I started smoking the summer of 2013, when L and I decided to divorce.  It was an amicable decision and yet it initiated a very stressful phase of transition, communication, and action.  

Our divorce was finally final on 12/2/14.  In recognition of what prompted my smoking habit, I decided that I would quit when we divorced.  It has been 6 days since my last cigarette.  

I'm chewing gum, including nicotine gum.  I've told a few folks and have received good support from friends and coworkers.  I'm imagining my lungs healthy again.

12/2/14

There's more to say.  About the work it took to get divorced and how I feel. But for now it is enough to recognize it and even celebrate an end, a new beginning.

In addition to being a time to recall our Beloved Dead, Samhain is also referred to as the "Witches' New Year."  This really works for me.  I appreciate the cohesion of a year ending while the earth is going into a cold, fallow state.  In fact, I see the time from Samhain to Imbolq as a period where the year is dying.  When the light and the plants start to rebound in February, I perceive the new year beginning.

This year, I've approached Samhain with a mind of letting go.  A whole dark cold season of letting go.  A time to compost, mull, and brew.  No resolutions for January 1 - they will wait for February's light.  

I am letting go of my marriage as I complete final paperwork and prepare to stand before a judge for the final decree of dissolution.  I've been preoccupied with doing the work of this process and the emotions have faded from my perception.  In this dark season I will pause and say goodbye to married life.  Lay it down, with all its expectations and disappointments.  Let it rest.

I am loosing my desire to lose weight, right now!, and slowly surrendering to my emotions.  I may need the entire dark season and the entire new year to learn this practice.  Where in my body do I feel my feelings?  How do I experience my emotions?  Time to lay down the perfect body and inhabit the one I am today.

And somewhere in the back of my mind I'm wrestling with our culture's prescriptions for age and timing and worth.  That by X years old one should have achieved, purchased, defined Y, Z, and Q.  I'm 40.  I have a job that is neither a career that defines me nor my heart's work.  My job is low paid and my heart's work goes unpaid.  I have a home that I rent.  Purchasing a home is not in view, despite my age.  I have no partner.  I am mother to a young child with special needs. I am short and fat with greying hair and no make-up on my face.  My life is out of sync with the culture's preferred order and significance.  This year has surprised me with the realization of how much those guidelines mean to me despite how little I've consciously subscribed to them.  I will lay these down, too, and sit with the life that I am living.  

The promise of spring lingers in another segment of the Wheel of the Year.  There will be a fresh season for incantations and invocations.  Part of me very much wants to skip over the slow still dark and rush into the bustling of resolutions and new habits.  But a deeper hunger rumbles, calling my attention to the value of this current season.  

On Sunday afternoon my Pagan circle celebrated Mabon, the holiday of the Autumn Equinox.  Mabon is the second harvest festival we recognize, this one for later crops like squash and apples.  We gathered to give thanks for the light that has sustained us and the bounty of the land, and to prepare ourselves for the coming darkness and cold.  Already we observe darker evenings and cooler temperatures. 

This new season we are entering is referred to as the time of the Dark Mother.  She is the Crone aspect of the Triple Goddess. Marked by her sickle and scythe, she comes to reap what has been sown, in the land and in our lives.  She has many names in many cultures including: Demeter, Inanna, Kali, Tiamet, Hecate, Nemesis, and Morrighan. 

The story of Demeter and Persephone is particularly relevant to Mabon.  Demeter, the goddess of grain and harvest, loses her lovely daughter Persephone to Hades, the god of the underworld.  Either abducted or perhaps descending voluntarily, Persephone is resigned to six months of each year with Hades.  Demeter grieves the absence of her daughter and the land is barren.  That change, from lush to loss, begins at Mabon.

For our ritual, we decorated the altar with garden fresh vegetables and fruit.  Bright Mums and Oak leaves stood out in a vase.  We crafted candle holders from apples and placed them on the altar to note the four directions and god and goddess at the center.  Our meditation focused on seasons of our lives – which season are you entering and how are you preparing for it?  We used a Talking Circle to shape the individual sharing and later group discussion around our altar. 

