love and your glow fills me. I lay my heart in your hands, in faith I continue down my own road, dancing to the beat your drum.........I pledge to never forget and to always serve you with an open heart.

My words, my life, my path......Blessed Yule to you! May Blessings of love, peace, prosperity and health find you one and all!

Hold onto your Magic

My day starts the same way everyday, I wake up and groan as I try to get out of bed. For the last almost six months I have lived in a constant agony of pain, some days are better than others but for the most part it hurts. I sit more than I used to, I get tired faster as well, but I keep going. While things are getting better on one level they are still hard on many others; like many of you out there that read my blog, because at the end of the day we all have our own issues in our lives that make our lives difficult, none of us are immune to the daily struggles of life on Earth. Still though this week a few times I kinda lost my shit; let it get to me and vented a bit on my wall, and then of course a whole heck of a lot to the lucky ones that messaged me to find out what the scoop was. Yep that is right I let my crazy have free reign a little this week, as uncomfortable as that may make some people, yep that is right I noticed the drop in friends and it made me think about a statement I made a while back.......What if I told you our biggest problem is not religion, politics or money. It is our disconnection from our own humanity.

Big statement that one, isn't it? so what gives me the authority to make such a huge statement? did I study in a university? or have some schooling that qualifies me to make such a statement? nope, nope and nope but my qualifications come from a much higher source when it comes to making a statement like that, my right to say this comes from the undeniable truth that I am very human. I have now lived in different stations in life, within different cultures and in entirely different ends of my local geography. I began with a life 46 yrs ago in an infinitely different place than where I am now. I have been daughter, mother, wife and sister. I have been comfortable, wealthy and dirt poor. Not only have I seen and been all these things but I have watched myself and others and how things change within and without as circumstances around us change. You cannot live through what we have just gone through and continue to try to pull ourselves out of without it affecting you on an inner core level, well at least in my humble opinion, so if that is not enough qualification for you then stop reading now, for others let me tell you this is some serious shit!

Why are we so afraid of human emotion? is it really somehow so ugly and disgusting of us to admit to weakness, or to even admit to another that we may need help? I find it so sad to realize that help is one of those things that we should be able to all rely on in each other, but in truth the world has become such a cold and bitter place at times, and when you have no money it becomes an even colder one. Our governments hand out stiffer sentences to those that steal money from them than they do those that rape or murder, somehow creating this prevailing energy that human life is much less important than the economy and government coffers. Can it be any wonder that our society values and measures your success by the car you drive? Let me tell you a little story; yesterday my husband and I were out with our beat up old Chevy truck, our old money maker back from when things were good and what we had we shared with all those around, she is not great now but she still runs like a dream......we stopped at the gas station and inside was a local man we recognize from the grocery store not a particularly memorable person other than his envious energy and need to gossip really stands out, and yesterday maybe it was the full moon or maybe it was the week I had, I had enough, my truck is old but she runs well and takes care of me, my home as my husband says it may not be the Taj Mahal but I find shelter and love here, I may not have tons of money but I am happy in my life and for the hard bits I hold onto my magic. Well let us just say he could not look at me, even when I passed him once again in the middle of town, if he could have found a hole to crawl into he would have. 

After some time the husband well he is finally back to work, it will take some time to pull us out of that hole that just well grew to the size of an enormous crater, and it will continue to feel like every day when we crawl a little further up the side the ground might just cave below us, but still we will keep going. Everything costs in this world, even the ability for him to work costs us money we don't have till he works a bit, it is a constant cycle of outflowing before it will start to really flow inwards and remain. There are bills to pay, things to take care of that do not wait, responsibilities that require taking care of, these are the realities of life....the car I drive no matter how old is irrelevant, at this point I am simply glad I still have a vehicle that keeps going. You tell me if that man is thinking about how hard my human struggle is or if he is just poking at someone he sees as having less than him.....you tell me if you think he has lost his humanity or if he retains it when he goes to church on Sundays only? or is that just to keep everyone else from pointing and mocking him as he does to others? how connected to the creator/ess is that behaviour? 

