I’m excited to start offering workshops and rituals in the Madison, Wisconsin area. Soon I’ll be listing the events I’m hosting on my main website, but I thought I’d put this one here so I have a link I can give people other than a Facebook event.
Return to the Root: Samhain Ritual and Workshops
Do you seek community and spiritual connection?
Do you yearn to claim your magic?
Do the ancient mysteries call to you?
I have had this book sitting there almost finished for about two years now, so it’s a huge relief to have it out the door and to the printers! Like some of my other works, this book is a collection of articles and essays that I’ve written, though in this case, the focus is on personal spiritual seeking and my own path of pilgrimage.
I’ve been in open relationships of various formats for many years. For a long time I struggled with the label “polyamorous,” but I’ve come to accept it for myself, along with becoming comfortable with how polyamory and monogamy are a spectrum, not absolutes.
This is the essence of what polyamory means for me personally: I have to be able to be not just ok with my partner being with someone else, but genuinely glad for them. I have to be genuinely excited that my partner is happy, and in most cases, happy for the person/people they are spending time with too.
It’s being fully confident that my partner can love me, and other people. And that I can have feelings for more than one person, and those feelings don’t take away from anyone.
![6950774_xxl-[converted]](https://shaunaaura.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/6950774_xxl-converted.jpg?w=320&h=453)
I’ve been reading drafts of old blog posts. Things I started, and never finished over the past couple of years while I was dealing with some fairly intensive trauma. It’s good to see those snippets into the past, because I realize that–even though I still have bad days–it can get better.
The older I get, the more I realize that people will show me who they are if I let them. I’ve just had someone who I thought was becoming a close friend dump me via FB message and then block me, and all because his now girlfriend found out about how he lied to her about me. Here’s the context…and before I dive into that, an acknowledgement that I haven’t blogged here in a while. The open relationship I was in and (had posted about) crumbled because of the abuse of my metamour, and my now former partner’s enabling of that abuse not just of himself but of his kids and of me. In the wake of dealing with that heartbreak, I met someone new, and got my heart broken again when I wasn’t ready for it.
This post is both about venting my spleen about issues in my household, and a lesson in Pagan leadership, particularly event organizers. I live on a farm in a rural area, and the top of the silo half blew off in the storm last week and is now bouncing around precariously. Some parts have fallen, the rest needs to come down. I live with my boyfriend and his wife, and it turns out that my boyfriend’s wife (ie, my metamour) is highly emotionally abusive. It’s a complicated situation and the abuse impacts the rest of the scenario.
Getting back to the silo, my partner had a plan for doing this on Tuesday on his day off. (He works third shift on a rotating schedule of 12-hour shifts. This weekend he works Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night, so he’s pretty wiped out by the end of that.) We talked through how I could help with the plan, and waiting til Tuesday gives me time to finish up some of my own backlogged to-do list.
My metamour, however, decided to just do it today on her own. This didn’t go well. But first, the backstory.
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Here it is, my schedule for this year’s Pantheacon. The bolded items are workshops or rituals I’m leading, or supporting. As always, we’ll see how many of the workshops I actually get to.
I can’t believe Pantheacon’s in a week. So much to do! It’s full moon again, and I’m once again feeling a lot of gratitude, so I thought I’d post about that. Gods know we could all use a little hope in the world right now.
This one’s a repost as the blog it was on is now defunct. Though I wrote it a few years ago, it seemed appropriate given the political climate and the many people rising as activists to fight against a bigoted regime.
There’s a quote from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi that has nagged at me for years. In my 20′s, it was an inspiring quote that brought a lot of energy to me when the chips were down and I was fighting the good fight.
After I did a lot of feminist leadership training, I reversed my opinion on the line: “Your hate has made you powerful.”
I was taught that setting the bone is a crucial part of being a priest/ess, a leader. That sometimes we have to hurt in order to heal. And I was also taught that truth often hurts. We couch so many things in white lies to salve someone’s feelings, to soothe it over, to make it hurt less. But those attempts to ease pain in the short term often cause longer term pain. In essence–sometimes the deepest form of compassion is to say the hard thing. It hurts in the short term, but it heals in the long term.