I’m entering a season of partner-less among the partnered.  Now, more than ever, I feel like our culture places heavy expectations on us to have a partner.  The expectation peppers our popular culture in music, television programs, and even commercials. The love-interest.  The love unrequited.  The love lost. 

I started dating when I was 13, and while interspersed with solo phases, have usually had a partner or some love interest in my little sphere.  Even in those times when there wasn’t a partner, and they were good for me once I adjusted to them, I assumed that there would be again.  I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve drawn some (a lot?) of my sense of worth from being partnered and possessing partner potential.  Not so these days.  Who wants to date an overweight, 40-year old, divorced mother of a child with special needs?  The culture tells me the options aren’t good.  So I look ahead and assume a long season of singleness.  A season of belonging to myself.  I’ve grown to like the idea.  I’m choosing how to live in that season and claim it as my own.

I think it starts with treating myself as I would a good friend, in my thoughts, words, and actions.  I tend my close friendships with time together, authenticity, listening, fun, sharing, patience… and so I will treat myself.  It means developing personal practices for my body, mind, and spirit.  It includes returning to my dreams for 2014: improved health and weight loss, feeling and expressing my emotions in healthy ways, hosting mini-retreats for women, cultivating a good divorce and co-parenting, and returning to my creativity – especially writing.   It stretches to imagine new dreams of confidence, good work, and community. 

So where I previously experienced loss and confusion, facing this season of living partner-less, I now feel excitement and anticipation.  I am a true companion to myself.  Composting the distractions, lies, and cultural hubbub, to tend something true, vibrant, and vitally my own.  This is my season.

***

Note – The Fall Equinox has only recently been named Mabon.  It received the name in the 1970s from Aidan Kelley as he wrote Crafting the Art of Magic.  He deemed it a useful tool in helping modern Pagans to conceptualize Pagan religious ceremonies.  This is interesting to me because it speaks to how contemporary Paganism is both an old religion of ancient myths and symbolism and a young religion that is still being created.  I think about that seeming dichotomy a lot as I imagine all the little circles around the country, or around the world, gathering and recognizing the symbols and seasons of the year in their own unique ways, borrowing from the past and infusing it with their own personalities, creativity, and desires.  I appreciate the malleability and personalization of this religion because it allows each person to honor Spirit in his or her life in his or her own ways. 

A gorgeous, early, foggy morning at the beach.  This place has been such a comfort to me through the last year of transitions.  From bringing Little N here last summer as we prepared for his dad to move out, to quick stops to collect myself after work, to quiet strolls during my weekend hours alone.  

As the transitions continue, and new ones rise in my horizon, I am grateful for this lovely place, in sunshine and in fog.  

Stay tuned for what I hope will be a very happy announcement, and a new phase of transition, in the near future!

My little pagan circle celebrated Lughnasadh/Lammas this weekend.  It's the first of three harvests that we recognize as pagans.  I was high priestess, for the first time!, so it was also a big deal for me and the roles I play in our group.  Lughnasadh/Lammas is a crossover holiday originally celebrated by pre-Christian society and later adopted by Christians.  

Lughnasadh began as a celebration of the god Lugh.  He is described as a multi-talented, multi-skilled god, excelling in everything from swordsmanship and blacksmithing, to history, poetry, and harp playing.  The holiday was either a recognition of his death day or that of his mother, depending on which accounts you read.  It was honored with ritual games, religious ceremonies, matchmaking, legal contracts and more.  The holiday also comes at the time of the first harvest, celebrating the abundance of the land and the ongoing survival of the people who depend upon it.  Versions of this holiday continue with festivities in parts of Ireland today.  

