Where's my Map Light?

I am grieving. I am in the process of processing the emotional and physiological aspects of my miscarriage and the subsequent car accident that followed.

I am doing well as I gage these things.
As an unmedicated major depressive with PTSD I have years worth of experience with my mind/body brokenness and learned tools to handle my emotional and physical pains.

I wish I was a medicated major depressive with PTSD in that it's less time consuming to start a grieving process when you don't have to constantly put every thought under an electron microscope to see is this old stuff or current pain.

But right now I have to do without medications. And I feel like a rock star in the fact that I have handled my loss so very well. Only one really bad day(thus far). That's a miracle in of itself.

I've found healthy outlets to speak about my pain. I have not become closed down emotionally. Nor have l been scattered and obsessive (accept for chocolate. I've been obsessed with it and I am allowing it for the moment.). And those are all major life wins!

I've been blessed with support and love. I've been labeled as brave for being honest about this process. I feel odd about that because I feel anything but brave. I feel like a fleshy, half inflated balloon filled with shattered glass. Not very heroic.

I see all this good work and healthy handling of my pain. But I still feel like shit.

I am concurrently today filled with euphoric sense of gratitude and and burgeoning overwhelming sense of rage.

In a desperate need to feel that I am in control I revisited the five states of grief.

But then I found this: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/4414077 and found my head exploding!

Yes I am 100% guilty of wanting a neat and clear path to 'normal'.  And I really know better. This isn't my first rodeo. I know my mind and my limits and yet, and yet I realized that I wanted to just be done. How foolish. How disrespectful to myself!

I am really angry right now. My religious beliefs do not give comfort during this time because my practices are based not on orthodoxy but orthopraxy. And right now doing the basics needed to live and care for my child drain all of my resources.

So having a faith based on doing instead of being has been invariably hard. Most people find solace in faith during grieving. I, right in this moment, find it an unwanted, unreciprocated chore. My rites are hollow and I find instead of comfort,rage and restlessness.

But guess what? That's completely fucking normal!
It's okay to not be okay. It's okay to be a practicing neopagan who just doesn't give two flying screws that an agrarian feast day is this weekend. Especially when the high day celebrates a return to fertility when you are wrestling with the demise of your own fertile nature.

It's perfectly acceptable to not want to do ancestor work when you are smothering in your own grief from the loss of the life of what was supposed to be your child.

It's perfectly fine to feel distant from deity when in reality you feel distant from every aspect of your own life right now.

The Kindred, no matter your personal religious choices get it. They are still there helping as always. I see it in the outpouring of support and the car ride from a stranger when stranded. In the moment of waking and feeling blessed to have so much when others suffer so much more than I do.

But I am honestly too angry and lost and emotionally unstable to a. Handle group public rite b. Want to have to suppress and contain the place I am currently c. Act like I am okey donkey when I am clearly not.

I hate that I have yet to fulfill promises I made in January. (I have one mitten made. But I really don't want to create gifts in this state of mind. No, I cannot create beauty in this state of mind and you deserve my best efforts. And I thank you for allowing me to if not welsh delay fulfillment.) I hate that I am not 100% me right now.

I hate that I cannot define what "me" is right now.

I am doing 1000% better than my own expectations. But I am so very guilty of thinking that exceeding known past experience means a shortcut to wholeness.

So guess what? There's no yellow brick road through grief and loss. I am not special because I have been here before.

What I am grateful for is the tools to heal, the support of those who love me and the awareness to know I am lost, but it's only a temporary state of being.

I will endeavor to stop rushing through and daily remind myself this too shall pass. But that reminder isn't passive. I have the responsibility to be fully present in the now.

I am desperately trying.

Spring Hurry Hurry?

I am fully in discontent with this winter's seasons of death and decay.

The usual laments of spring crazed romantics call to me like Sirens. Oh the desire to add to the rubbish pile of spring tide ode-ing!

When will the grey end? When will the soul numbing cold cease? When will hope and living and happy warmth return?

I breathe and count to ten.

I remind myself to try to be present and be appreciative of the now.

Cuz spring leads to August swelter which I hate. Hate it!!

No the last dregs of the time of storage and want are almost gone. I try to feel the gnaw in my belly, my soul, as a good thing. A leanness that strengthens resolve and a necessity of community for survival. The sharing of what's left to nurture and sustain until the green and growth come back around.

I am very, very grateful to my close knit community and the life sustained (mine) by their love, courage and most importantly their storytelling.

The time for doing, the deep digging, moving and ACTION is a hair length away.

