So Angry

Lately I have been super angry, like all the time. I wake up feeling pissed off. When one of the kids asks me a question I feel irritated for being interrupted (even if I am only playing solitare). Not that I have ever been a patient driver, but even my road rage seems to have escalated. I can recognize the anger when I am in it. I can take a step back and see that I am being unreasonable. I can watch the seething happening, but no matter how hard I try to look below the anger to see where it might be stemming from I just can't seem to get under it. What is worse than that....when I am feeling mad, I don't want to look deeper, I just want to be mad.

Since returning from WitchCamp I have noticed when I am sad, depressed, angry, or really any non-serving emotion, I can take a step back and look at the situation from an outside perspective, but I choose to not change the negative behavior. Which only leads me to feel frustrated with myself thus leading to more negative behavior. It is a vicious cycle.

When discussing this recently with a friend they suggested that maybe my anger is a result of not being grateful for things I do have. He suggested that I think of five things to be grateful for every morning before getting started, a little addition to my typical morning routine. This is an exercise that I have done before and found helpful, but when he first gave me this bit of advice what I first felt was an overwhelming urge to tell him to piss off....I mean who do you think you are anyway?

But after a few days had passed and I was able to let go of my wounded pride for a bit I thought that I would give it a shot. I mean, it can't hurt, right?

So this morning when one of this kids was annoyingly singing over the sound of the radio making me want to kick her out of the car, or perhaps just shoot her (immediately deciding this would be too messy and too difficult to explain...well she was singing.....)....I instead took a couple of breaths and thought of five things to be grateful for right-that-minute....1. I am grateful that I have a functioning car, 2. I am grateful that I am able to drive afore mentioned car, 3. I am grateful for breathing, 4. I am grateful to be alive, and of course 5. I am grateful that I am able to hear anything at all.

You may be asking yourself if this little exercise helped to diminish my anger? Well, maybe a little, but not as much as I had hoped. Maybe this sort of thing just takes practice? So I am going to continue giving it a try. In the meantime I truly hope that I don't kill anyone....(fingers crossed.)

Meaning of Mabon

We are coming close to the next of Pagan holidays...Mabon. This has got me thinking, what exactly is Mabon? In my personal practice Mabon sort of gets left by the wayside in my thinking and planning. Samhain, Beltane, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Lammas....these are all big days for me with traditions that I enjoy following....but Mabon? Sheesh I am starting to feel a little bit guilty.

When I studied on a Druid path I learned that Mabon is the son of Modron. Modron being the ultimate Mother, making Mabon the ultimate shining Son, but what does that have to do with the Autumnal Equinox? Interesting that the first harvest is named after the Celtic god Lugh and the second harvest is named after the Celtic god Mabon.....Hmm. Look like there is something for me to look into here.

In elementary school I learned that the Autumnal Equinox is one of two days where the light and darkness are completely even. A day of perfect balance? Sounds pretty good, right? But it is also the start of shorter days ahead and longer nights of winter.

My later Pagan learnings brought me the knowledge that Mabon is also the second harvest. Our ancestors were still working away in the fields, getting everything stock piled for winter. This was the time when they were hard at work mid-way through the harvesting. In my part of the world the grape harvest happens in September. The fields here are filled with people picking grapes and soon the crush will start. All in preparation for the coming winter.

Mabon also marks the point in the year when the heat of summer is winding down. The mornings and evenings are getting chillier but the heat is still strong in the middle of the day. As the year is waning so were the ancient gods and many traditions worship the aging gods at this time of the year.

So I have decided that this year I am going to make a big deal of Mabon and start a new tradition. I am going to have a Mabon feast. I will take some time to release what no longer serves, letting go of guilt or negativity and filling up with love and acceptance.

Kitchen Witch

I am a sensitive place of self reflection and a little bit of self abuse. Not intentionally self abusive, it just sort of happens that way sometimes. Of course no one really sets out to intentionally abuse themselves, or do they?....but I digress, I am getting off of point. The point is when I am in a place like this I tend to notice synchronicities more often. I have had a lot of 'signs' pop up, sort of gently smacking me to pay attention, or help me notice when I am wondering off of my path.

Today in-between getting myself a bowl of cereal, cleaning the kitchen, and working on an article I looked up to see my kitchen witch staring at me.