Every day I get up and I do the same thing, I groan as I move, then I light the candle on my altar and chant for a new day that is opening before me. Everyday I ask for the protection, love and understanding to go out into the world. I ask that my family and the families of those in need be taken care of. Everyday I sign onto my page, my little piece of me and I offer to help, I extend love and blessings to those that come my way. I create and I bend wire as I try to help pull my family out of this circumstance, everyday I hold onto my magic as I craft the life I want to live around me. I post moments hoping that the eyes reading them will feel the magic and let it fill them, rather than get stuck on the realities of the words. I figure if one person is reached then it maybe can create an avalanche of change. I pray for the day that we all can be connected and feel for each other the way it should always have been, the day where we cannot stand to see our fellow humans in pain because it hurts us if we do. It is only because our connection has faltered that religion, politics or money have even been able to become such a problem. I could sit and see things the way that man does, I could feel as negative and greedy with life as he is, but everyday I choose to strengthen that connection rather than let it die, I choose to hold onto my magic.

Everyday I start my day the same way.....I say a prayer for you, won't you join me? see if we can turn this shit around? 

No I am not Perfect

Never have I said I was perfect, not a bit, not a lot not even an inch of perfect is wrapped up in me, I am what I am and life is what it is. I come from a respectable family and on the outside it is all lollipops and fancy crocheted socks, on the inside it was hard, lonely and lacking in direction. All I knew as a kid was that I was starved for love, so I looked for it, I searched and found what I thought was an all consuming love, a heart that called to mine and eyes that I could not look in without getting totally lost in the dream of a life filled with love that was all for me.  I wanted nothing more in my life at the time, just the feeling that I had when I laid in those arms, strong, young and in my innocence and stupidity of youth I thought love would win all the battles and we would be together forever....I didn't much think past that, I was 16.

I sit here 30 years later, exactly, looking back on the train wreck that was my life.....hell no I am not even kind to myself in some of that; even though there is plenty of them that already tear a strip every so often from an already lashed back, no matter how many times people tell you the past is the past it is until it involves them........then they have memories like elephants and me I am never allowed to let it go and move forward......so let me just rip the fucken bandaid right off and expose the wound in its entirety......I tell my kids all the time guilt is an useless emotion that serves absolutely no purpose, feeling guilty and doing nothing about it is well useless, what growth comes from it? what release? in truth though I still drag that bitch around with me like a proverbial anchor around my foot. I let everyone down. I got married and didn't even know how to make automatic coffee, imagine that! boiling an egg well that was even worse. If I had written this blog a few years ago I would trash him right here, tell you that he was a horrible monster, truth is we were children playing at being adults, neither one of us had many skills at this home making thing, add to that parents that never let go to let us fall when it would have been a smaller bump than the end result crash with three kids involved. Now being an adult and a parent I can see that partly it was done out of love, but the result was not good.....maybe it was a way for them to make up the existence of a child that felt so out of place even in her own room that she ran to uncles and aunts, anyone that could see the hurt and loneliness, that offered a warm hug and a grandmother that just enveloped you in love......it is what it is and it was what it was.  I am not perfect.

Today I am faced with change, growth and stepping out of that old skin every day a bit at a time, one foot in front of the other....sometimes I look back and I think my life started when the other one ended, I do not recognize that person anymore, but every so often the fallout reaches my shores, I am once again reminded of who I was, what I walked away from and once again I am forced to feel the pain of the past, the moments that should be happy and I should cry tears of joy end up creating tears of pain and anguish for those that I lost along the way to reclaiming me, for their lack of understanding and inability to let go of the past and move forward and for what I know will come knocking at their doors for their judgments, my own flesh and blood; people wonder why I say that blood is only what we are forced into but it does not connect us, hearts do that, the will to want more, the love that is born out of purity not obligation.  Obligation is ego in disguise, do the right thing in the eyes of those watching so that you may receive a great pat on the head and smiles of acceptance....yea long as you are a good girl, guess I was born wearing the black cape already.

All of this at times makes me buckle under the pressure and the weight of everyone that still relies on me today....so I write and I bend wire, I create and I apply magic where the pains still surface, I send love to what I cannot fix, and I pray for their release as well as mine....and today well this is the ramblings of a hurt old witch, I grew and became the woman I should have always been but it was not at no cost.....this is my day to sit and remember and cry the cleansing tears of release.....we all need that sometimes.....sending love and a slanted half hurt smile to those that want them today.

