Self-Care in a Post-Election World (Especially for my Pagan Family)

Self-Care in a Post-Election World (Especially for my Pagan Family)

Dear Ones,

We are hurting.  We are grieving.  And grieving looks and feels different for each of us.  It may manifest as crying, raging, numbness; detachment, depression, insomnia; stress, physical pain, anxiety—and it changes over time as the energies run through and out of our bodies.  Let us be gentle with ourselves and one another, knowing that our expressions of grief may not match.  Some people are crying; some people are shouting; other people are marching in the streets.  Some of us are ready to take action; some of us need more time. Assigning blame does not help our process; all expressions of grief are equally genuine and legitimate.  We Are All One; we are each a sliver of divinity; we are each Divine.  Let us not turn on one another in this time of anguish, Beloveds.

For those of us encountering our own deep sadness, rage, panic, confusion, and paralysis, please keep feeling what is true for you in this moment.  You are so very brave and all of your emotions are “right” and valid. Keep feeling and releasing, feeling and releasing, feeling and releasing.  We Are All One.  Some of us are feeling and releasing for those who cannot; spiritual warriors who have taken on an enormous task.  Take solace that in feeling and processing this heaviness, your contribution to our collective healing is immeasurable.  Not everyone is meant to stand on the front lines.

I am currently experiencing intense sorrow and shock.  Sorrow and shock that so many of our “fellow citizens” chose hatred, bigotry, racism, ableism, and misogyny, chose to use their vote against the sovereignty and well-being of women, people of color, LGBQT+-folk, non-Christians, disabled people, etc.—to send the message that we, and the quality of our lives, do not matter. I am quite aware that we live in a patriarchy/kyriarchy—my entire life is dedicated to ending this structure—and yet I had not accurately grasped just how deeply it is rooted, into those sneaky, tricky, crooked, deep fear places that people keep stealthily hidden away—perhaps even from themselves—buried and secret.  I am in “emergency mode,” which only comes to me in times of urgent necessity, when my mind becomes fiercely clear and quiet so that I can make the best choices to protect myself and others.

Our community, Sisterhood of the Moon, is a matriarchal* community and although our primary service is to women, we lovingly open our space to all people who wish to gather together in peace, to experience what we mean by “matriarchy”—how it looks, feels, and lands in the body.  (These circles, Solar Tribe for all, and our children’s circle, Honey Hive, are founded and guided by High Priestess Sabrina Moon.  Please join us with your Loved Ones.) One of the cornerstones of the foundation of our community is that of empowered Sovereignty for all beings. We’ve found that one of the keys to living a sovereign, authentic life of integrity is Self-Care. Without caring for ourselves first, we cannot truly care for others. 

Please, Dear Ones, take care of *you* and do it every day, today, right now if possible. You are needed; you are loved. Here are some ideas for self-care to use during times of trouble, and every day:

Daily Spiritual Practice:  Many of us already have a rich daily practice.  Even though it may be tempting, do not drop this in times of difficulty!  Adapt and shift it, shorten it if necessary, but continue connecting with the Divine daily in whatever way is right for you. 

If you do not yet have a daily practice, now is a good time to begin; if you only have one minute in the shower every morning, make that minute count.  A daily practice can be as short and simple as pulling a Tarot card, Oracle card, or Rune for the day; lighting a candle or some incense on your altar and saying a brief prayer; speaking from your heart to the Divine within or without, or engaging in five minutes of meditation. 

Movement:  The body is our physical Temple of Divinity; we are Divine and our bodies are the Temples we reside in.

Engaging in daily physical movement assists us in running energy through and out of our bodies, draining out and releasing experiences and energies that we don’t want or need to hold within it.  It’s imperative to let these energies go and release them to keep our bodies healthy.  Energy is cyclical and we should always strive to be in the flow of giving and receiving. 

Effective movement can be anything from intense running to loving, gentle stretching, to anything in between: a quiet twenty-minute walk every morning and/or evening, yoga during the lunch hour, an aerobics class in the early morning, etc.  Often, the hardest part of engaging in physical exercise is starting or just getting out the door.  Once we’re moving, the benefits are usually felt almost immediately. 

Physical Body:  Our goal is to feel 100% optimal at all times.  When we don’t feel well, we don’t feel powerful.  Think of how you feel when you are down with a cold or flu.  Now think of how you feel when you have eaten too much, eaten food of poor quality, ingested chemicals, etc.  Let’s take the best care of our bodies as possible.

Water:  Water is the Element of Sovereignty.  Staying hydrated helps us to stay empowered and to make better choices.  When we’re hungry and it’s not time to eat, let’s pause and drink a glass of water instead.  Many people are chronically dehydrated and don’t realize it.