The time huddled together sharing and nurturing and holding back each other's darkness will pass. And that is a loss as much as the bloom of Springtime is a gain.

Winter has always been my time. It's darkness protective. It's coldness profound and embraceable yet escapable when too frigid. The sweet loneliness of Spring and the sweaty lust of Summer were an affront to my nature. The broiling heat dreaded (and honestly still dreaded).

So it's odd, or maybe not so much, how different this year's turning has been for me. I feel rabid with the need for all this death and hunger and longing and want to end. But instead I am trying to fight this uncharacteristic, overwhelming response to see Winter's ass hitting the door on its way out!

Enjoy the now. Embrace the cycle as it is in this moment. And search inside for the beauty that each second brings.

And it's almost easy! Like quantum physics.

Just follow your breath.

Oaths are funny things

So as I posted previously I made an oath to Odin to create in 2013. Whether new life or creations from my own hands.

I spoke of my sadness in choosing responsibility and not having another child.

I spoke of 2014 being about balance.

Then last Friday (1/13/14) my world turned upside down.

I found out we were pregnant. Conceived on the Winter Solstice. I completely kept my oath.

Then three days in a state of constant emotional rollercoaster.

Then on the end of the afternoon on Monday, today,bleeding.

All the heartache and soul searching, panic driven search for healthcare and matrimonial bonding/comforting of the last few days to end most probably in miscarriage.

It has only been an hour since I noticed the bleeding. The cramping I have, more of an all over abdominal squeezing, could simply be my distress.

If I had not tested I'd not have known as I am still within my estimated menstration cycle.

I spoke only to a few people about this pregnancy. Mostly in connection to obligations previously accepted in which a pregnancy might be a an issue. And a few to help me hold it together on Friday until I could tell my husband.

It wasn't a mystery when we conceived. But it should have been impossible. Factoring being 40, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and my mense cycle I had less than a 5% chance of being fertile at all.

Do what is the lesson in this experience? For now a state if shock and preparation for the loss.

Hey there might still be a chance this pregnancy is still viable about the same percentage as its conception.

How do I balance all the emotion? How do I process this event? This will be my 6th miscarriage. Four losses in my twenties (I never got confirmed of pregnancy but my experience with my birthing and the first loss after having our child make me 100% sure of them.) and a fifth week miscarriage when my kidlet was 14 months old.

The strangest part was how desperately I wanted to be excited about the pregnancy. Unlike with our kidlet, in which we planned and spent four months attempting to create the life, I was more upset and frightened over the last few days.

I tried looking up names and clothes and car seats. I inventoried our hold out paraphernalia from the kidlet's earlier days. I tried to find anyway to feel the giddy joy I had expected.

Now as I linger between pregnancy and natural abortion I feel numb and sad and nauseous.

My husband too is unsure how to feel. We spoke a lot since Friday afternoon about all aspects of our feelings. We very, very rarely do that.

So for now. I will let this post sit as nature takes it course and all family members are told. No one needs to find out about such things this way.

And IF I remain pregnant this post will be posted after everyone knows.

I just needed to write or scream. And I appreciate your indulgence in allowing me to process here.

*POSTSCRIPT:

 This pregnancy was definitely not like the others. A six week nightmare of two strips forward five steps back. 

The end results after multiple blood work ups and ultrasounds was a diagnosis of blighted ovum and missed miscarriage.

 Surgical removal of the gestational sac on one of the worst days of my life, see my post on Fat Tuesday from last year, followed the next day by a car crash which totalled our vehicle but left my husband and my self shaken not stirred.

I've pondered and questioned the why's and what for's and though I found some answers I am not yet ready to share them. 

I shared the load though by being open via Facebook about my condition. What I experienced was mostly support and love and I am eternally grateful. I was called out for being selfish and forcing my 'drama' on others via social media. I was told that none of my heartache would've happened if Jesus was my personal savior. Those morons are no longer part of my life.

And strangely I found myself seeing a need for a safe place to talk about loss. Losses of pregnancy, losses of faith, and so many other kinds of loss left unmourned.

Am I less right now than I was prior to December 21st 2013? In ways very much so but I have also gained during this period of life! I've gained a deeper understanding of the love my husband and I share, a gentler way of dealing with myself, a more grateful outlook on my life and all the family I am blessed with, and a stronger acceptance of who and where I am at this time in my life.

So I thank you all for your love, support, patience and understanding as this final oath was played out.

May the balance gained be well worth the hardships and loss.

A New Beginning

It's been a year since I forced myself to summon all my courage and create this blog.