As Lammas, or "loaf-mass", the Christianized holiday focused more on the first fruits of the harvest.  People made a loaf of bread from the early crop of grain and brought it to church to be blessed.  It's rumored that the loaf was then carried home and used for magic.  

In our circle, we focused our attention on the harvest aspects of the holiday. We recognized the little crops coming up in our gardens and the seasonal fruit filling our grocery stores as well as the personal growth coming to fruition in our lives and the letting go of what has not bloomed in the time span that we had hoped.  For our craft, we made smudge sticks. These small bundles of healing herbs, like rosemary, lavender, and sage, bound together with cotton thread, are used as a tool for cleansing a person or a space for sacred work and connection with the Divine.  We also chanted together, raising energy to send to the children at the US border in the form of compassion and courage for the journeys yet ahead of them.  We closed the circle with a potluck chat about what we are harvesting in our lives, both the tangibles like fresh zucchini picked that morning and the intangibles like gratitude.

For my part, I served as high priestess for this ritual.  I don't think of myself as a public, out-in-front leader, but in ritual the role is more subtle and supportive.  It's about moving the group through the different pieces as the energy and attention of the people warrants.  It's about holding space for folks to have time to complete a given piece and then host the transitions between pieces.  So I guided the group from one focus or activity to the next.  I also shared the meanings of the holiday, the attention we would be giving to it, and information about the Border Children to whom we were sending our energy and good will.

But what about my harvests at this time?  I've written a bit in other posts about the dreams I'm working on in this season of my life.  This holiday offers a time to reflect on where I'm at in those projects and processes.  I haven't lost the weight yet, which I shrilly lament, but I am harvesting better health thanks to the Kind Naturopaths and the Beloved Therapist.  I'm still working on a Good Divorce with my ex.  In my view, that would look like less cranky conflict and more clear communication and agreements.  We're not quite there yet - and maybe we'll never be there but always working on it.  As long as we can protect Little N from the conflict and crankiness I'll be able to call it good.  

I am finding my voice, again, too, a fresh harvest that I hadn't consciously planted but am grateful to find growing up through the cracks.  I hear my voice becoming clearer and stronger in many places.  In responding to my ex.  In my journal.  On this blog.  Through my un/healthy habits.  In our little pagan group.  At my job.  It requires good work for me to be able hear my own ideas, opinions, feelings, and perspective on a given experience and then give words to it out in the world.  It makes a good rich harvest that I'll be tending for the rest of my life.

What about you?  What are you harvesting these days?

So we're finally using the "D" word with Little N.  I read two-hug day to him the other night and it brought up more questions from Little N and some better answers from me.  I explained that the word "divorce" is what we call it when a mom and dad decide not to live together anymore.  We decided to divorce because we had grown-up problems that we couldn't fix, even though we tried.  The book also does a great job of showing that both mom and dad still love the child, want him to be comfortable and happy, and care about his interests.  He can have a good time with mom and tell dad about it, and vice versa.  

I'm anticipating more questioning now and phases of new questions as Little N grows up.  Before too long he'll outgrow two-hug day and Sesame Street characters.  But a good foundation, I hope, is being laid today.  L and I are doing our best to make safe space for Little N's big questions and big feelings.  We are answering him honestly and consistently.  We are reassuring him that we love him; that we are both invested in him and take care of him.  We've established some basic routines so that he can expect when he'll be with dad or mom, although those continue to adapt with summer break, vacations out of town, and special occasions.  He's doing a great job of adapting with us!

Finally, I'm really pleased that L and I were able to reach agreement on when and how to talk to Little N about divorce.  We got lucky in finding that kit and even luckier to both like it.  We got lucky that Little N started speaking up about his questions, letting us know it was time for more and better answers.  In just a few emails, which, really, is how we communicate clearly and child free with each other these days, L and I were able to agree to the timing and the current solution for Little N's needs.  The better we can learn to communicate as co-parents of a little guy we both adore, the greater the peace and stability for Little N.