Emotional Body:  It is necessary that we clean up our emotional messes, get in touch with our emotions, and learn how to effectively manage our feelings.  We all have different experiences, therefore different needs and coping mechanisms. 

Etheric Body:  Tending to our etheric body is paramount.  We can check our auras, our chakras, and look for energetic cords to others and situations that no longer serve us and should be cut, dissolved, or released, and then do so or ask for help in doing so.

Clearing and Cleansing: Releasing things from ourselves and our homes, both physically and energetically, keeps things as clean and clear as possible.  Clean out the clutter; smudge, asperge, spritz—whatever feels right to clear our spaces.

Pleasure: “All Acts of Love and Pleasure are My Rituals.”  Pleasure is mandatory!  Make space for enjoyment, fun, and play.

Sleep:  We all have different sleep requirements.  We must each discover our own and be mindful about resting our Sacred Temples.  Turn off electronic devices before sleeping hours.  Do not engage on social media right before bed.

Other ways of caring for ourselves during troubled times include social media fasting, connecting with nature, meditation, dancing, singing, chanting, making music, creating art, and reading something just for the fun of it.   Laugh! Try affirmations, movement, the healing arts (massage, acupuncture/acupressure, tapping, counselling/therapy/coaching, etc.), visualization, vision boards, holding boundaries, travel, mirror work, water immersion, herbs and essential oils, astral travel, and energy work. 

Remember your magickal practices.  Engage in ritual and spellwork, if that is part of your Path. Gather with your covenmates, Circle Family, and others of like-mind.  Spend time face-to-face-breathing-the-same-air with Loved Ones. Ask for support and if you can, give support to others.  Be a compassionate, listening ear.  

If you find yourself in fear and panic, stop—take a breath, become present in your body and present in this moment.  If you are having trouble doing this, reach out for help—don’t wait.  

Be willing to sit in the uncomfortable longer.  Bless yourself and your body daily.

Let us truly *feel* our pain, feel it so that we can release it, and when it is truly felt, to pick ourselves up and move forward, together and with love and compassion in our hearts. Let us come together. Let’s share resources, actions, magick. Let’s check in on one other and give help and support where and when it’s needed. Let’s remind one another to breathe, to ground, to center. Let’s remind one another of our innate divinity.

My election magick was cast for "the highest good of all involved." I hold fast to the knowledge that the results will be such, although not in the way this human woman had hoped.

Each breath we take is a choice and can be a vote for change.  When we start with ourselves, our homes, our families, our friends, our micro-magick builds.  Many pebbles in the pond make a great tidal wave of change, change that is lasting and built upon a strong and sturdy foundation.

There is now, and has always been, lots of work to be done.  Let's hold one another and love fiercely. Let’s each do our part. We can do this.

You are needed.  You are loved.

With Love and Gratitude,

Lady Jesamyn Angelica

High Priestess, Sisterhood of the Moon

Resources:

Free Mental Health Resources

For those of us feeling powerless and are ready and longing to take action, this article lists organizations that can use our support, time, and money:

A List of Pro-Women, Pro-Immigrant, Pro-Earth,Anti-Bigotry Organizations That Need Your Support

*Please note that matriarchy is not the “opposite of patriarchy.”  Matriarchy is based upon egalitarian ideals, where are all have equal value.

Art:  Stormy Sea at Night by Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky

From Mary to Magdalene

From Mary to Magdalene: How I Joined a Cult

Or, Unravelling the Past to Free the Present

Part I

The almost-empty bus rumbled and bounced along the decrepit road.  My house was one of the first stops on the route so, by choice and design, I sat alone.  White capris, glittery blue eyeshadow, curled and sprayed fringe, I had woken hours before in preparation for this momentous day, my first day of high school. I was nervous, keyed-up for my new adventure—finally, the world was opening up before me, my path clear and well-lit.  All was possible, and I was ready.

It would take at least another thirty minutes before we arrived, my first time in a public school since a disastrous first-grade year which was Never To Be Spoken Of Again. Since then, I had been hidden away, protected and sheltered by nuns in the local Catholic school. As we bumped over dirt roads, I entertained myself with idyllic visions: thrilling new friends and the fun we would have together; how, finally, I would be courageous, universally loved, guaranteed easy success in academics and friendship and sports and absolutely anything that caught my fancy; and, above all else, what an incredible sensation I would create simply by walking through the door in all my glory—just like in a Brat Pack movie!

