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Hollow Bones

"In our life there is a time of wonder. Walking with the ancient ones as they share their world. And the dancing voices are carried by the wind. As I walk this sacred ground, I know I'm not alone, and I thank Mother Earth."  ~Alex Davis, Seneca Cayuga

An Attitude of Gratitude

12/28/2018

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I’m feeling a great deal of gratitude this season, albeit mixed with pain.
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Gratitude because my youngest son is taking positive steps to extricate himself from a years-long toxic relationship, and start a life as a single father. Pain because his partner has alleged child abuse and is preparing to fight him for full custody of their 3-year-old son. She says she has also filed abuse charges against me, although I have received no notification.

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I have no worries about the charges, but I’ve been so mad I could spit for most of the holidays. However, I’m proud of my son for standing firm while considering his son’s best interests in every interaction.
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He’s heading back to his apartment, to continue house-hunting and packing after meeting with his lawyer. This will be an anxiety-fraught New Year, but he knows we will stand by his side in support no matter what he decides going forward. And we will continue to love this tiny being who calls him “Daddy” and be grateful for the time we have with him in the future.


Research has shown that being grateful has a deep and lasting positive impact on your body. Good friends, family, the kindness of others. Scientists are saying that feeling gratitude for the good things in our lives, instead of dwelling on the negative aspects, boosts out physical health as much as our mental state. Recent studies have linked living a thankful life to fewer aches and pains, better sleep, and more.
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Of course, when experts talk about gratitude, they mean more than simply saying the “thank you” you’ve been taught since you were old enough to talk. 

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“Gratitude is affirming the goodness in one’s life and recognizing that it, and recognizing that its source lies outside the self,” says Robert Emmons, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at University of California-Davis, and author of The Little Book of Gratitude. He says it’s feeling indebted—not just to for the neck massager you received as a gift for Yule, but also to nature for a crisp winter morning.

Emmons has been studying the connection for more than fifteen years. In an early study, he asked a group of volunteers to write down five things they were grateful for once a week for ten weeks. Sample entries: “The sun on my face”; “Becoming a grandparent.” Other groups recorded either small hassles or neutral daily events. At the end of the study, the blessing-counters reported feeling 25% happier, but the rest of the findings were more tangible: The people who practiced gratitude spent 30% more time exercising and had fewer health complaints.

In another study by the Journal of Health Psychology, subjects who kept a gratitude journal for just two weeks slept better and had lower blood pressure readings. Other research found this kind of journaling resulted in a 40% drop in daily smoking rates after two months.

This all indicates that there’s a powerful connection between our minds and our bodies. Researchers have some theories that could help explain it. For one thing, when we feel overwhelmed—whether by work deadlines or family squabbles—our nervous systems go into a state of high alert. The body floods with stress hormones like cortisol, which over time can cause a cascade of health problems, from high blood pressure to inflammation. The sense of profound well-being that washes over us when we feel grateful sends a message to our systems that all is well, quieting those responses. “Feelings of gratitude trigger the parasympathetic, or calming, branch of the nervous system,” says Emmons.

Perhaps the biggest payoff comes when we feel indebted to ourselves in the same way we do to others. “People often report feeling grateful for their bodies, for the ability to see, smell and hear,” says Emmons. “As a result, they take better care of themselves.”


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Simple Ways to Feel More Grateful
 Gratitude is a choice. We can create it at any moment in our lives. Like any practice, it becomes more automatic. Here are some ways to make gratitude your new default setting.

Write it Down
One of the most studied methods is to keep a gratitude journal. The experts suggest you write down a handful of good things per day. To get the most out of this practice, don’t just dash off a short laundry list. Instead, stop and contemplate why you feel grateful, being as specific as possible. Try for 3 or 4 sentences about each positive thing.

Give Yourself Gratefulness Reminders
Stop several times throughout the day to notice, appreciate, and savor the good in your life. You might think of something you’re grateful for each time you walk inside or outside: The sunlight on your face, the smell of coffee when you walk back inside, or your dog’s happy greeting.

