Parenting

My oldest daughter, little miss 9, went to her first camp for a week. She was a little bit nervous and very excited. I am happy and proud of her, but a little part of me is sad. My baby girl is growing into a little lady and with each passing month her wings are extending further and further, preparing her for the day when she will just fully fly towards life. There is pride in seeing my daughter grow, but there is also sadness, for these years, when she is still a child are flying by too fast.

I guess that from now on I will end standing by, watching her travel on her own road more and more, waving to her and praying for her safety, knowing that I will always await her return... And there will always be those questions that only the passing of years can answer. Have I done a god enough job teaching her the necessary skills to navigate the twisted roads of life? Have I taught her all that she needs to know in order to grow into a decent, kind, loving, independent, strong adult? Did I teach her how to be happy and how to stay safe? Only time will answer.

But waiving at her, watching her take these steps towards independence and self awareness, watching her grow more and more into her own person, apart from me, fills me with pride, and in the same time with sadness and fear. Fear for her safety, fear of not having taught her the skills she needs, and sadness because I am losing my baby for this little beautiful miniature lady that fills my heart with pride.

In a way, it was easier when they were just tiny little babies that only needed love and care and cleaning. Yes, the sleepless nights were torture, teething a feverish nightmare, and at the time I thought that things could not get much harder. But looking back, it was simple and easy. Or at least, easier then the many questions that plague me as they grow. How much freedom to give them and in what conditions? How much information is the right amount? How to teach them to be independent while making sure they stay safe? When to say yes and when to say no? As they grow more and more into miniature adults, there are so many shades and so many nuances, so many twisting paths that need to be navigated by them, but also by you, as a parent. And it is scary.

It gets harder and harder to stand by and watch them growing and making mistakes, knowing they will inevitably get hurt and there is only so little you, as the parent can do. Yes, you can be there with advice, if and when it is required, with love even when it is not wanted and a shoulder for when it is needed, knowing that you can never fully shelter them, that you can't fix everything for them. And knowing that some things they need to learn for themselves, that they need to make mistakes in order to grow, it only makes it more confusing. If you as a parent shelter them too much and lift every weight of their tiny shoulders, they will never grow into the independent, responsible adults they need to grow into for their own wellbeing. But on the other hand, it makes your heart bleed to see they crying because a friend hurt them, or because they ran too fast and their knees are bleeding. Yes, you know that they absolutely need to learn to deal with the friend that hurt them, you know that you will not be able to be there to shout warnings, but it still makes your heart bleed. And when they start walking on their own road, flying in their own skies, your heart is squeezed tight by pried and by fear.

My mother told me once, when I was crying to her after three nights with no sleep when my daughter was couple of months old, that small children mean small problems and big children mean big problems. I did not understand it then, and part of me thought that it can not get any worse. But now, when the sleepless nights because of a baby's cry are a memory, there are other things, other worries that keep me up at night, the problems are more complex, the roles more blurry, and with every year passing it gets harder to figure out what is the right thing for them, the children that are growing. Oh, there is an amazing beauty in it, in seeing them extending their wings, but the needs are different and less clearly marked, and as a parent you can not wonder if you manage to have the wisdom necessary, the forward thinking and the ability to really see how every little thing might develop into something else. And there is so much pride for them when under your eyes they learn how to navigate pot holes and they start being little wise people! Your heart melts and squeezes, grows and beats faster, with a love that keeps growing as they grow themselves.

As my daughter grows towards her teenage years, and later towards an adult, I find myself second guessing my every move more and more, even as I am more and more proud of her. And it also makes me look at my own parents with a new understanding of the fears they must have had, of the journey they took to bring us up into the grown ups that we are, and it makes me respect more the sacrifices they made, day after day, so quietly that I never really saw it until I had become a parent myself.

A Jar of Mustard

Another Christmas is approaching with fast, noisy steps... And like every other Christmas for the last ten years, my heart bleeds with longing...