The women in my family have always had kitchen witches. Although none of my aunts or my grandmother consider themselves witches, they all have a a little witch somewhere in their kitchens. When I first moved out of my moms house she gave me a kitchen witch for my own place. She said that every woman needed a kitchen witch. So I have always had one.

I now have more than one kitchen witch, but the one that was giving me the stink eye today hangs right above my dining room table, where I am sitting to type this. She is really typical of a story book witch. She is wearing a pointy hat, has on a green dress, is old and wrinkled with a wart on her nose. She had grey hair sticking out of her hat and is riding a broom. The cool thing about her is she is wearing sandals....so California.

The reason her staring me down stuck out is because I was thinking that I am just not doing enough. I am not crossing enough things off of my list. I am playing too many games of Solitaire and not writing enough. I am not planning enough, good enough, smart enough, worthy enough........"ENOUGH" my kitchen witch yelled at me with her beady eyes as I looked up from my own barrage of internal abuse.

This is what her look told me.....I can only do what I am doing. Beating myself up for all that I have not yet done isn't helping me and it isn't making it get done better, faster, or at all. I have to accept my limitations and just allow the flow to happen. After all it is not like I am sitting still, or hanging from the ceiling.

What I Learned Today

I have spent many hours over the past few weeks helping to plan a baby shower. My hubs eldest daughter is pregnant and I am about to become a grandma at the ripe 'ol age of 31. Yes that's right.

Now, I am cool with being Grandma. I was cool with helping plan and execute the baby shower, but now that it is over I am totally exhausted not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. You see, I have three step-kids. The eldest is only six years younger than I am, but she is still a step-daughter. Their biological mom lives several thousand miles away, so I really felt like I had to step up and get things done for this shower, or it was never going to happen.

At first I was happy to do this because I like planning events like this, but I started to feel like it was all up to me and worse than that.....the kids mom was going to be coming. So I had to do all this work, all this planning, all of this spending...and she would get to be the proud happy grandma. The ex-wife would get all the glory.

Needless to say we have less than a friendly relationship. This goes on for many layers of levels, but suffice it to say I was dreading having to spend the day around her. I was dreading being around her. I was dreading having to take a back seat for all my hard work. I wanted to get out of the entire shower fiasco, but that became impossible.

Through all of this inner turmoil and strife I realized something amazing today. She is not just my husbands ex-wife. She is my step-kids mom. No matter what, we are going to have to deal with being around each other for these BIG moments in life. Today was just the first one. We get along just fine with that is the premise. When I stop being the 'new' wife and she stops being the 'ex'.

Today was ok. I was able to keep busy and feel proud that everyone was having a good time. I was able to let her be the proud grandma. There was more to my feelings than just what they seemed on the surface and I really did feel like I gave a bit of an offering today. I chose to do that, no 'glory' required.

Now that we have had this one big moment out of the way hopefully the next one will be easier.

Lammas

Something really interesting has been happening, or at least I have just started to pay attention. I have heard from several people, read on several blogs and Pagan magazines, and just generally felt over all Lammas confusion. In 'general Wicca' Lammas is known as the first harvest, but does that apply to everyone all over the world?

Obviously people that live in the Southern Hemisphere are not about to celebrate their first harvest. They are rolling along right towards spring, so there is half the planet that "harvest" does not work for. Modern Wicca's roots stem from England. The seasonal patterns in England (although not too far off) are not in alignment with the seasonal patterns in Northern California. So it seems reasonable to think that the harvest they are experiencing in the 'motherland' (so to speak) is not the same as the harvest I am experiencing right now.

Looking at Sonoma County, California where I currently call home, the main agriculture is hay, apples, and of course, grapes. If you were to look around here today there are lovely, warm, golden, bundles of hay wrapped up in blocks all over the fields waiting to be thrown into the backs of trucks and carted away for the abundance of local cows to dine on. We are definitely in the hay harvest. But the apples and grapes are still one to two months away from being ready to eat (or drink). I suppose this means for us here in Northern California this would be the first harvest, with still more to come.

What is amazing and beautiful about Wicca or modern Paganism is the rule of anarchy. The only real rule is that there are no rules. Maybe there are some basic threads, but beyond that it is pretty much anything goes. Which leads me to this thought.....if August 1st doesn't fit into your idea of harvest time, then figure out what it does fit into. Whether the fruit is ripe on your local vines or not, the earth is pregnant with possibilities right now. If your apples are not ready to eat just picture them growing on the trees as a telling reminder of the harvest that is soon to come.

