I was about three.  It was at our playgroup, in Allhallows village hall.  I remember lying on my stomach and watching it move towards me, a long, brown, speckled line, maybe six feet long, tongue flickering.  I wasn’t scared.  Amazed maybe.  Interested.  Fascinated by the touch of its smooth, soft skin.

Since then though I have feared snakes.  Something made me shudder.  Maybe all that old Eden myth, the voice of temptation and disobedience.  I never learned that there is wisdom in the snake, and the lesson of constant rebirth, the old skin dying away and left, just a husk.

This is what brings me to snake medicine today.

About a week ago I read something which jolted me.  I don’t remember where now.  It said that the snake sheds it skin, and leaves it behind, it doesn’t go back to it.  So when a friend pulled this card from me from Ethony’s Awakened Soul Oracle it was timely.

I have been shedding my skin.  Actually literally shedding my skin through chronic eczema for the past four months. But also shedding my emotional – soul skin.  The ways of a lifetime do not work anymore, old patterns, ways of being.

It reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the wine skins, you don’t put new wine in old wine skins, they’ll burst.  You don’t put a newly reborn soul in an old soul skin, it won’t be able to hold it…it’s not the right skin to be in.

But I have been running back to it.  Picking up the translucent shell of my old self and trying to stitch something together from it, create some kind of patchwork self, afraid of letting it go, of leaving it. Of releasing.

I want to thank the old skin.  For the lesson.  For carrying me and holding me when I needed it.  For being my edges and my boundaries for a time.  For knowing when it was time to leave, even when I didn’t think I was ready.

It is dead now, brittle, only a wraith-like cocoon.  It was the space in which I grew for a while, the womb of my new self.  But it has served its purpose now.  It does not  mourn for itself.  It is not sorry.  This is what it was for.  And I no longer fit it.  It was too small.  Too tight.  Too restrictive.  So it died and I wriggled free.

To be free.

 

 

I recently read Brene Brown’s book Braving the Wilderness.  One of the key things that struck me early on in the book was the idea of permission.

Quite often, no, honestly, all the time, I am waiting for permission.  I give my “power” away and look to external authorities.  In one way or another this has been, and continues to be, parents and teachers.

In her book, Burning Woman, Lucy Pearce writes about the Good Girl:

“The Good Girl learned her lesson well: she knows that she must submit to survive…She looks outside herself – to parents, peers, and her bible of choice…to dictate how she should live, what she should wear, how she should speak, what is acceptable.” (page 126)

It is paralysing.  This need, deeply set in my mind.  A chain around my ankle.  Shackles. Quite often I come to a decision, feel that the time is right, and then I wait.  I talk to people about it.  I pull cards.  I talk about it some more.  I journal.  I read books.  I create vision boards to explore my idea further.  I speak to my mentors.  But I don’t act.  I do not trust myself to take that next step without someone telling me it is ok. I am looking for validation, for approval, for someone to sign the slip, that says I can.

I have done this for my entire life. I didn’t realise how powerful a habit it was and that I was still doing it until I read that section of  Brene Brown’s book.   She says that she started writing herself permission slips on post-it notes… right now I am still struggling with the fear of taking that step, what would that be worth? Who am I to say it’s ok?

Who else can though?

The journey I am on now is about reclaiming my own power and trusting in my own inner wisdom.

It doesn’t come easily.  I have a sense of being untied from the moorings and bobbing about in a vast ocean.  The obvious thing to do would be to pick up the oars and start rowing.  But somehow, I’m still sat in the stern looking around for the captain.

Increasingly though there is a sense of a hidden part of me yelling as loud as she can to get my attention. To break me from my stupor and shake me into action.  I have woken up, and stand here, still blurry with remembered dreams,  in the light of a different dawn.

I watched our priestess circle call yesterday.  Our teacher was talking about intentions and about our commitments.  She talked about her own experiences, and how there are some intentions that she continues to set every day.  For her this is part of committing to that intention and keeping it alive and present, as well as reminding herself it is something she is working on.

Then she spoke about commitments.

Now I have always thought of commitments as the things I do.  In the past, when I went to church, that was one of my commitments.  In the years when I served on various committees those were my commitments.  And I would say that I’m committed to my family.  They are important to me.  In this sense it’s about loyalty and showing up.

But she gave me a new way of looking at commitments.  She asked us to look at our lives and see, in real terms, what we were committed to.  She said that we manifest, make real, the things we are committed to.

So, I looked at my life.