2013 by way of my own oath before Kindreds and Grove was a year of my own creation.

It was apparent early on that though both my husband and I wanted another child it was unattainable in a responsible manner.  The loss of this potential baby was one of the most painful choices I have made in a long time. But our family stability, newly found, would be in supportable with increasing our family from three to four. I would be lying if I didn't say how devastating it was making that decision on both of us.

But my oath had to be kept. And 2013 was indeed a fevered time of my own creation. Photography, blogging, puppetry, props, poetry, essays, art, fiber crafts, jewelry, costuming all flowed from mind to my hands and out into the world.

Seeds sprouted in February were harvested all the way until Halloween.

Mother and child collaborated to bring childhood dreaming to reality.

Yarn and thread sung through my hooks blessing those I love with warmth and care.

Gemstones and glass twisted and knotted to become offerings of friendship and fellowship.

My cameras captured each moment that light and fancy and family dictated I must not lose.

But of all this wonderment in artistic abundance I created something very unexpected. A network of community for myself. Social media connections became as dear as those whose hands I've held. Friends were met and family was added.

Religious peers and mentors became  unexpectedly bountiful and of which I am stunned and  eternally grateful.

And though I suffered greatly this year I created another unintentionally wonderful cycle within myself; one of deepest and profound gratitude for all I experienced in 2013.

I declared 2012 the year of Sorrows. 2013 was the year of Creations. And it is my gentle petition to the universe that 2014  be the year of Balance.

It's my deepest prayer that mental, emotional, financial, spiritual, communal, familial, creative, and relationship balance can be found and maintained.

So thank you all. You journeyed with me from a year so full of heartbreak and loss that I am still not fully recovered to travel with me here through a year of growth, abundance and discovery.  I am so beyond grateful.

My new year is of Balance. 
What do you see as 2014's goal for yourselves?

Kindest regards,
Arden

To Whom Does The Torch Pass?

This is a discussion I've had about a kagillion times with my agnostic husband in the last ten years: who will be the next wave of elders/leaders in the pagan world?

Let's face it the Neopagan world (in the United States) was carved out by the generation who came into their own during the nineteen sixties and seventies. The experience of civil rights, free love, gender and sexual equity battles deeply influenced the leaders of paganism today.

Can you imagine Selena Fox and The Lady Liberty League without the formation crucible of the fight for civil rights?

How about Issac Bonewits' degree in Magic could that happen now or even twenty years ago?

What would police action or anti-defamation be  like without Kerr Cuhulain?

Our leaders are aging and in some cases gone. Who shall step into the void?

Where in the generations since the baby boom: the Me generation: "Greed is good" or the alphabet soup of X Y and Z, and let's not forget the Millenials will our: Selena Foxes, Starhawks, Ian Corrigans, Scott Cunninghams, Issac Bonewits', Kerr Cuhulains, Z Budapests, Raymond Bucklands, Laurie Cabots (and the list can go on) come from?

Who from my generation on will stand for our freedoms and will solidify our traditions and protect and nurture our futures?

Who will be the hand to reaches out in interfaith trust? Not only with other world religions and to those of no faith but who will create trust and dialog and unity within our own multitude of Pagan ways to live?

I am not talking of lock stepping all Neopaganism into one modality but simply who will be there to provide a bridge for Heathen and Witches and Wiccans and Druids and Family trads and Initiate trads and Solitaries to speak in common?

Who will train those called to service? Who will be our priests/priestesses and our brothers and monks and nuns?

Who shall step up and brave being a public face of an infinite varietal religious belief system? Who is ready?

I see a great swelling lately. I can think of ten such folk being the pillars and the gateways thanks to blog portals and access to electronic media. But can't we be more in number? Can't we be together in purpose?

So think on your community. Who are your leaders? What programs and services do you have in place? Which needs can you identity? Who and how will these services be provided by and for?

What can you do? How do you serve? How can you support the efforts of those who provide for the pagans in your community?

How do we handle: substance abuse, bereavement, birth, death, hospice, incarceration, environmental issues, poverty, educational, milestone, ecumenical, elderly and childhood issues within the context of our belief systems and traditions?

Lets work together now. RIGHT NOW let's talk about this issues and tackle them.

Please let's work now while we still have the resource of the First Wave Elders wisdom to draw upon. Let's stop reinventing the wheel when we can create the automobile. Let's redefine the car so that we can fly!

Let's jump head first in so there's no voids to fill just a continuum to grow and mold and foster for ourselves and the next  seven generations.

We the first born of the pagan boomers need this, our traditions need this and our children need this.