“What’r-you-lookin’-at???” Only vaguely, slightly, just outside of that feathery edge of consciousness did these gravelly words even register as I gently floated in my reverie, a silver-backed, pink, flowered mylar balloon rippling, catching the bright, late-summer sun—singing to myself about All The Glorious Things That Were About To Occur, what with the Hills Alive and All that Jazz, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

“Hey! What’r-you-lookin’-at?” I didn’t know anyone on the bus—or at the school for that matter—so the sounds just drifted by as my eyes caught the wee little—orange? yellow? red?— butterflies swiftly flying past us outside the windows.  “HEY! What’r-you-lookin’-at???

HEY!  WHAT. ARE. YOU. LOOKIN’.  AT.”  I hastily glanced up.  For no reason I could discern, she appeared to be talking to me.  Icy hot then frigid cold seemed to pour over my aura, my head, my brow—Copper?  Silver? Gold?  I had no idea— my face turning red, my hands trembling, my heart fluttering, beating faster. 

“Me?” I squeaked out, through a now-constricted throat, “Nothing...”  “Better keep it that way, FRED,” she barked, a jagged, barbed voice. She took out a pack of cigarettes.  With cracked, unpainted lips, she pulled one out, flipping open a scratched, bronze Zippo at the same time:  SNAP!  Lighting the tip, taking a gigantic drag, blowing the smoke out directly into my face. Dark bangs rested limp and sweaty on her forehead, her brown eyes almost completely obscured. She looked years older than I felt. “I’m gonna make your life hell.”

And so she did.  Day in, day out, all through freshman year and into sophomore year, when my friends and I finally got our driver’s licenses and no longer had to suffer the horror and insult of riding the bus.  She was persistent, always following me—through the days, weeks, months, years—until our graduation ceremony, yelling things out in hallways, starting rumors, sowing lies.  I was perpetually stressed, stretched, strained—thin, ancient, brittle glass ready to shatter—never knowing when or how or where a strike would come.  Sometimes months would go by and she wouldn’t say a thing; other times she would find and taunt me multiple times in one day.  

The almost-constant sense of being watched, targeted, and bullied utterly shredded my personality, my already fragile teenage girl-Self, my inner knowing.  I was torn apart, undone.  When I wasn’t in afterschool sports, student government, nerd-gatherings, whatever, anything to keep my mind off of it—I spent hours hiding away in my bedroom—now painted black and purple—going over what, exactly, must be wrong with me to be so hated by someone who didn’t even know me.  Sometimes I thought that I must be horrifically ugly or stupid or something even worse (I couldn’t even imagine what the “even worse” was).  I continually wondered how and why this could be happening to me, obsessively going over it again and again and again.  Yet, deep down in my secret, sacred, resilient inner core, I knew I was none of those things.

In no way did she ever know me, or me, her—the only place our lives touched outside of school was where our parents were casually friendly with one another; we lived in a tiny town.  I never, ever, ever told anyone that this was going on; only the students, bearing witness in our small bubble of a school, knew.

Many years later, I was informed that she had been sexually assaulted in the eighth grade.  When this was revealed I wondered—yes, I immediately knew—that she had been taking this horrendous, harrowing experience out on me.  Sometimes, on bad days, it’s still challenging for me to find compassion for her.  Feelings of absolute helplessness and hopelessness…these are the same days I have a hard time finding love and compassion for myself, too.

Throughout those four agonizing years, I maintained absolute silence.  At first this was due to shock, then as an intentionally chosen act of power, then it quickly dissolved into the opposite:  paralyzed by the pain of what was happening, I was profoundly ashamed—and this paralysis stretched out, coiling like so many poisonous snakes into other parts and times of my life, reaching out roots that sunk deep, deep down, stealthy and insidious, growing in more places than I can ever, even now, be wholly, consciously aware of.

I buried my worth, my thoughts, my feelings as deeply within myself as I could manage, always outwardly acting as if it didn’t matter.  I deliberately gave her nothing: nothing emotional, nothing physical, no reaction whatsoever.  I realized only later that I had given her everything—that in not confronting her, I had given away my voice.  I had given away my sovereignty. I had given away my Sweet Self.  This primed me to later join and become an intrinsic part of an unhealthy cult—one experience grew directly from the rich, fertile soil of the other.

Stay tuned for Part II of this story!

*********************************************************************************

I feel passionately about helping you find your own unique Path and magick.  Let me bear witness to your unique story, to hold space for your own truth and self-empowerment, to help you to hone your particular skills.  The portal is open!  Join our vibrant community by signing up for our mailing list at www.MagickandEmpowerment.com.