Go Mobile
Try an app like Gratitude Journal, which pings you with prompts. Share your posts with friends on Facebook, or set up a Gratitude section on your Pinterest. Or click through the website thnx4.org, which as developed by UC-Berkley’s Greater Good Science Center to act as an electronic storehouse of positivity.

Say it out Loud
Find opportunities to express your appreciation to another person, and do it in a way that acknowledges the giver rather than how his or her act makes you feel. Say how the other person’s efforts or qualities help you, for example. Psychologist Sara Algoe, Ph.D., and associate professor of social psychology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, calls this, “putting the ‘you’ in ‘thank you’.”  

Focus on Little Surprises
We tend to think of the things we’re grateful for in capital letters. Family, Health, Financial Stability. Also look around for surprising little acts of kindness to give yourself a gratitude reboot. Remember the person who held the door for you going into the store, or the driver who made a space to let you get out of the parking lot onto a crowded street.
It’s so easy to slip into negative thought about our lacks, or the corruption in government, or your impossible to-do list at work. Remember to take the time to weave a healthy, happy of circle gratitude around you as well.

Blessed Be! And happy New Year.
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Winds of Change

12/21/2018

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The Winds of Change are blowing through our family. While the wind feels black and full of evil while we’re in the midst, I have no doubt there will be bright, sunny and much more positive days on the far side of this storm.

It will, however, make for a turbulent holiday season. No mother wants to see her child in pain, or see the negative effects of a vindictive, short-sighted parent on her own child. I can do nothing to prevent the pain, can only sit on the sidelines and watch it unfold. It’s an uncomfortable, absolutely awful place to be. But we will all survive. Hopefully with no lasting harm done.

I had planned to blog today on the healing power of gratitude.

Instead, I’ll postpone that blog until January, and simply wish each of you a happy and peaceful holiday.

See you on the far side of the storm.

In the meantime…be kind to each other. That’s what this season is all about.

Blessed Be.


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Yule Traditions Endure

12/14/2018

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The nights in December fall dark early, and houses twinkle with strings of colored lights. Back porches are stacked with firewood, and the crystalline air is scented with wood smoke.

Inside, homes are filled with firelight and candle glow, while outside, the drifting snow covers the fields and rooftops.

Let’s think for a moment, about the Christmas traditions you love to repeat every year. Did you know that many of them are ancient pagan practices?

For example, kissing under the mistletoe is a tradition that has come down to us from the Druids, although radically changed as it passed through the Christian era. Mistletoe was sacred to the Druids, who gathered it from the high branches of the sacred oaks with golden sickles. White linen cloths were spread beneath so that none of the mistletoe would touch the earth.

In Old Norse the name for mistletoe is Mitel-teinn. The suffix teinn links it to German, Irish, and Cornish words that all mean “sacred tree,” and Hlaut-teinn in Old Norse means pieces of wood upon which sacred runs have been inscribed. One ancient rune inscription reads misel-vel, which has been translated to mean the power over life and death through magic.

The holly tree, resplendent at this time of year with its clusters of red berries and shiny leaves, has long been a sacred Yule plant representing both life and death. The lyrics of the carol, “Holly and Ivy,” although praising the virtues of the god of the modern religion, also hints at the tree’s association with a much older god of death and resurrection in the lines, “Of all the trees that are in the wood, the Holly bears the crown.”

Holly, mistletoe and fir trees were all considered sacred to the Druids because they never brown or die over the winter. From these beliefs come the custom of decorating a Christmas tree in the heart of winter time. The Celtic Druids decorated their evergreen trees with all the images of the things they wished the waxing year to hold for them: Fruits for a successful harvest, love charms, nuts for fertility, and coins for wealth.

In the Scandinavian traditions, Yule trees and other greenery are brought inside, not only for decoration, but also to provide a welcome resting place for the tree elementals who inhabit their woodlands.

The gift-giving tradition this time of year comes from Roman pagans who called Yule by the name Saturnalia, a festival to honor the god Saturn. It was also a New Year’s festival with gifts given in honor of loved ones who had died during the previous year. Early roman conquerors carried this tradition throughout Europe where it remains a part of the Yule and Christmas celebrations.