Yes, I have my children and my friends in this country where I had build a home away from home, but it is not home. There is no snow like a white blanket covering the Earth, there are no snowflakes dancing in the air in a frosty night... There are no children knocking on the door to sing carols old as time, there are no bells from snow carriages pulled by horses... And more then anything else, I don't have my parents and my siblings with me to decorate the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, joking and singing and drinking boiled wine with cinnamon... There is none of my mother's cooking, and no laughter in the kitchen as more and more dishes are prepared...

Another Christmas is coming, and my heart bleeds for all of those lost things that I had barely noticed once... I dream of the old decorations that went up a real fir tree, that smelled of winter and forest, those decorations that were taken out of dusty boxes year after year... I dream of my father putting the star on top of the tree and the laughter as we tried to untangle the lights... I dream of sitting next to the tree with my brother, late into the night, and talking about the year that has passed and the hopes for the year to come... My mum pretending to be Santa late after dark on Christmas Eve and the jokes and teasing as presents were unwrapped... I even miss the crazy days of cleaning the house, before the crazy days of cooking with my mum, before the decorated table nearly breaking under the weight of all those dishes...   I miss siting with my mum and discussing the Christmas menu, pondering over each dish... I miss the carols on old LP disks...

After ten years away from Christmas, I miss it more then anything... Yes, in this home away from home, I made the Christmas tree at the beginning of December with my daughters... The tree is plastic and the decorations mostly new... And the carols played on YouTube, in English, chosen by my eldest daughter... Yes, I had made the menu with my daughter, as once upon a time my mother did with me... And yes, I went to the craziness of cleaning, and buying presents, and buying all the ingredients for the feast to come... But I had done it on my own, without the laughter I once shared, as I will do all the cooking... And yes, presents will be unwrapped under the tree, with laughter and hopefully delight, and there will be a dinner feast with lots of foods... And in between those dishes, there will be some, highly inappropriate for the hot Australian summer, that remind me of home, those dishes that will find their way on the table of every other family in my far away land... But it is not home...

As I will be cooking, my soul will be longing for my mother's kitchen, and my father's jokes as he photographs the dishes, and my brother's hunger, and my sister's beauty... I will be cooking and I will dream again, for yet another year, of doing it for my entire family, daughters and parents and siblings...

But I can never have my Christmas at home, no matter how much my soul longs for it...

Today, with an over full shopping trolley, as I was dashing madly from one shop to another with a typed up list in my hand, I stopped at the butchers... And I saw a jar of mustard... The colors reminded me of the one my mother buys, and I looked closer... And looked again at the writing, not daring to believe... But yes, the writing was in the language of my childhood... And I picked it up, still not daring to believe, and looked again... It was indeed made there, high up in my mountains... I could feel my smile creeping on my tired face... It was home. A tiny, tiny piece of home... I might not have my loved ones close, I might not have the carols of my childhood, or the puffy and cold white snow, there might not be any children knocking on my door, but along with my daughters and my memories, I will have this little piece of home... And as I will be mixing that mustard in the dishes I am cooking, I will have something of home into it... And it does bring my family closer... Just a tiny bit...

Somehow, from all the presents that will find their way under my tree, this simple jar of mustard is the best present I could have found in this land where I had built my home... Because it is a piece of the home of my soul, the home I am longing for, painfully, every Christmas... I could have never believed that I will find happiness in a jar of mustard... But for me, it made Christmas more real... more Christmas...

A Little Light, A Little Magic

It was meant to be simple. Something I had done countless times before, even before I knew what I was doing. Something I learned to control and use at will. As a daughter, as a friend, as a mother, as a stranger at times, I used the gift again and again, time after time, to sooth and to help.

Why have the gift if not to use it when someone needs it? No thought involved. Just the calling and the reply. No danger lurking. There is help, there is answer and soothing, and there are barriers which you simply don't cross. It was meant to be just as simple. Soothing pain away was something I always did, at the beginning with no skill and very little magic, later, as I learned more about my gift, with more magic and less consequences.