New Moon Blessings

A blank page stares at me, my fingers itching to write, my mind filled with so many thoughts that it is so very hard to formulate but one to start with, and the events of the last week or so roll around in there....the happiness, the celebration of course followed by the disappointment and finally the stages of grief, and yes I say grief, not grief from the death of a loved one but the kind of ripping pain you feel when someone that you are connected to in a most fundamental way let's you down so much. That kind of pain that is with you even when you tell yourself that you are lucky, you are rich in so many other ways, surrounded by love and those that just want to uplift you but yet your heart yearns for only that one moment of recognition from that person that withholds it, knowing you deserve all the love they should be showering on you, expecting each year to be different but age only shows that nothing changes. Maturity, understanding and love reserved for death beds and moments of reckoning with their own gods, amazing how facing their own mortality can have that affect on those kinds of frozen, concreted and bereft of feeling hearts? and although I am referring to one specific incidence in my family recently, I could be drawing attention to quite a few of extended relationships that my immediate family members deal with. It is what it is, a big saying around our home it just is what it is, it really is not personal, as odd and difficult as it may be for some to get the concept of how it could not be personal since you feel like you are personally being mistreated, seems ridiculous huh? well way I look at it is the way someone else treats you is based on their own inner workings, when you are sure in yourself of your own beliefs, who you are, your own moral compass and you feel it is directed properly, by far none of us are perfect and all we can strive for is to be good humans, good people then when you do that and someone still mistreats you it is their issue, their personal problem to deal with not yours.

Cut and dried huh? well it has taken years of us discussing these things back and forth and many blended spiritual practices and thoughts to come to this place where we can deal with the realities of our relationships and lives with each other openly, without the blow ups of the past, there are still tears and moments of anger but they are more within our control and about expressing feelings without shouting and screaming, more discussions that run late and deep into the night and bucketloads of black gold. These moments are the ones we reach for old faithful energy lifting things like our favorite movies....this weekend it was Practical Magic, it actually has been that movie quite often...no not because of the somewhat unbelievable Hollywood additions to the magical moments, for moments of magic that you would find unbelievable I have plenty of them in my own life ~ remind me someday to tell you about the year the snakes came to roost in our home ~ anyway I have always loved the movie because of the two sisters, their strength, devotion and love of each other and their family but especially each other, the love story was secondary to me.....but watching it this weekend with someone else that although they have watched it with me often they have never really watched it like they did this weekend, well even for me it was an eye opener......as one sisters life unravels and the other steps in to help suddenly they could see how the first spell was suddenly coming to life, starting to weave it's energy, this brought up the most interesting discussion that ran two days about energy, how it weaves into our lives and connects us....about how it is adverse to our lives and those of others when we try to hold on to that energy and not allow it flow, back and forth, completing its cycle. Amazing isn't it that to anyone in this world the way a light bulb works with the flow of energy ever constant never stopping is so well understood, hell we even as kids created those lights with potatoes but yet so many of us have trouble understanding that same concept in our own lives, in our communities and with our own families.

It has been a very difficult stretch in the last five to six years now, there has been so much growth, so many things clearer now to us, so many lessons explained in painstaking clarity. There was a time that everytime one lesson was done I would secretly think ok awesome this must mean the road ahead is clear now and it will be smooth sailing now.....then well you know the rest. I won't deny that those moments make it hard, even for me the eternal optimist, I get tired too....I have been asked many times how I do it, keep going, lift myself up time and time again, and I have said many times faith.....for me watching that movie this weekend partly through fresh eyes of one I love well I realized part of it is the sisterhood. I grew up as an only child, it was lonely, it was sad and there were many moments of wishing for a sister of some sort, someone to talk to, share my dreams and hopes with, but there wasn't. Aunts were great, but you could only tell them so much, cousins are wonderful but for me all were younger than me, other than male ones and well those I wasn't looking to share my dreams with much less too many words.....adolescent Portuguese males in the 80's in downtown Toronto were not necessarily all that liberating when it came to how they felt about women, of course not all of them but majority of them. What I longed for my entire life was sisterhood, community, a sense of belonging.....a place where I never doubted my role or my value to the greater whole, hell I created my own family that is blended and the lines are so blurred now that we revel in the fact that love reigns and bloodlines are irrelevant, and those that don't well I guess bloodlines are really irrelevant to them so how can I fault them for that decision? after all we all learn on our own what is truly important to them, I can't and I won't so on we go......