Now whose with me?

Ruminations on Leaving the Fourth

Today is the last day of my fourth decade. Tomorrow I embrace a new set of ten. But before the clock turns and the ball drops here on the eve of my 40th anniversary of birth I want to take stock.

I'd ask your forgiveness for such a self centered rumination but this is my blog. And after all you my dear friends come here to glimpse pieces of me through the lenses I manufacture. So onward I must go!

My life seems to decade centric. My first mental breakdown was age ten. It was not unlike a midlife crisis. A time fraught with "is this all life can be?" If that seems silly and indulgent in a child allow me to assure you it was not the fancy of an overly sensitive.

My life has been classified by decade thusly:

1st decade: focus on survival
2nd decade: focuses on denial and disguise
3rd decade: focuses of illusions of normality and coping
4th decade: reclamation

My early years were about daily survival in duly an emotional land mine and in a real world of poverty and abuse where neither condition ever was allowed to show.

My second decade was another war zone. One where familial ties frayed and though the battle for freedom was won and living conditions were 100% improved the lies got bigger and the secrets were kept AT ALL COSTS. I learned to blend and shift and be whomever was required of me.

My third decade was at first about maintain and creating illusions. But the double toll of holding up my mirror while being trained to be an actor, a professional masque, broke my looking glass and I tumbled down a rabbit hole miles and miles deep.

My fourth decade brought completeness to my soul by breaking the boxes all my childhood traumas were locked in. That happened not as a gentle pass wall of knowledge but as a torrent that carried me into madness and horror to the event horizon of death itself. My mind and body were scoured clean to the bones and only after all the marrow was licked clean was I dumped into the cauldron and reformed.

But this new creature I became took a few years to gather her legs under herself.
I finally entered full adulthood. For the previous two decades though body and mind aged and ripened my emotions stayed frozen as those of a frightened and abused child. All interactions, friendships, partnerships, actions during those years were powered by the love and fears of a very, very small child.

But in this last ten I have gained all that was missing. I am wholly myself. Driven not by kid fears or childhood daydream any longer I have bloomed into full adulthood; swelled into motherhood and found my self through small acts of creation.

No longer trapped girl-child in grown body, but fully rounded in late adulthood plus motherhood I step into a near future of bodily croning.

Three of my closest kin all died in their early forties. Cancer took all three. And though it's a thought to ponder it doesn't loom or cause me fear.

My fifth decade which begins in the early morrow hours as I shuffle of 39 and dress in 40 I am choosing to be about balance and joy.

The balance of past lessons informing but not dictating the present. The living of the present being more important than the possible worries in the future. Balancing of motherhood, wifedom, daughterhood, friendship, piety and service are my goals.

That equilibrium makes room for emotions here to now I have stiffled for fear of exposure to harm: joy, expressive love, happiness, inquisitiveness, giddiness, passion, gratitude.

So Bon Anniversary to me! And raise a glass to another year of creation and change and love and service to man and Kindreds.

I shall raise a cup to all of you tomorrow so that you too shall share in this wonderful bounty.

Hallowe'en Dreams

Sitting in the now dark. As the rain fails dismally downward.

The squeals of delighted and mischievous children are gone.

I sit still in vigil on the porch for the last straggler who braves the elements to claim chocolate boon.

The wind is tossing the treetops. Terrier like lashing back and forth denuding the crowns of their gold and crimson glories.

Heavy hearted I wait. Holding tight the losses of loves and life of family and friends who are family.

It is fitting this dampness and dreary dark. The moaning of branches that are bending but haven't broken.

The sad cauldron of goodies for small ghouls is still mostly full. Our revelers numbered more than last year yet only totaled eleven souls.

What to do with the riches? A full pot of spiced cider, heated and blessed to warm the numb fingers of the adults who braved our mountain.

They come each year for their treat as much for the spectacle that our home is every year.

I love this night.

As children we had to go far from home to haunt the suburbs. The farms on our road were too far apart to walk.

So through hostile and unknown plans we trudged pillow cases in hand. Hoping for treats and clever tricks.

Daring each other when we got home to scale the pastures in the dark to play blind man's bluff.

But always the wind played a melancholy air.

So trudge on and gather treats. Brave young lads & lasses Souling in the darkness.

Stop on over. I sit like a crone, rocking on the porch. A cauldron of full sized chocolates. A vat of spiced brew awaits.

We can sit and enjoy the symphony of death. The chorus of the wind and rain to soothe and numb any loss and heartache.

Dance with me this Hallows Eve.