Someone was in pain and the woman, the witch in me, responded. Harm none. Do not manipulate. The only rules I live my life by, the only rules I would not break. As a woman I responded with touch and kindness. As a witch, I responded as I know best. Open up, do not intrude, let the energy flow, knowing that the other, unaware will just be able to use the light to the best of his soul. As I was offering nothing else but light and understanding, nothing else but wisdom and hope, as I was only offering the undiluted energy of the Universe, it seemed simple, easy, just, right, safe...


So I opened up. And maybe that was the first mistake, as by now I am skilled enough to offer energy without leaving myself open. My second mistake was opening up without checking first how open the other person was. Or maybe I just knew it and in a moment of blindness I thought it mattered not. I am trying to understand what happened, using logic as a microscope, and the understanding eludes me.

Somehow I opened up completely and I let pure love pour through me. Initially my senses were assaulted by pain, pain so deep it made me reel. Pain and sorrow, sadness and sacrifice, regret... A wave of undiluted pain... In that total compassion and empathy, I still had enough reason left to not intrude, to not look at the cause... And then the time stopped and the world vanished... There was nothing left, nothing but two souls touching, connecting... Losing their boundaries and reaching out towards an unity so perfect, so full, so round... I have no idea for how long did we remain lost into each other's eyes, with arms loosely wrapped in a friendly embrace... It could have been seconds, or the eternity. I would not know because it was in a place beyond time and physical space, in a space that was nothingness and yet the sum of all that there is.  I can't even put into human words what I felt beyond the pain: recognition, wonder, unity, home, peace, surprise... Perfection... Two souls touching and meshing... We pulled apart... with a longing that should not have been there between two near strangers...

I look back and I am able to understand that somehow we were both completely open, naked of all defenses... And that none of us closed the connection... There was power there, more power then I ever experienced. Mine skilled, his unskilled, but power nerveless...

Later, experiencing his emotions as clearly as mine, even though, thankfully not his thoughts as well, I told myself that I just soaked part of his emotions. Cleansing should have been easy, simple, basic... Again something I do as easy as breathing nowadays... But it wasn't. No amount of meditation, charkra cleansing, earth connecting, helped... My own emotions, his emotions were not two separate things anymore... Ended up going to sleep, hoping I will find a solution... Only to wake up realizing that whatever happened, it was more, much more  then just soaking up like a sponge someone else's emotions. Somehow I lost the edges to my soul...

And that is something I had never experienced before. I have no idea how to close something that became part of my very being, no idea how to separate the me from this another, and it confuses me because I can not putting into its own little box with a clear label. Maybe the witch in me has seen or recognized something more, but the woman in me has no idea what that is...

Dark

Night... Dark as nights filled with promises, dark as secrets that are better left untold, dark as hopes that have no right to exist, dark as pleasure... Dark like a night when the moon does not shine, and yet is so alive... Dark as the time of no being, so mysterious and yet so safe...

I love the vibrancy of sun, the life and joy of it, and yet the dark attracts me, like a whisper, like a mystery that wants to be unraveled... There is life in that dark, a life harder to see beyond the veils, a life filled with mystery and magic... In the dark I can get lost and nothing else can exist. The time stretches, then stops, the world ceases and there is nothing left but that sea of night that drowns me, exhilarates me, scares me and soothes me... A sea that gives life to dreams I thought I left behind, a sea that stirs something in my soul that was better left asleep...

And yet, I am attracted to the night, attracted enough to throw caution to the wind and allow myself to be carried on the waves to wherever they need to take me. I try to tell myself that I have a choice, that I am still the master of my destiny, and I can hear the Gods laughing at me... I know that beyond the dark there is joy and pain alike, but the veils are too thick and I can not see on which side is the joy, on which side is the pain, and all that I know is that on this particular journey the two are interlinked, that accepting one I have to accept the other, and it is not what I want... It is not a journey I am taking willingly, more so as for once my instincts choose to be silent...