Facebook many times takes a ton of hits, many complain about its drama quotient, well yea its pretty bad at times I know! but in truth the internet and Facebook combined have given me the ability to find my extended family, my sisters and brothers too. In a society where so many of us feel alone at times, especially us solitary practitioners it has become a place to connect with those that are of like mind and at times we are lucky and find a part of us that was missing. For me that is what it has become. I cannot tell you how many times in the last almost 8 years on there ~ and yes I said 8 years!~ that I have held hands virtually with a sister and sent love to support her and her family....or that a brother has stopped to just chat with me when they may not have known that at that moment I needed a friend too, someone to just say hello how are you...amazing something like Facebook, a tool so many of us take for granted, has so very many times connected me with those all over the world that feel my heart when it breaks, just as I feel their spirits when they soar. Something changes in the heart of a solitary witch when she finds that community, or at least it does for this witch. It is as if the knowledge of the ancients opens before me, supported it seems so much easier to see that which was hidden in the shadows around me, and the shadow no longer holds the same fear of darkness, more of an understanding and clarity of purpose. In all things and people there is good and bad, it is our choice how we use it. I chose growth, so now I don't do the little happy dance thinking ok yea smooth sailing anymore, no, now I sit back and absorb, pondering the words and sniff at it, swirl it around in my chalice as you would fine cognac, I let the smoke from my altar billow and rise as the connections in the lesson form, as the magic shows me what I am to gather from this moment, what I am to let go of and what I am to carry forward....

Today as I lit my altar, as I have come to do everyday, I sat back and just enjoyed the constancy and flicker of the candles both different but yet the same, as the little one did his little morning ritual of sweeping the kitchen I enjoyed watching him and realizing this was his moment of connection with his one little magical tool, his own broom, it reinforced in me that I never want to not enjoy the simplest of moments with eyes closed and a heart that does not see ever again.....community, belonging, sisterhood, family best lessons ever and in my opinion you can never fully grasp its enormity in your life because love is ever changing, support is always shifting and there is always something to learn about those you love, when we stop doing that we start taking each other for granted, and that is never a good lesson.

As the US Thanksgiving approaches for the first time in our home we are going to celebrate it, we are going to sit and let each other know around our table what we are thankful for in our lives, and how very thankful we are for each other, for the food we eat, the roof over our heads and for all of you that share in our lives and in our hearts. I am extra thankful that hard times bring us closer now rather than tear us apart, for that alone I am ever grateful, this was really a wonderful New Moon for us, plans are made and bonds reaffirmed. 

Blessings all! I send out blessings and love to you all!

Happy Anniversary Witch's Chamber!!

Today is the anniversary of the day I took back me, and I have spent this last year looking back on my life, going over bit by bit, moment by moment, analyzing my actions, who I was, who I became and how I did it.  I realized in all that time that I am pretty thankful that I walked onto this path.  I was headed down this road that well for me would have surely meant a death to my soul.  When I was first married at 16 I couldn't cook, I was timid and quiet most times and well there was no way I could ever plant anything it would surely die! I look back now and realize that although at that point I dabbled and played with what at the time I considered the occult, I had no idea what path I was headed down and how much it would change me, witchcraft in the shadows saved my life. I kept that part of me hidden and kept doing what everyone thought was the right thing for a girl like me, a good little Portuguese girl, well even by the cultures standards I was already not one of those, although I had not done any of the things that classified you as a bad girl for whatever reason that reputation had already attached itself to me in my early years.  Some said it was my dad, since he had been the dark horse all those years I had graciously inherited the title so I worked harder to please, to make them stop talking.....well that created the worst pattern in my life, the people pleasing one, that somehow ate up all of who I was meant to be.

Life has sucked at times, not to put down the word suck because there are times that sucking can be so good! but this time instead of sucking honeysuckle flowers it has sucked sour grapes, and that I am not into. There was a time that I would look at all that bad stuff and think well as long as I never set my heart up for breaking by expecting the best then I will never be hurt or disappointed when the best doesn't happen.....should work right? nope! that was the worst thing I did! My heart is just not built that way, as I have come to realize there is a little bit of me that always looks at the best first, even when it is a bad situation I find the good in it, so that means for all those years I lived conflicted in those thoughts, how did I figure it out for myself? simple! I put everyone else's needs first, not just my kids, or my family but everyone! I became not important, non existent and the last person I thought of in any matter.....I made myself a second class citizen. Not such an original tale is it? us women we do this to ourselves a ton! we put our parents first as we grow, our partners first when we are older, then come kids and they come first, our jobs, our friends and on and on, we prioritise ourselves right out of the whole entire picture and then one day we wake up and suddenly we see that we are lost......that was me when my father passed.....suddenly that rock solid plateau I could always rest on when I tried to clear some of my patterns and reached for growth was gone....I relied on that rock for so long I lost my balance and freefell, open for all kinds of manipulation from all sorts of people, all I wanted to do was quietly lick my wounds, hibernate, disappear.....anything but center stage where I was suddenly put.

