Roots

It would probably be a good idea to reveal a thing or two about myself. I am 34 and mother to a wonderful wee girl and wife to an amazing man. I have been knowingly walking a pagan path since 1988. I say knowingly. When I look back at childhood and adoloescence, I can safely say that I have probably always been pagan. I grew up in the country on a small beef farm. I have always believed in other worlds and in beings that other folks couldn't see and I sometimes could. I have always believed in magick and I have never, ever been even remotely comfortable with my Christian upbringing, though I adore and get along beautifully with my Christian mother and my agnostic brother. I have been out of the "broom closet" so to speak for 10 years now. Maybe more. I can't really remember when I came out, only that it was about an hour's worth of horror for my mother and a few hours of detailing and explaining my beliefs to her. My brother just kind of figured me out on his own.

I was extremely lucky to grow up in the country where we had plenty of forest and pasture, with parents who understood the value of good fertile land, clean water and the bounty of the forest where we could hunt and forage (nothing like fresh wild berries and hickory nuts :)). I also learned how to do a lot of things "the old fashioned" way. Baking, canning, pickling, sewing, making maple syrup, milking, tending chickens and my passion - gardening. These are all incredibly important skills to my life now and I could not be more grateful to my city-girl mom for turning into a country-girl. It's really quite amazing to think about.

I have studied music since I was quite small, starting out on the piano and wanting to pursue that to the concert stage. I was always artistic and dreamy - so that all kind of came together for me at an early age. I took up the guitar at age 12 and that became my passion. I pursued a career as a classical guitarist with a desire to go into orchestral conducting ( I conducted a small group for a short while in my early twenties). It was not to be however. With no clear way to afford music school, orchestral conducting would have to wait. I did make a fairly successful living as a guitarist, focusing on classical guitar, until later into my twenties when I began having some pretty severe problems with my shoulder, wrists and hands. So that was the end of a career in music. I was bitter about it, and still am on occasion, but for the most part I understand and I am pretty delighted that I have artistic skill to fall back on. Of course, the real skill to have to fall back on, would have been as a high paid ceo or something...oh well (dramatic sigh), we work with what we have :)

I think that covers my upbringing and some of my history, just to make clear where I am coming from on some issues. I have not said a whole lot about my pagan beginnings, I wanted to get my roots out of the way first - makes explaining things so much easier later on, no? Hopefully, no one reading this will have fallen asleep.