I am so used to listen to my instincts, so used to have them as an aid in my decisions, and without it I feel lost... Just trust that the Gods know better then I do? Oh yeah, on a rational level, I know that, as well as I know that each journey just makes me stronger, wiser, that each lesson is a blessing... But I look into the dark and I wonder at the promise, I let myself seduced by the mystery... And yet, even when it is too late, I don't want to step further onto this road, I am reluctant to make this particular journey...

My human arrogance screams that it is too fast, too soon, not what I want or need... I don't want to change yet again, I don't want to tilt my world again, and I know without doubt that at the end of this journey, regardless of what I end up finding following the rainbow in the dark, I will be changed and for the first time I am scared of change...

How the Gods must be laughing! Me, who always welcomed and thrived on challenges, me who is always willing to change and grow, me who stepped with courage in the crazy dance of the unexpected, I sit on the edge of the dark, still able to see a glimmer of light, too scared to step further because the road is not marked, because it is a completely new journey with no safety nets, because my instincts are silent, because I am requested to put my full trust into the Gods hands, with no guarantees and no reassurances... Just trust and go with the flow, the Gods are saying... So simple, so easy! Just trust!

I can't just trust, just let myself carried into a world where logic does not apply... Just trust! And that is the hardest thing in the world for one such as me, because I lost my trust long ago... And yet, the pull of that dark night it is more powerful then me... Like a mermaid's song that calls and pulls, it waves around me until my will is nothing and no choice is left except to go under the waves and let them take me to an unknown destination...

Love Spells and Bubble, bubble, boil and trouble

I was not going to write about love spells. Partially because I have no interest in them, partially because in my opinion such spells are almost always pure trouble...

But too many people, when they hear I am a witch, after a minute of silence, end up giving me a detailed description of their love life, or lack of, and ask for a spell to fix the problem. On the other hand, it is Beltane, so what better night to write about love spells?

Love... When I think of love, I think about the one emotion that shapes our lives more then any other. We wish for it, we bathe in it, we long for it, we fight it, we run away from it, we cherish it... Sometimes we yearn for it so much that we see it where it is not, other times we are so scared of it, we can not see it even when it is there... Love... Love for one's family, love for a lover, for things and possessions, for moments, for friends... Sometimes love for nature, or a stranger... Love for a day or a lifetime... The love we give, the love we are given, or the one that is lacking... Used wisely, it has the power to lift us to the top of the highest mountains... When the wisdom is lacking, love is the one that can take us to the bottom of despair...

There are many people and many things I love... My family and my ancestors, my children, my friends... I love my coffee in the mornings when my brain is still half asleep... I love the wind blowing wildly in a storm and the breeze gently blowing in a hot day... I love the sunrise with the promise of a new day, the sunset with the culmination of another... I love the moon, gently lighting a dark night sky... So many things I love... More often then not, I prefer to count my blessings in the love I give, rather then in the love that is given...

And there are loves I avoid out of fear, because I have been hurt too deeply.

But most of the love spells I am asked about, are more precise, more to do with love from a man or a woman... I do not know if it is possible to use magic to make someone love you... and I don't even care to find out... What I do know, is that you, yourself should be magic enough if someone is wiling to give that love. Because Love is an emotion you offer, but you can never request. And I also know that forcing someone into love, it breaks one of the only laws I respect as a witch: An' it harm none,
Do what ye will.

And yet, love is not about you, but about the other, about you offering without the need to wait for a return. Forcing someone into love hurts not one, but both people.

However, there are some love spells I do agree with. The only one I would freely practice, with no buts attached to it, would be love for oneself. I noticed in life how people freely offer love to everyone and everything around, and I always thought it is beautiful. But more often then not, self love seems to come hard to people, and lacking this important ingredient in life, always gives birth to resentment. If you can not love yourself, how can you expect another to do it?

