It’s been a little while now since I made some big leaps of faith and decided that it was time to let go of some things that I’d been doing that weren’t fitting with what I was really feeling in my heart.  It was a big jump and I spent some time doing a bunch of mulling it over and thinking about what could happen as a result before I finally committed to the changes that I was considering.  And after doing all that I was going through a bit of an introspective period that was certainly not helped by the crazy planetary retrograde dance happening in the skies.  But now I’ve come to the point of feeling the irony of change.

It had been a long time coming, my decision to start fully embracing my own path which had me stepping away a little bit from some of the things that I’d been involved in for quite a while.  The big change and the “announcement” of it, as it were, happened when I resigned from doing the Modern Witch podcast.  Devin asked me to write something that he could share about my leaving and he posted it to his website before I thought he was going to so it even caught me off guard a bit to wake up to a barrage of emails and comments from people about my departure.

I had to leave the show!  It wasn’t “me” anymore.

It was actually kind of like torture to have to spend 4+ hours a week planning and recording each show because it just felt like pulling teeth, talking about the same things over and over again, and often things that were the last things that I wanted to spend all the time talking about.

I hung in there for two reasons:
1. I didn’t want to let my best friend down.
2. I was scared of what would happen if I did stop doing it.

But, in all honesty, I had come to a point where I didn’t really want to spend all my time focusing on talking about Witchcraft and then feeling like I was letting people down by ever talking about or work with the other things in my spiritual path that were important to me {you know, all those “flaky new age things” that I’ve come to really embrace as having always been part of my spiritual path, even when I was, as someone said, “a hard core Witch”}.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…at the risk of sounding like a broken record…but my being a Witch doesn’t mean I have to always wear my pointy hat and shoes in public. 

I guess, if I had to put a label on where I’m at now, you could say I’m an a Buddhist Pagan Witch with a New Age twist.  But I don’t need a label really, I am who I am and it is what it is.

So why does this all matter again?  Because now that a little time has passed I’ve realized some of the irony of change.

When someone decides that they are going to be Pagan or Wicca or a Witch they often worry about telling their friends and family because they don’t want to upset, hurt, and lost those people in their lives. I’d been an openly practicing Pagan Witch for 26 years, over half my life.  And when I said “hey, my spiritual path is evolving a bit” most people said “good for you!”

The irony…when I actually said “I think I’m going to be stepping back from some of the Witchy/Pagan things, and maybe the Pagan community” you could hear a pin drop followed by a round of crickets.

I never said “I’m not going to be a Witch anymore!” 

I didn’t pull a Jessica Galbreth and go on the 700 Club and talk about renouncing my “dark past”. 

So it was funny how after leaving a podcast and it’s associated projects and deciding to embrace the true path of my heart I started to lose “friends”.  I say “friends” because anyone that starts to pay you no mind or actively leave your life because you change and evolve and embrace your soul’s journey aren’t real friends in the first place.

That doesn’t make it hurt any less, but that’s the truth.

Then it was interesting to have people who have been involved in the Pagan Blog Project start talking about me {as though I wasn’t around at all} talking about how I was going to “abandon” that as part of my “abandoning the Pagan community”.

I don’t abandon projects, I end them. 

I would shut down the PBP if I was going to “abandon” it.  And I haven’t.  It will run through the end of the year, just as planned.  What will happen with 2013 isn’t certain yet.  We’ll see.

It was interesting to see just how many people and previous {and obviously somewhat shallow} offers for things disappeared as soon as I was no longer doing a podcast.  I can say that as a result one thing that I always said I wanted I got; I never wanted to get anywhere as a result of someone else’s name or work, and clearly that’s what was happening before as a result of what happened after.

I love that now I’m able to just focus on my own work and the things that matter most to me, creating programs and products that can truly help those looking for it rather than spending all my time rehashing the stuff that can be found on hundreds of websites and in any book on Wicca.  Instead sharing magick, spirituality, and healing from my unique point of view {which doesn’t jive with “hard core” or “purist” Pagans and magickal folks}.

But always remember this…

Follow the path that your heart calls you to follow,
not the path that other people expect you to take.
Those who are truly with you on your journey will be with you
no matter where you go.

So the month of July and much of August {so far} have turned out to be a big mental and spiritual break.  I’ve been working with a bunch of new clients though, which has been great.  I love my coaching clients and I love helping them work through their situations and find their clarity.  Even when it comes with a dose of irony.

But I had to put a pause on creating because I was so emotionally drained.  Now I’m getting back to it a bit.  I’ve been spending time painting and drawing and starting to work on the PDF version of the 2013 datebook.  Yup, I’m trying to make two versions, a B&W print one and an ebook version that will be the full color and full fun version, full of my own art {painting, pen & ink drawings, digital art, etc} and pictures.  The B&W version will be just like the previous versions if you’ve purchased them before {if you haven’t picked up the 2012 version you can get the PDF version here for just $6.99}  The new 2013 PDF will be different from the more traditional datebook…but I’ll share more about that in the next month as I get it all done.  There’s still time to come and tell me what you think you’d like to see in the 2013 version too!

 

At the end of the day, it’s all about accepting that your journey can never be certain.  As you evolve so will the world around you.  People will leave but new ones will come.  Opportunities will go and new ones will come.  In the end it’s more important to be authentically you, whoever that is.

 
Current Mood: contemplative