Samhain Night: a Night of the Sacred, a Night of the Profane

Samhain with younger kids is always a balance between the sacredness of the thinning of the veil and the profane (everyday or non-sacred) of dressing up in silly costumes to collect as much candy as possible. Neither is more or less important to the joy of the holiday.

That is a contradiction that I have learned to embrace. The kitschy, even materialistic, aspects of a Holy Day can be as spiritually and emotionally satisfying as any ritual in the heart of a child.

Combining the two will leave the spiritual forever entwined with costumes at Samhain, or (conscientious) gifting at Yule, or feasting at any of the Sabbats.

Isn't that what the goal really is? To make the spiritual so much a part of life that is a natural part of it?

That's what I'm hoping for. No matter if the kids stay Pagan throughout their lives, they will always feel that extra awe of the sacred in the midst of holiday minutiae. 

Pagan Parent Confessional: I Had PPD & No One Knew

Full disclosure: I didn't have adequate time or insurance coverage, so I was never diagnosed. This is my assessment of my own mental state after both of my pregnancies, with three years of pre-med college, two years of working in the medical field, and a healthy respect for the fallacies of self-diagnosis.

I plastered on a smile when I went to work every day. I spent most of the day ignoring my co-workers, skipping breaks, and seeing how many days in a row I could get away without speaking a single word to anyone. I maintained a strict daily schedule to be able to get to work on time, wash laundry, and occasionally get groceries.

Speaking of groceries - for nearly five years, there wasn't a single trip to the grocery store that didn't end with me crying in bed for an hour.

Symptoms of PPD

• Anxiety - Like being either terrified or just numb every time I went out in public with my kid(s).
• Depression - A complete lack of motivation to do anything 90% of the time. Habit was my only friend.
• Mood swings - Crying jags, rage, fierce protectiveness.
• Irritability - Oh, yeah. I broke up with my now hubby because I found out I was pregnant again.
• Loss of interest - In people. In activities. In living.
• Thoughts of harming self or the child - Let me be perfectly clear. The first year, for both kids, this was a DAILY thing. Every single day. Either I wanted to be dead, or I had thoughts of hurting my kid(s). Every. Single. Day.

But How Did I Hide It?

Oh, I'm good. See, I'm the ultimate altruist. When I decided to go through with my pregnancies, I formally accepted the obligation to see these children into adulthood to the best of my ability. I literally made an oath.

Because of that, my feelings on the matter didn't matter. I shut the emotions away and made a schedule to keep us going even when I could barely string two words together without sobbing, and that was that. Score one for dissociation.

Years of being an introvert stuck in customer service jobs taught me how to fake a real-looking smile. Compartmentalization allowed me to enjoy brief moments of interaction in the midst of nearly constant emotional self-abuse.

It probably also helped that my friends never visited and seldom called, so how would they know? My parents helped, but got frustrated, and I simply accepted what was offered, seldom even asking for more.

And I just plain didn't speak about my pain. To anyone. If I spoke to anyone at all.

How Did I Get Through It?

Well, one could argue that I didn't. I still have flashbacks and crying jags over this stuff, which is now close to 8 years gone. I can't talk about it without feeling guilty because 1) I chose to keep my kids, 2) I actually do love my kids, 3) I was never diagnosed, and 4) nothing bad actually happened.

Secondly, I reached out once, to one person, and he responded. After my second was born, I found myself struggling once more. And I realized I missed him. I talked to him online and looked for signs that he'd grown a bit - I really couldn't tell you if he had or if I'd just been hoping - and I offered to let him move in with me.

I have since been slowly working with the pain - shadow work, the never-ending cycle of shadow work. I occasionally find a new detail or depth that I'd missed. And it all comes up again.

Mostly, I just feel disappointed. I feel cheated about my pregnancies, about my birth experiences, about my kids' infancy. Like, I could have enjoyed all of them more, if only...

So What?

So... help new mothers. It doesn't have to be much. Visit for an afternoon. Take her a meal. Hold the baby while she showers. Call. Talk to her about her, not the baby. So many women feel like their identities are overwhelmed by their new role as baby's mom. Visit again.

Even a new mom who doesn't have PPD needs these connections. Someone to listen to them. Someone to help them remember themselves. Someone to care about them.

This is sacred work. This is caring for the newly born Mother. This is mourning the Maiden's passing. This is celebrating life cycles in all their dirty, messy, chaotic, natural state. This is community and priest/essing.

This is Paganism.

The Nine Noble Virtues: a Modern Take - Self-Reliance (Cross-post)

Originally posted HERE.

The Nine Noble Virtues are a modern invention, so it seems my title is redundant. However, little seems to have been done to bring the concepts themselves from the past into the present.