Now, as prelude to this, I will share that I have set some intentions in the past few months, about the work I would like to do, and the direction I would like my life to take.  I’ve spent time journaling and visualising and creating rituals to set my intent.  I have taken some steps to make this real, setting up a business website, completing my 100 readings as part of my initiation as a tarot reader, taking a life coaching class…

But when I look at my life it isn’t that stuff that I’m committed to.  What I’m committed to, it would appear, is over work, being too busy, and being constantly tired.

Because that is what is here. And that is what I continue to create.   I say out loud that I want to have a different life.

But it scares me.

I keep the door to another life open.  Because I know it. And because in practical terms it pays the bills and provides for my family.

Now I’m not advocating throwing it all in and leaving my loved ones homeless and starving.  But.

Then, later in the circle, we made a journey together.  We went to visit our inner priestess who we’d encountered right at the start of the programme.  In the vision she showed me something I really didn’t expect.    I saw myself carefully moving obstacles into my own path.  I was shifting giant boxes so that the way ahead would be difficult to navigate or completely impassable. And I was doing it all very quietly and subtly so that my “waking” self wouldn’t see.

Sabotage!

It is both ridiculous and shocking.

I am left with a sense of having been woken from a dream, and also, utter bewilderment.  I can see now the pattern I’ve been creating and living and reliving.

The question remains, if that is not the “real deal” what is?  Is my new dream valid, or is it another impossible construct that will prove unobtainable as my inner self works to undermine?

Time is needed.  Have I got the courage to step into a new way of being, to unstick myself and be free?  What comes next is a mystery…

Sometime around 8 o’clock this morning it hit me.

I’ve been having counselling now for about a year and a half.  The other day I was thinking about endings and wondering when I will be ready to stop…

And it came to me, between drying dishes and sorting laundry.

When you believe you are ok.

When I believe that I’m ok as I am, when I can look in the mirror and think “yes, I like you, you I can live with.”

Then.

Because at that point all the other things that I wrestle with; over work, perfectionism, self-doubt, boundaries will fade away, because their roots lie in low self-worth.  And if I transform the roots, the other things will no longer have the food they need to live and will die away.

I’m not there yet.  But I will be.  I know this now.

This comes in part with owning my “shadow”, as I wrote the other week. Not so that I can bleach it into oblivion.  Not for spiritual jet washing through high vibration shenanigans.  I am not going to meditate myself out of my shadow.  I am going to see it and embrace it.

Because it is me.

It made me think of the moon.  When she is shining brightly on us it is her sunlit face we see.  Half of her is always in shadow, even when she is full.  Yet she is always whole.  If we got rid of her shadow side she would only be in part.  Like a paper disc, flattened.

If I scrub and clean with my spiritual tools until there is no trace of anger or jealousy or rage or passion what will become of me.  I will, for a start, be inhuman.  And only a paper person.  Two dimensional. 

This thought gives me such a feeling of joy.  That I can be good enough and that is ok. That I can stop reprimanding myself, that I can stop trying to bend my mind into saintliness, that I can start living without my internal headmistress constantly tutting at my imperfections.    I have shut her in her office and thrown away the key.  Better still sacked her and sent her far away to get some sun and perspective.  **Throws straw boater into air and cheers.**

I was sharing these thoughts with my dear friend and soul sister this morning; talking about agreeing to this process, about being open to it, because I can only sit within it and allow it, it cannot be forced, and she reminded me….

this is grace. That in my current state, holding both light and dark aspects of my character, I am a whole person; fully human.

And worthy.

 

I had an epiphany just now.  It’s worth sharing.

I was up at 3.30 am this morning.  There’s a lot going on in life at present (for you too, no doubt) and sometimes it’s the time I have to think about it.  I got up and made tea, trying to persuade the cats it wasn’t breakfast time yet.  I lit a candle and pondered a while.

It took me some time to get back to sleep but I think I managed about another hour.

Once I was up I had to get straight on with report work.  My muggle job is as a specialist assessor.  I assess children and adults for specific learning difficulties.  And write the reports.  So.  One left from last week to finish, before this week’s assessments kick off tomorrow. I worked on this for an hour finishing around 8.30 am.

Then straight into some chores, we were expecting a visitor for an official meeting and I still like to make sure the place looks passably tidy.

The visitor arrived and we had a meeting with my eldest son.  He has an autistic spectrum condition.  We needed to discuss his options. I was proud of him when he explained to the man who came that while he accepted he had a disability he didn’t see himself as disabled and he felt the new benefits on offer were for people in greater need than him.  He is opting to seek work.