Then the vultures came out, once again let me be clear I love vultures in the wild but when people take on the attributes of vultures well they are not so damn attractive are they? They attacked every part of me, there was nothing off limits.  My health was used to be something that somehow was my fault, my weakness and the way that I let my family down, the fact that I collapsed from overwork and went into a full SLE episode, had to have surgery to remove lumps from my breast, could barely walk or function outside of my home, I was now scum and not worth the time to talk to. It was a time of pointing out where in my life I had failed to live up to expectations, my protector gone I became free game, and I hung my head in shame, lost in a world of grief and pain. My saving grace was that thankfully I had already started my online world, my shop, my page and my gallery, it was my place to hide away from a world filled with pain, for which I took further heat....the whole thing about hiding behind a computer screen, well yea that is not me....I am who I am either online or live. Of course I met many that I love dearly and love me but hell there is a shitload of well what I have come to call plastics or plastic witches out there ~ there is that shit stirring of the cauldron again!~ So what did I do? well at first I buckled and let them ride over me, but then as the pressure in my personal life continued and my outlet was being ruled by pompous asses, I rose up and took back my presence, my life and who I am even online.....man what a bitch that made me to soooooo many people! both online and live!

I don't say much in my status' about it anymore but in truth they attack my page, me, and my shop all the time. They spread gossip and lies about things they don't know, tell people my products are not made by me, post about my cheap wire, oh let's not forget how they measure me on their witch scales to decide how truthfully witchy I am or not....hell I have even heard about how they decide and measure what they consider to be my failures in my life to decide how strong MY magic is. REALLY? yes really.......there is nothing that is ever hidden in the online world for long, people talk. These are the reasons I am so choosy about who I associate with, I do not share anyone on Witch's Chamber that I do not believe in, that I do not like their product or their energy, and trust me when I tell you I take flack for that. There are those that do not like this, those that have tried to control what I do on my own page, through threats of hurting the page, spreading more vileness or even have openly started stupid ass witch wars that I refuse to participate in. I REFUSE to be coerced into supporting anyone I do not believe in simply for MORE exposure! you either like me and my art or not! I will not pretend to be more than I am and will most certainly NOT pretend to be LESS! Most people who walk in our community know that these things happen, they realize that someone is always trying to gain the upper hand by underhanded methods, magic is a wonderful thing but it is an energy that will work in the way the practitioner asks of it, and trust me not all you meet work with it in a positive manner that benefits all those they touch, for that matter I am also a witch that will work freely both in the light and for lack of a better word dark, in balance, always in balance. 

My life is hard enough with all the challenges I face daily I have no time, patience or desire to deal with all the bullshit that comes associated with these plastics.  Today marks a year for me of standing up and reclaiming my independence and my strength, it marks a year of telling myself that I am better than that and I deserve better.  I have worked hard all year and run into more of the plastics from which I ran away from very quickly! they are still out there but my antennae are finally back fully in line and working so I listen to my messengers much better now.  I live authentically within my magic and mundane life and combine the two without division.  My magic is who I am, it lives and breathes with me and provides my faith for the life I am building, the dreams I have for my little business is that it will become easier to care for my family with my sales, my book that I am still working on, taking my art much further with wire and gems, my point being I have dreams and I finally ~even without that plateau my dad provided~ I am finally able to put in the time and dedication that I needed to all these years to being me, living authentically and magically.......I am able to do that because I finally realize that it was probably the most important thing I could have done for myself my entire life. 

I am able to do this not because I have had some amazing windfall, the money came through or I suddenly have no other obligations that I CAN put first, no all of those things remain the same, money is non existent! especially this week after home repairs!, I still have 6 kids to think of and one full time to care for, I still have a husband that requires time and caring especially now that he is semi retired, all those obligations and responsibilities that I love are still present BUT now I realize that unless I do that for myself I can never truly be happy within......

I guess I can say I found the happy spot inside of me, and it was ME all along! Imagine that! 

Onwards and Upwards! 

Blessings all!