On a personal level for Lammas, we all have our own 'inner gardens'. Now is a good time to do some personal tending. What is ripe in your personal garden? What is ready to harvest? What plants have taken over and need some pruning? What weeds have you been ignoring that need to be pulled? I plan to take some time over this Lammas to tend to my own internal garden. Not only to get rid of the weeds, but to remember all that I have brought to fruition.

However you end up celebrating....Have a very Happy Lammas.

Men and Women

I just realized that what society tells us to believe about men and women is total crap. I just watched a preview for a movie...another romantic comedy...and it is about (surprise) the differences between men and women. What society expects us to believe is that all men just want to chase the next piece of ass and all women want is to settle down and have babies.

I know enough men and women to know that this lame 'truth' is just that...totally lame.

I was raised to believe that men only wanted "one thing". I was raised to think that no matter how nice a guy was, ultimately he only wanted to get in my pants and once he had, he would leave me, alone and sullied. What crap! My job was to weed out those pigs and find a true knight in shining armor to take care of me. But I also needed to always take care of myself because no matter how shining the armor he was still, just a man.

I know that I was not the only one raised to hear these things over and over again. Now that I have some perspective I can see the huge holes in this theory.

There are just as many women in the world that are only after the goal of getting into someones pants. There are just as many men out there that want to settle down and have families. The problem is our greater society doesn't really accept women that just like the chase, we call them sluts. And men that choose to stay home, or want to settle down are soft. It is unfortunately the way we force and label women and men into little boxes.

I for one will no longer place that label on people. Women and men should be who they want to be. They should have the relationships they want to have and they should not apologize or have to hide it. I will not support any more of this societal crap that reinforces the stereotypes. I am totally over it.

End Rant. :)

Summer Solstice

Is it just me or does it feel like Summer Solstice totally snuck up this year? I cannot believe that it is already Midsummer and honestly, it makes me feel like a bad Pagan for being so out of touch with the Cycle. Before you say anything....I know there is no room in Paganism for guilt, that is not part of our deal, but that doesn't change the fact that I do feel guilty...

So in order to offset some guilt I spent the morning thinking and reading up on the Summer Solstice. Here is what I think is so cool about the Summer Solstice....although it is not usually the hottest part of the year, it is officially the longest day of the year. For me that is the best part about summer, the fact that it stays light out until 9 or 10 o'clock. What is a bummer is that on the Solstice we start to lose daylight everyday, but at least it won't feel like it for a little while.

Many Pagans celebrate the Summer Solstice by creating charms or protective amulets and charging them over a summer bonfire. In fact having a bonfire is also a big part of the celebration, the heat of the fire representing the heat of the summer sun. And really what is more fun than having a bonfire?

The Summer Solstice is also a really great time to gather herbs for drying and storing the rest of the year. Of course you have to know what you are doing. You need to be able to recognize that you are harvesting not only the correct herbs, but that you are doing it sustainably.

Like many of the warmer season holidays the Fae are known to be out and about during this holiday. If you have noticed the presence of a wee one in your area (things gone missing, items being moved without explanation from one place to another, etc.), or if you want to make them feel welcome in your space, leave them a little offering of food. They love milk, honey and practically anything sweet.

For our family celebration we usually have a feast. I try and make bright colored foods that match the feeling of the holiday. Oranges, summer squash, lemons or lemonade, potato salad, any foods that are bright or remind you of the summer are great to have as part of the feast. We frequently have our feast outdoors, it is the kids favorite part of the celebrations.

This year none of the kids are home for Midsummer, so I don't have to worry about making my celebration 'kid friendly', but I have no idea what to do. There are several public celebrations happening in my area and I am seriously thinking about checking one of two of them out. It is always good to meet people in the community. Plus I am rather shy by nature and this always helps to force me out of my shell a little bit.

For now I want to take some time to acknowledge that Summer is here. School is out, the weather is heating up, my allergies are still kicking my butt, and Witchcamp is just around the corner. Perhaps today I will take a little walk around my neighborhood and see what the season has changed...

However you celebrate have a Happy Summer Solstice!!