Once the visitor left we got straight onto the government website to make an application and upload his CV.  Then I had some emails to deal with.  I rang my mum too.  She was feeling blue.  She has a whole heap of challenges to do with her health and with my dad out working today was feeling lonely.  I went over with some lunch and then we came back here for a coffee and some chats with my son. After I dropped her back at home and helped with a few small jobs I headed home again, the sun blazing through the dark clouds and burnishing the already golden leaves.

Now this is where the lesson comes.

I am taking a basic counseling skills course.  It’s proving hugely helpful in several areas of my work.  The class is three hours on a Tuesday evening.  So I was supposed to get ready and go out again.  Only I noticed something.

I noticed that I was struggling to coordinate my body.  That I felt nauseous and my head was tight.  That it was more difficult than it should be to see straight.

I have learned, over the past eighteen months, that these are signs that I’ve hit the red warning marker on my personal energy gas tank.  In the past I would have ignored this.  I would have drunk a jug of coffee, eaten some cake and gone anyway.  That’s how I got ill last year.

Today it was a different story.

I sent my apologies.

Then I went to look for some crystals.

I chose rose quartz for self-care, bloodstone for healing, clear quartz to clean my energy and obsidian for grounding.  I placed them all in a gauze pouch.  Then I ran a bath with olive oil and Epsom salts.  I added the pouch and some dried lavender from the garden.

Once soaked and feeling a little more stable I put on my super-cosy extra large Ravenclaw sweatshirt and made a fruit smoothie for a snack.

Bazinga!  Self-care baby.  I was so incredibly amazed at the change in my behaviour.  And so thankful.  I might not manage this everyday but today I did.

I am learning.  Slowly.

 

 

The shadow self.

It feels as though this is the key.  All the issues I’m facing seem to come from keeping it in check, pressed down and squashed.  I am concerned about the term itself, “shadow self”. It makes me think it is “other”, like an othering of myself.

When, in reality, it’s me.

I grew up believing that some feelings were wrong, unacceptable; jealousy, anger, spite, fear.  I spent a lot of time and energy trying to control them, the “sinful” nature.  Instead of owning it.

This is me.

It frightens me.  The possibility that I might not be able to keep it in check.  That it will burst out suddenly, pouring forth in a torrent of horror and darkness, that I will be all the worst elements of my character without filters or barriers.  That there will be no going back.

That would be a thing to behold.

I feel as though these parts of me ought to be beaten into submission.  New Age teachings encourage us to “raise our vibration”, dismiss the earthier impulses, control them, mantra them out of existence, light wash them away. I feel as if I am supposed to get them to conform, the wildness scrubbed clean, matted hair untangled, scar marked flesh covered.

Sit there and behave, like a good girl.

It isn’t working though.  Years of prayer, meditation, spiritual searching, service, seeking to be a better version of myself.  This “shadow” is still a part of myself.  It is the part that helps me to survive, that fights my corner, that lives on instinct and raw nerve.  It listens beyond words, feeling the vibrations of danger before they are visible.

And what a deal of work to keep that hidden! No wonder the façade eventually begins to crack, our bodies and minds rebelling. Breakdown.

Breakthrough.

I wonder if a gentler approach would be possible.  Kindness. Love. Soothing.  To welcome and own this aspect of my nature.

I do not know how to live in this place yet.  Neither do I know what will happen if I try.  I might end up friendless and alone, curled up in a shop doorway with a sheet of cardboard for a blanket.  Or pacing the sterilised floor of a locked psychiatric ward.  That is the fear.  Of becoming outcast, rejected, unclean.

I hope I will meet my wild self and learn to be free.  To flow with the seasons.  To walk barefoot in the woods. To breathe with the beat of ocean waves.  To rest under a starlit sky and finally know myself whole.

It sits at the back of the attic, covered in brown paper and wrapped with string.  Apart from this there is no other indication of what it contains.  Covered in cobwebs and the dust of the loft space she knocks it as she moves a pile of old books.   The box shivers, almost sighs.  She nudges it back into place with her elbow and turns, heading for the ladder with a sudden urgency for fresh air.

She has been trying to make it ok for a long time.  She has taken responsibility for her own healing.  She has written a version of her story which she can share without bitterness or anger, without tears or tantrums.  And she knows that there is a richness and freedom now which she couldn’t have imagined in the past.  Life moves on.  She is grateful.