Wreaths, symbolizing the Wheel of the Year, has been used for more than 4,000 years. Its circle has no beginning and no end, illustrating that everything in its time comes back to the point of origin, over and over again. Wreaths came to be used a Christmas through the influence  of Scandinavian pagans who hung them at Yule (their New Year’s Eve) to commemorate a new beginning of the ever-moving cycle of life.

The full moon nearest the Winter Solstice ( December 22 this year) is the Oak Moon, the moon of the newborn Divine Child. Like the Divine Child who is born to die and dies to be born anew, the ancient oak has its trunk and branches in the material world of the living, while the roots, the branches in reverse, reach deep into the underworld, symbolic land of the Spirit.

As the Oak’s roots probe downward into the gravelike darkness of the Earth, its branches grow ever upward toward the light, to be crowned by the sacred mistletoe.

At this most magical time of year, as the light of the old dying year wanes and the Oak Moon waxes to full, take some time to consider the pagan roots in your family’s past.

Cast your magical circle wearing mistletoe in your hair. Let this token remind you that like the oak, we too exist simultaneously in two worlds—the world of physical and matter and the world of Spirit. As you invoke the Goddess of the Moon, ask that you become ever more aware of the other side of reality and the unseen forces and beings that dwell among us.

To all a happy and peaceful Yule. 

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Braving Holiday Darkness

12/7/2018

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I am feeling these days like I need to be brave. My husband and son are both on the brink of some scary decisions, Paul regarding his health, and Ian in his relationship.  

I wake not charged with excitement and anticipation, as I would like, but empty. Empty because the space around me, the shape of my life and future is still unformed. I’m a mapped-out kind of person, and instead I’m holding in a betwixt and between place, with nothing to do but wait.

It scares me.

Then I …breathe. And remember that our life energy requires a rest every year.

December is the month when cheerfulness is pushed upon us in mega commercial doses. But in nature, that isn’t truly the mood of the season, at least not until Winter Solstice. The natural mood of the month is introspection, self-doubt, questioning what to shed going forward.

It’s appropriate to respond to the energy of winter by storing and replenishing our own energy during the dark months of the year. The garden is dormant and the land is in a state of maximum rest.

The Chinese ancient suggest that, in winter, the will should also remain dormant, “not unlike someone with all his desires already fulfilled.”

I’ve experienced winters when I didn’t heed the ancient’s advice to take sufficient time to be quiet.  The parties and feasts around December and January frequently resulted in fatigue, colds and flu, even late winter depression in January.
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This year, I’m reminding myself to balance the celebrations with equal reflective time. Slowing down, I relearn how to move with the deep slower rhythm of winter and let the frenetic activity flow over the top, not into the core, of my consciousness. 
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​This year, my Reclaiming group is planning an all-night fire-tending vigil to welcome in the longest night of the Winter Solstice.

For me, the timing is perfect: use the longest night for much-needed quiet reflection, giving my questions ample time to bubble to the surface to write down, in anticipation of burning them away in our group ritual.

If you find yourself mired in the dark part of the month, with no outlet for release, following is a spell to help dispel depression.
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Perform for three consecutive nights during the waxing moon (which begins on Monday).
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Supplies Needed:
1 oz. loose white sage (or 3 white sage incense cones/sticks)
Some good-quality temple incense - frankincense and myrrh are traditional.
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Create a circle about 7 to 9 feet in diameter and stand in the middle.
The direction of the East is associated with inspiration and breath, newness and cheerfulness, birds and flight. Call upon those spirits to help you or someone you love to fight depression.
Hold up your hands after you lit your incense and, inhaling deeply, say,

             I call on you, healing spirits of the east
            That you shall attend me at once.
            I conjure you in the sacred name of Hecate,
            Transformer and Midwife!
            I conjure you by the sage and (other incense you are using)
            To life my spirit from this despair!
            Lift the misery by the smoke.
            Lift it by the fervent wish.
            Lift it by the power of the moon.
            So mote it be!

Repeat this ritual on three consecutive nights, and soon all shall be well.

Blessed be to all of you. Be kind to yourself this holiday season!        


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    Writer, witch, mother and wife. Order of importance is a continual shuffle.

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