I do not consider the NNV to be a historical reference. I do consider them to be a modern way of understanding cultural and even subconscious values that were stressed, if not perfectly, by those peoples lumped together as Norsemen.

This series will explore my thoughts on these values and, hopefully, start conversations about them in a modern context.

Self-reliance may be one of the most misunderstood concepts, in my oh-so humble opinion. We look at it from the highly individualist perspective of western culture, rather than the tribal lifestyle that the Norse peoples lived.

This means that we like to take the Libertarian road, where we would all do just fine so long as we were left to our own devices. But that's not how humanity has ever survived. We are horrible at being on our own.

Did you know that the top two factors in surviving in the wilderness are 1) being able to create fire, and 2) having someone with you? Even one other person can be the difference between life and death. So why would we need self-reliance?

Because self-reliance doesn't mean going through life alone. It has more to do with not being what is often referred to as a "sheeple." (Read Ralph Waldo Emerson for more.)

That's right. This isn't about growing your own food and building your own homes. Barn-raisings were a thing, and for good reason. That's a lot of work, and many hands make it better.

But if you don't think for yourself - understanding the group's mindset, but still looking at it critically - you are just a mindless body for the society. Mindless bodies don't make history. Mindless bodies don't make a society grow. Mindless bodies don't call out injustices and point out logic holes.

Thinking for yourself, being able to use your mind as an individual, makes you an invaluable part of any group. It doesn't replace the group, and the group doesn't replace it. Society isn't a machine, needing virtually identical cogs to function. It is a living, growing - dare I say enlightening - structure that should be promoting growth from all of its members.

Growth doesn't come from conformity. It comes from being slightly different. Small mutations in genes lead to new species. Small mutations in thought lead to new ideas, inventions, better ways of living... and, of course, STORIES!

Because stories feed us in ways that cannot be explained by biology. Stories feed our souls, and new stories are not created from static thinking.

So be self-reliant, not in some crazy, build-your-own-roads kind of way (unless that's what you really want...). Be self-reliant in that you consider ideas in your own way, you look at messages from the media and political propaganda with a critical eye. Those things that you've been fed by social conditioning? Think about them again, and be your own self in your beliefs.

Lammas: Settling Down and Celebrating Self

This post is also available HERE.

Each Sabbat brings with it a special meaning as part of the wheel of the year. The journey through the seasons is not just a physical one, but also mental and spiritual.

As we approach each Sabbat, we can grow with the seasons when we know the lessons each one brings us. This series explores the Sabbats' spiritual meaning in the context of modern Pagans.

Lammas is the time of year when we stop pushing the gas pedal. We aren't really slowing down, but we stop the energetic acceleration that began in the spring.

We begin to look forward to the more relaxed and introspective schedule of the dark half of the year, but we know we have some loose ends to tie up first.

This first harvest of three is a good time to look at what is growing in your life, what has borne fruit, and what needs to be pruned or cut out to keep the rest of the harvest healthy. It is also the time to begin celebrating your successes and gains. You've worked hard to make a plan and carry it out.

When those first grains give you a taste of the benefit of your efforts, you need to celebrate for it. Celebrate yourself for your work. Celebrate the gods for their aide. And celebrate the world we live in for everything we manage to accomplish.

It is important for us to celebrate, and even congratulate ourselves for, our accomplishments. We sweep so much of our work and efforts under the rug because it is just doing what is expected. But that minimizes us as effective and active participants in our own lives, and minimizes the energy we expend to improve our lives and the world around us.

This Lammas, take the time to celebrate you and what you have done. You deserve it.

The Nine Noble Virtues: a Modern Take - Industriousness

This was republished from HERE.

The Nine Noble Virtues are a modern invention, so it seems my title is redundant. However, little seems to have been done to bring the concepts themselves from the past into the present.

I do not consider the NNV to be a historical reference. I do consider them to be a modern way of understanding cultural and even subconscious values that were stressed, if not perfectly, by those peoples lumped together as Norsemen.

This series will explore my thoughts on these values and, hopefully, start conversations about them in a modern context.

Industriousness is an interesting subject in the modern sense. We like to believe that, in most ways, we are more lazy and less productive than our forefathers had been, and that we should get back to the good ol' days of hard, honest work.

However, numbers do not lie. Thanks to the advantages of technology, we produce more than ever before with less physical effort.

And that seems to be the crux of it all. Less physical effort.

We used to have to move our bodies to do everything. We had simple machines to help with the task, but hand-sewing and machine sewing are two very different animals. There are even machines that knit for us!

The truth of the matter is, we didn't used to work all that hard, either. Historically, the Jewish literally didn't even cook on Saturdays, and the good Christians ate cold food on Sundays... after spending all day at church. Yeah, all day.