She has new boxes to store in the attic now, full of bunting and table decorations from the wedding, or leaflets and tickets from day trips and holiday visits.  She stores there the spare plates and kitchenware which come from combining two households.  And the Christmas boxes with ornaments she has chosen with a new love.

The calendar flips in a movie-style montage and months, years pass.  Her hair begins to grey, lines crease at the corners of her eyes now.  Anniversaries come and go, for celebration and those she would rather forget.  The pain has shifted into regret, and a blurring of memory.  She knows it tore her life apart, but the emotion is washed out, faded from technicolour to sepia.

These last months though she can feel it calling.  A whisper each time she ventures into the roof space, a rustling at the edge of her dreams.  Something unvisited, unapproached, locked down.  For months she distracts herself, more work, more social calls, projects and plan, classes and crafts.  Because in the busy time she can ignore that murmur at the edge of thought, the nag in her gut, pulling her.

It is with a clear, blue flash, while hanging laundry, that she realises it is holding her, pulling her strings, that she is allowing it to manipulate her inner world.  The sensation is like the shock of cold water closing over your head as you plunge into an unheated pool, like the falling within that comes when you miss a step.  She pauses, hand on the line, looking into a clear autumn sky.

Leaving the laundry, she enters the house, jaw set, heart pounding.  It is time.  Because the story she has told is a version of events, one she has created to show and tell, where she is whole and happy, air brushed and suitable for family viewing.  The real story is tied in the box.  Unexamined.

She pulls down the ladder and climbs up, suddenly breathless, the dark space flickering into reality as the fluorescent tube winks into life.

There.  In the back corner, leaning against the chimney breast.  She crawls across the boards, reaching for the string binding and pulling it towards her.  Her hands are slick and sweaty now.  The knots resist and, for a moment, so does she.  She closes her eyes.  Slows her breathing. Loosens the knots gently, working them free, peels back the paper, removes the lid.

She takes out the items one by one, each memory held up to the light, some blurry and unclear now. She looks at the images, checking the back for dates to reconstruct a timeline.  It is incomplete, and the raw power that sat here once has faded with time. She sits, surrounded by the story, heart sore and raw again, tears flowing freely.  This was it.  The legacy of a great love.  A shared path laid out, the tangling of two lives, now unmeshed.

She pushes the attic window, and props it open, allowing a streak of blue to peep through into the harshly lit space.  Returning to her papers she gathers them into her hands, wondering at their frailty.  She holds them to her heart and whispers to them, her sorrow and regret, her gratitude, her love.  Taking them to the window she spreads her hands and watches each one as it grows wings and flutters into the fresh, cool air, mixing with the golden leaves that shower from the trees.

So you’re exploring spirituality.  You have decided you’re on a more earth-based track, there’s a vague sense that you are on a path, new and also as old as time…you whisper the word and wonder…witch.  But where do you start?  How do you develop your knowledge and skills from here?

There isn’t a right way, just like there isn’t a right way to live your life, or raise your children, it’s something felt, grown into.  It’s a subtle journey, feeling your way forward with your toes in the earth.   But if you’re looking for a signpost, these are some of the things I have found helpful.

1. Meditation – this is a key tool for crafting. There are heaps of resources on the internet.  Nicole Cody offers a range of guided meditations at Cauldrons and Cupcakes to get you started.
2. Candles – colours can be great and as you develop your work you may find these help you to focus and clarify your intent. But a plain white candle from your local supermarket is enough.  Take a moment to breathe in slowly before you light it.  Focus on the brightness of the flame as you offer a few moments of thanks and prayer to the goddess and god.
3. Ethics – whether you consider yourself a Wiccan or a witch, ethics are an important consideration.  I seek to practice a magic which avoids harm to others and find the Wiccan Rede a good starting point: and ye harm none, do what ye will.
4. Awakened Soul Coven Outer Court Series – these free lectures from Ethony provide a comprehensive background to witchy life and beliefs. Covering everything from the wheel of the year to gods and goddesses.   If you find them helpful and want to go further Ethony also offers the Inner Court for monthly full moon rituals…
5. Books – so many and never enough time. Here are a few I’ve found particularly good:

Everyday Witchcraft – I love this book ( I’m a Deborah Blake fan).  It is honest, straightforward and down-to-earth.  I appreciate the sensible approach to spirituality and the suggestions for ways in which to walk your witchy talk in the every day.

Hearth Witch Companion – Anna Franklin’s book contains a range of recipes and spells for every season and occasion with a beautiful, earthy and centred energy.