Another type of love spells I am not against, is wishing for love in general. I want to meet, love and be loved in return, by someone that can be my best friend, someone I can respect and be respected by, someone responsible, reliable and mature, someone that can have a good laugh... I wish for someone that could be a good father figure to my children and care for them... Someone I can talk to and shares some of my interests... Someone I can sit with in silence and be comfortable doing so... Someone who is kind and compassionate, generous and empathic... Someone I could have a pillow fight with, or cry on their shoulder... I wish for someone that I can be fully myself with and be accepted and loved for it... The list could be longer, or shorter, or more, or less specific... I find that for me, these would be the things I would really wish for... As long as that list does not have a specific person at its center, it is all good.  If it does have a specific person, it is trouble...

And lastly... When one wishes for love, the wish should come with the implicit understanding that effort needs to be put in, or all is for nothing...

Another Beltaine...

Another Beltaine is approaching... My house is decorated for Halloween, as my children can not accept my reasons that in the Southern Hemisphere, Halloween is actually in April, in autumn, not in October, in spring. Even though I lived here, in the South of this wonderful planet for ten years now, even though my body sings of the approaching summer, my brain still argues that October is autumn...

Ignoring the names of the months, I look out of my window at the riot of blooming flowers, at the jacarandas in purple mist, and I know without doubt that is spring. Even blind, even without being able to feel the warming sun on my skin, just from the quickening of my blood, and I would still know that Beltaine is only few days away...

I had made the choice of being single, and staying single, a choice I am happy with, for a countless reasons, including to be able to focus more deeply on me, my children and my craft. And yet, regardless of my mind being at peace and my heart being content,  the instincts that come from an immemorial time, are searching for that elusive something that is passion and love, that is the connection between the divine feminine and the divine masculine. And interestingly enough, it is not the call of a relationship I hear, thank Goddess or I would really freak out, but the abandon of rules, the crazy thirst for life and being alive...

Normally I love Beltaine. As much, and yet differently from my love for Samhain (Halloween), when my soul craves the solitude and peace that allows me to transcend the worlds in the search for my dear loved ones that I lost or never met. At the opposite side of the Wheel, sits Beltaine with the craving for crowds and thirst for life, with the need to start anew and forget the wisdom of winter. Beltaine, when my soul wants to forget the teachings of the Crone and just enjoy the innocence of the youth, when years drop by and for a short while I can be again the girl I once was, full of dreams and illusions, acting on powerful instincts, rather then the wary wisdom I had learned.

Last year, Beltaine was meant to be a party with friends that I cared for and it become a night with a lover. The year before, Beltaine was an amazing ritual in a group of strangers, with a man that by then was not my lover anymore. The year before that, Beltaine was celebrated with a friend I loved dearly, and I still miss so much, and the Gods found their place in the deep connection of friendship. This year is different. This year it seems I need to learn how to spend Beltaine on my own, with no friends I love, no lovers for a night or years, no big ritual where I can lose the edges of myself, no party where I can abandon convention. The part of me that learned to read the signs, knows without doubt that the reason for it is because while I had learned so many lessons over the years, the one I skirted about is how to really connect with myself, outside the meditation moments. The witch in me, the one that is old beyond time, and young the same, knows that the only love I have to share this year is with myself. Maybe the hardest type of love, especially for one such as me, that finds it easier to love and accept others, but not myself. But the woman in me, the one used to having a friend or a lover near, the one that is human and is tired of learning, would have preferred a different, more joyous Beltaine. 

Two years ago, on Beltaine, as I knotted a wish on a red string, I wished with all my soul for freedom. The remembrance and the repercussions of that wish, reminds me of something my mother used to say when I was a tiny child still, wishing aloud: "Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it". The wish made on Beltaine two years ago, came true, as wishes made in sacred moments tend to do. For the last two years I had never regretted that wish, one that my soul needed to mend and to live. But now, I understand the danger of an incomplete wish. Wishing for freedom more then anything, I forgot to ask for the wisdom of learning how to use it.

And yet, beyond wisdom, my soul still stirs wildly in my blood, asking for something elusive...