Have you ever read the poem about what day you do what chore? This was COMMON! For families with eight or nine kids! I have two kids and we have to run a load of laundry every day to keep up.

Why? Because we change our clothes every day. And bathe every day.

Historically, bathing was a once a week or once a month activity. You had maybe two or three outfits for everyday, and a good shirt or dress for your religion day.

Clothes were made sturdier, yes, but they also were worn every single day for a whole week, unless something majorly dirty or damaging happened to them. Women wore aprons because aprons are easier to wash and mend then dresses.

And fun was spending an entire day travelling a few miles away for a barn raising, potluck and dance. Three days spent just to socialize! And that kind of thing happened a lot.

The problem isn't that we are lazier. We just have more efficiency, but with the same idea of what it means to work hard. Industriousness needs a redefinition, and this is my suggestion for that.

Industriousness is doing what you can in the current social system with your resources. It is acknowledging that intellectual and managerial work is just as valid as physical work, and vice versa. In many ways, it also means understanding the ways that work and production and income have grown, sometimes in vastly different and opposite ways.

Industriousness is about making yourself a part of a successful local and larger economy, improving the lives of those who are dependent on you and interact with you, and instilling your values of a productive life on those who come after you.

This can mean a person who works two jobs to support their family, but it can also mean the spouse/partner who stays home to keep all the balls in the air on that end. It can be a blue-collar worker who sweats through their shift, or the HR manager who makes sure employees are paid and treated fairly. It can be the loyal worker of 40 years, or the protesters who urge governments and companies to respect that loyalty.

Industriousness has become more complex as our society and economy have grown, but the value of working for the betterment of your kith and kin has not.

Mother Goddess, Immigrant Children, and the Pain of Social Consciousness

All throughout my social media feeds, I am inundated. Children crying, screaming, for their parents. People begging not to be sent back to the country they fled to save their lives. And my own people - Pagans who feel the compassion of Oneness, of Gaia as Mother to All, yet cannot stop the wailing that we, the United States, has caused.

This is a tragic time for us, living through this time of horrific deeds shared worldwide, unedited, unfiltered, in an instant. We see all of the pain and joy of everyone, for the first time, getting a taste of how overwhelming it must be to have omniscience.

There is no way to describe this new way of living. It used to be that a small handful of photos, taken by a war correspondent, printed months after the fact, could shock us as a nation. Now, those photos are shared, meme'd and seen hundreds of times.

It is easy to become numb. It is easy to mute the videos and the audio recordings. It is all in our faces, and it is easy to push them away to protect ourselves.

What isn't easy is the realization that this choice could place us on the wrong side of history. What isn't easy is plowing through contradictions and lies to find the facts. What isn't easy is to open our hearts and hear what the gods are telling us. What isn't easy is to take a stand and to be vocal about it.

In truth, nothing about this is easy. But that's the point. Life isn't easy. It isn't supposed to be. Life is a mountain. You don't get to the top by complaining about the incline.

As a Heathen, I believe in certain values. First, in my heart is the value of Hosting, or Hospitality. It is my duty as a human on this earth to aide travelers, visitors, and those fleeing danger. It is my honor to provide for them, knowing that someday they or their children will do the same for another.

As a mother, I believe in a single rule: Always protect the children. This is non-negotiable, and I accept that others may need to be... um, removed to do this.

As a Pagan, a member of a minority religion, I believe that every right and generous action given to women, minorities, immigrants, etc. PROTECTS my rights. In a fascist situation, I will be one of the last to have my rights stripped. I will not let it get to me and my children. The rights of more vulnerable people literally protect my rights.

So there's some things to consider as we all struggle through this mess.

What are you doing about this situation? Are you good with your choice? Should you be?

Pagan Children's Books Litha Newsletter

See the full Newsletter here.

It's time for Litha!

School is out! Our plans for the year are either in full swing or coming up soon! This time of year can be hectic and frustrating, and so much fun!

This would be a good time for kids and families to make some time to breathe. Camp and vacation is great, but are you stopping to enjoy everything along the way?

Don't be afraid to let things go, to say "no" to an activity, to just have a movie night instead of cramming another day-trip or public event in. And don't forget to check in with the rest of the family. Are they enjoying what's going on, or are they stressed from rushing around? Maybe they want more, maybe less.

Remember that the growth of your kids requires some down-time, even at this time of year.


There are some great activities you can do just for Litha. I'm pretty big on developing life skills, so I tend to focus on things that will help kids learn to take care of themselves later on.

Here's some ideas for helping kids get their summer groove on to celebrate this time of bounty and beauty.