Sacred Earth Celebrations – Glennie Kindred’s book on the wheel of the year with background on the sabbats and ways to celebrate with the whole family.

6. Crystals – crystal friends have helped me to stay focussed, healthy and protected as I explore my spiritual path. They’ve been part of rituals and remedies and I am thankful for my growing relationship with them.  Hay House offer a range of courses and I found Judy Hall’s introduction to working with crystals comprehensive and accessible (and affordable!)
7. Friends – joining a group to talk about your spiritual journey can be really helpful, especially at the start when you’re not sure who to share with. Vix Maxwell’s group Spiritual Journey Pitstop is an open, dogma-free zone and offers a welcome to seekers of all spiritual persuasions.
8. Guidance – divination can help you get clear on the path ahead and point to energies at play as you journey. I’ve worked extensively with tarot.  I started with The Illuminated Rider-Waite deck, a copy of Learning the Tarot by Joan Bunning and Beth Maiden’s Alternative Tarot Course. Alternatively, you might want to explore runes, charms or dowsing to help as you travel your witchy way.
9. The web – not a spidery one across your witch’s cottage door, the world-wide variety. There’s a lot of information out there.  Travel carefully.  Maybe keep some black tourmaline with you for protecting and grounding, and keep your energetic wits sharp too. Go with what feels wholesome.
10. Tools – this is more of a next-steps thought but worth considering. The witch makes the magic, not the tools.  Beware of witchy materialism, it’s temptation in the beginning (I speak from experience). When it comes down to it you don’t need any tools at all to be a witch.  That said tools can be a helpful aid in ritual and support your focus as you work.  This article on Witchvox gives a basic introduction.
11. Go gently with yourself. It’s a journey.  Like anything it will take time, patience, trial and improvement.  One step at a time. Follow the yellow brick road and remember, you had the power all along.

Where are you from?

This is my question at the moment.  I’ve been working in a therapeutic relationship for around eighteen months now.  You go back and forth in discussions, telling your life story, picking out the threads, recalling the happenings.  And, at some point, you become aware that some of what you carry through life isn’t yours.  It belongs to others, it touches you, brushing your skin like a stranger pushing past in the street, and leaving a mark.  It is where another’s experience has bled onto your own. And so, you carry it. The hurts and habits which have shaped your own.

These ancestor memories have got me to looking at my roots.

I never thought of this when I was younger.  I wanted to be a new creation, a self-made woman, it didn’t seem to matter who my people were or how life had been for them.  In the arrogance of my teens and twenties I thought I had nothing to learn from those stories.

But now I find more and more I am wondering.  It is like sinking down into something, at this time of year I am reminded of layers of fallen leaves, lying thick.  It is like falling into them, and then beyond them.  Down into the earth, wriggling past tree roots, flints, down through the chalky bedrock which surrounds me here.  Down into the heart of memory and forgotten dreams.

Have you ever watched a costume drama or historical film?  I always imagined that that would have been me, Jane Eyre, maybe, hardworking but from a noble background.  Nobility seems to matter here, it is the aspiration, transformed now into celebrity.  Yet even in the dreaming, part of me knew that was unlikely.  It reminds me of when someone tells you they were Joan of Arc in a previous life, and you feel that’s unlikely…I suppose it’s because we want to mean something.  To have a part to play, it helps us to feel special, or important.

So, I know that on my mother’s mother’s side I am from Ramsgate.  I’m guessing probably fishermen at some time, her family are there back into the 1700s.  In the early twentieth century, they ran a boarding house and welcomed holiday makers in the summer, mum talks of helping her grandmother clean up and of the endless sand to be swept from bedroom floors.  My maternal grandfather was a Londoner -Clapham and Wandsworth – he told tales of following the milkman’s horse on his rounds and collecting the manure to sell.  He went to a convent school where the boys had competitions to see if they could pee up over the wall.  If they were unlucky they would end up raining on one of the nun’s winged hats.

My father’s side is another story.  I am half Scots.  Having become a fan of Outlander over the summer I was keen to find my clan.  Thing is I don’t have one.  I’m from Borders stock and the Borderers story is even more violent and unsettling than anything Outlander can give us.  Centuries of skirmishes, raiding parties over the border into England, violent, unsettling and troubling times.  Does some of my hyper vigilance come from here, the need to be constantly watchful, to be canny to survive?  There’s more learning to be done about this part of my heritage.  But I’m conscious it isn’t the story I would have told myself.  Bandits and brigands, working class folks getting on with life, doing the business of daily surviving.  The muck and the sweat and the mundane, way back through hundreds of years.