A Cup of Coffee

How is it possible that a single cup of coffee can bring the past back so vividly? In my dreams, in my rituals, in moments of painful loneliness, I do sometimes call on the spirits of my loved ones that don't share this world anymore. But it is done with respect and preparation, with a clear intention. How can a single cup of coffee bring forward the ghosts of the past, not of the people that passed away, but of the ones that are still here?

Looking in the dark eyes of someone I once loved, the present stopped existing and with it all the years of hard work that I put into erasing the vengeful ghosts of my past. It seemed like the five years of fighting and growing, of learning to look within as well as without, never existed. I found myself obsessively watching the time again, fearful of an unpredictable future, and even repeating myself that I am free, that no swords will hurt me if I linger longer, my heart kept beating faster, expecting my phone to ring and be faced with words that cut.

I could still feel the sunshine in my hair, the ground beneath my feet, but the woman I became beyond the odds, could not be there, not while the broken, fearful young mother that I was was caught in a past no longer real, but equally as painful.

I chose to forget sometimes that once, not so long ago, I was scared of my own shadow. I forget that it was a time when I would think over and over again before saying something, and still the punishment would come, for a nonexistent mistake. The divine blessing of forgetting the tears that followed every act, every word, every thought. I chose to forget most times what it meant to be a living dead with no escape and no hope, with no help and no dreams...

With the present gone, I could see the eyes of the girl that was me and yet, not me. The same green eyes that over the last five years learned to smile, and laugh again, and to not run away from a confrontation, maybe to trust... But the eyes of the girl that used to be me carried no smiles, even the memory of them was lost to her; no dreams, no hopes... Those eyes could just reflect back the sadness of a world filled with terror, the helplessness of the one that knows that the dark cage will never be opened... In the girl that was shaking at the ring of her phone, there was no life beyond fear and punishment...

From across the table, separated by a simple cup of coffee, I see the ghost of the young mother that was me, of the man that I once loved and of the friend that I once foolishly trusted. I look at them then, in that time with no sunshine and no moonlight, and I remember running on dark streets wishing for death, because it seemed like the only possible escape from a nightmare I could not wake up from. I remember a night when I sat under a tree on a bench in a school, shaking at the leaves moving in the breeze and crying for the girl full of life and full of dreams that gave her world, her soul in exchange for love. I look at these ghosts and I see the day, when with a broken body as well as with a broken soul I realized that maybe, just maybe there might be an escape...

Now, looking back, I know that it was not courage, but a bottomless despair that gave me strength. Not hope but the fear that I will kill or be killed that gave me the power to risk the little that I barely had.

With the cup of coffee in my hand, I make an effort, from the bottom of my soul, and the past is gone, leaving behind a sunny spring day with children laughing. I am me again, the one that walked between the stars to gather the broken pieces of my soul, the one that fought to melt them back together. The me that is now, sheds a tear for the young broken woman I was, a tear not of pity, but of compassion. The me that is now, knows to the depth of her being that she will never be again that dead young woman that was yet living. But the me that is now, knows equally as well that she will never again be the young girl that gave up her world and her dreams, her soul and her heart in exchange for love. And if sometimes there is regret for knowing that I will never have again the open trust that I once had, for knowing that I will never risk my entire being for a dream, but only pieces of me, if at times there is regret for having had to learn how to store every part of my soul into tiny, pretty boxes, with safe compartments that will ensure that if one falls, the other will remain standing, I smile and I remember to be proud of the one I became, the one that in losing so much, never lost the compassion and the caring...

When I ran to fight the monsters of my nightmare, I was scared, not strong. Mending together the pieces of my soul. like a smith working at a forge, even though the blade that is my soul will never be the same again, I had learned its weaknesses and it strengths...  By learning how much I can risk before the danger will approach, by learning the steps between approaching danger and the risk of breaking, I became stronger, if not wiser, strong enough to take a risk if my heart so wishes and wise enough to know if the risk is worth taking... And for that, I am grateful.