(The first story in this series can be found here: http://modpriestess.blogspot.com/2016/03/my-life-has-always-been-profoundly.html)

*Art by Claudia Lucia McKinney

Mother Mary

My life has always been profoundly intertwined with Mother Mary.  I first embodied Her in a nativity play at age 3 in a Montessori school nuns’ production: a tiny, curly-haired, blue-eyed, blonde Goddess in a long blue sheet and a tinfoil and cardboard halo. 

Only in retrospect did I realize that my feet were always planted solidly upon the Priestess Path: roots growing around a stone, encircling tendrils that had, over time, grown strong and substantial; clasped tightly, a mother with her firstborn, an oyster with a single grain of sand, now polishing and honing, polishing and honing, polishing and honing.

Strongly influenced by maternal-line immigrant Roman Catholic grandparents—Lithuanian and Polish—I remember sitting between them at Saturday night services: the scent of frankincense weighty and thick in the heady myrrh of the church, the sight of the towering white candles set in their golden holders, wax flowing, flames glowing through the billowing smoke, the priests in ornate, lavishly embroidered robes, colors and patterns changing with the seasons, the altar boys in austere, fresh white, my eyes wide, a yearning and almost painful feeling in my heart, a prickling behind my eyes, a fluttering deep down in my belly, my toes curled up tightly in my fancy little-girl shoes.  I didn’t know exactly what it was, but knew I wanted it.

At age 6, my parents divorced acrimoniously and my mother moved me and my sister to a rural, woodsy, insulated New England village.  Here, I would spend seven years in Catholic school, personifying Mary almost every year in the nativity, participating annually in the May Procession, the Coronation of Mary, the May Queen.  Our entire school would line up by grade, then parade up the street of the small town to approach Her shrine, She white and unadorned, us with our high-pitched children’s voices ardently and exuberantly chirping out the hymn:

O Mary we crown Thee with blossoms today!

Queen of the Angels and Queen of the May.

Purple and white lilacs from our home gardens were the dominant color and fragrance—the very essence—of this time of year.  Without cease, we sang as we laid the flowers at Her feet:  piling them up, decorating Her brow, Her wrists, Her neck, Her ankles.  When we finished She was entirely bedecked—a swollen feast of sweet pollen for bees and butterflies, a then-misunderstood Pagan festival of renewal and yearly re-initiation for me. 

Here also was my annual bearing of witness to women in their full power.  Only much, much later did I realize that these were my first Goddess rituals, presided over by these nuns—Priestesses, really—their lives dedicated to Mary-as-Goddess, living together as Sisters in devotion and spirit.  A thread of my Priestess magick is eternally tied to these holy women.

Guided by the fervent fascination in my young heart, my beloved grandmother as example, and these annual Christian celebrations, I first dedicated myself to the Goddess in a secret and shadowy fresh-out-of-a-book solitary midnight ritual on Imbolc at the age of 13, my mother and stepdad sleeping in their room across the orange shag-carpeted hallway.  Around this same age I discovered tarot, and my daily magick included carrying my deck to school along with its “little white book,” seeking some sort of meaning in my own life through the cards my friends drew.

I would not personify Mary again until my senior year in college.  Living abroad in a 9^th century Dutch kasteel in a hamlet along the Maas River, the sleazy art teacher likened me to the Virgin Mary and, in the same sentence, Ingres’ Grande Odalisque.  Here I learned how to shapeshift into Mary as Sacred Whore,  Holy Concubine, Ancient Priestess, a place where some of my power-within is rooted to this day.

Many years later, I was asked to dress as Her for the neighborhood Las Posada, an annual reenactment of Mary and Joseph seeking shelter in Bethlehem.  I had been a public Priestess for over 12 years and was thoroughly proficient at drawing down the Goddess during ritual.  I’m sure I shocked and frightened these kind Christian neighbors with my depiction as I was never again asked to participate in the event.  It’s been more than six years since I last embodied Her.

Looking back on all of these experiences it seems natural that I would be a steadfast devotee of Mother Mary, yet I do not consider myself anything but a Priestess of She of Infinite Names, with particular relationships with Hekate, Lakshmi, and Morgan le Fay, first amongst other guises. I have intentionally created a life where I swim in magick and ritual 24/7, where, when people ask me, “What do you do?” I get to answer—most wickedly, gleefully, proudly, and sometimes still with a boundless wonder, “I’m a full-time Priestess.” 

I feel passionately about helping you find your own unique Path and magick, too.  Let me bear witness to your unique story, to hold space for your own truth and self-empowerment, to help you to hone your particular skills.  The portal is open!  Join our vibrant community by signing up for our mailing list at www.MagickandEmpowerment.com.