But I also feel I can breathe easier, knowing this story.  Knowing this is my place.  It is not as shiny as I might have imagined when I was younger, not glamorous, I’m not about to uncover a long-lost Duke in my family tree.

But it is real.  And down here in the mud and the chalk I can feel my soul growing strong.

Strong roots are, I am coming to believe, where it’s at.  A daily practice of grounding myself, out walking in the world, feeling my feet on the bare earth; or sitting quietly at the altar, imagining roots growing down into the earth around me, anchoring me.  In this coming dark season, I am going to grow my roots deep.  I am going to let them sink down to soak up the nourishment the earth and my soul have for me.  I am going to allow them to spread and grow strong.  I will allow them to draw up the whispers of my ancestors, I will allow them to weave themselves into my magic.  Everything that I am, everyone I have come from, weaving their story into my own.  Giving me the wisdom to go on, in the truth of where I am.  Rooted.

 

 

This is a recurring theme at the moment.  Self-care.  If you are living any kind of spiritual life, seeking to be of service in the world and to others around you, then it is crucial.  Yet it can be challenging to sustain a good, robust self-care routine.

The word routine for a start, smacks of rules.  I’ve tried that way; lists with daily “jobs” for self-care such as meditation or so many minutes of cardio-vascular exercise, food black lists, goals for positive habits and attitudes to cultivate.  It means that I always manage to turn something positive and life-giving into something restrictive and limiting.  And then I begin to avoid it – no eye contact with the self-care rules! – and then it goes out of the window.

So how to cultivate a practice of self-care that brings joy?

1. Give yourself the same compassion as you would another. I love the phrase from the Bible about how God feeds the sparrows, and that “you are worth many sparrows.” You would feed the birds in your garden (if you have one), you would give to a nature charity, or buy a copy of The Big Issue.  You would offer someone on the bus your seat, or listen to a friend who rings in need.  How would it be if you gave the same kind of consideration to yourself?  You’re allowed.  You are much loved.  When you’re tempted to avoid self-care can you try to approach yourself, gently, as you would another?
2. Listen to your body. I am only just coming to understand the power of this.  The body knows.  While we live so much of our lives now in our heads, in our thoughts, we are, in essence, creatures, beautiful, complicated, earthy, creatures.  What do you need right now?  I’m not talking about stuff, a new album or those killer pumps you saw yesterday online.  How is your body?  Are you feeling any discomfort?  Where is that coming from?  Are you fed and watered?  Do you need ten minutes to clear your head?  Listen to your body and treat it with respect and love, it is an incredible gift.
3. Linked to the point above, but are you getting enough? And how is it when you sleep? Does it take ages to drop off?  Are you often awake in the night?  Sleep is our time to process and reset, it’s our CTRL – ALT – DEL reboot.  Giving some thought to creating a good sleep environment for example no phones or tablets in the bedroom, fresh air where possible, a good pillow, lavender oil to help you calm after a hectic day, is a good starting point.
4. Find your passion. What sets you alight?  Do you run? Or enjoy baking? Or reading? Do you like to play board games or geek out with Kerbal or Minecraft?  Do you enjoy creating with art?  What is the thing that makes your heart sing, that takes the embers of your soul and sets it ablaze?  Finding this, whatever it is, points us towards our joy, towards our vocation.  The place, as Frederick Buechner says, “where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”  Now that’s magic.
5. Know yourself. There is so much around about self-development, courses you can take to be a better human, ways to hone your soul.  It’s worth starting out with some self-knowledge first though.  Who are you anyway?  If you’re on a spiritual path then the Enneagram is a great tool to look at our core strengths and needs, and for looking at how we interact with others Myers-Briggs is tried and tested.  Knowing that you’re an Introvert rather than an Extrovert for example can help you pinpoint the importance of time on your own and help you avoid burn out.
6. Find your tribe.  Who are those people who support you?  We are designed to be communal creatures.  We are designed to have others around us to support us and who we, in turn, support.  Find those people.  They might be in your family, or in your circle of friends, you might find them through an online group or on Facebook.  Finding a mentor or spiritual director can also be good. Someone to help you take a good look at where you are and where you’d like to be headed.

It’s a beginning.  Compassion, body care, finding your passion, knowing yourself, finding your tribe.

You are so worth it.  Brightest blessings.