I know a lot of people don’t really understand the Pagan lifestyle and that there are a lot of misconceptions about who we are and what we do. Honestly, there are as many different variations to that theme as there are Pagans. In my group of friends alone, we have an Operation Freedom vet, a returned Mormon missionary, a single mom, (who was, at one time, a rocker chick), trucker drivers, a cabinet maker, a dog groomer, a CNA, a surveyor, students, artists, it just goes on & on. None of us really look that different from anyone else you might see on the street, but inside, we are vastly different.

Are we tree huggers? I’m sure that some of us are, I know that almost all of us revere the Earth & the gifts she offers us. Many of us try to do our best to reduce, reuse & recycle. We don’t litter. We don’t take more than we need.

Are we hippies? I’m not. My friends aren’t. There are some Pagans who are hippies. I grew past my drug using years, and was never into free love and all of that, but I know people who are into both & some of them are Pagan. Some of them are Mormon.

Are we vegetarian/vegan? Well, in my group, no, not really. There are  Pagans who feel that eating meat is wrong & so they don’t. Some of us feel that not eating meat is wrong, and so we do.

You can see that there is no cut & dried “Pagan lifestyle” and nothing other than our belief structure that ties us together. Most Pagans are tolerant, open minded people who just want to be respected & accepted in society, without fear for our peace and safety.

We got the best news in the mail yesterday! The bank we have our car loans through is offering to let us defer those loans for a month. All we have to do is pay the interest on each one & then we have some breathing room for the holidays. What a huge relief that was! I went to get the mail after we took Kris home & saw the envelopes in the box & immediately started saying (under my breath), “Please, please, please…”

My daughter got some really pretty earrings for their 9 month anniversary, I’m not sure what the stones are, but they’re really nice. I think the main stone may be tanzanite or something, with a tiny diamond on each one somewhere. Now she has more diamonds than me. I’ve been married for 16 years & don’t have a single diamond anymore. I’m a huge fan of gemstone jewelry, just not so much one of diamonds. I’ve just had too many promises in my life that were sealed with a diamond & then later broken, to have much sentimental attachment to that stone. I have a sapphire engagement ring, and before that, it was a blue topaz one & the promise has lasted a lot longer. I guess I’m just superstitious after all!

Anyway, I have some stuff I need to get done, like the never-ending dishes & so on, so I’d better get out of here & get it done.

Our budget lately has been so tight there’s very little, if any room for mistakes. On top of all of that, I’ve been saving all of my income to pay for our car insurance next month, so we haven’t even had that to fall back on. There were a few times that i was afraid we wouldn’t have any money to buy groceries & having been hungry in my life, I even thought about getting a payday loan. I’m very thankful it hasn’t come to that & hoping that things will start to mellow out pretty soon. I really hate struggling with bills and everything else, you know? Troy’s starting to get depressed because there never seems to be any money for anything, and he worries about feeding us and all. Me? I’m stressed out about Christmas, feeling guilty that it will be a small one for my daughter & wishing it could be different for her this year.

Troy will have some holiday pay coming up & hopefully a little overtime, too, so maybe things will look up a bit for us as we move closer to the holiday.

I was never afraid to admit that I was Pagan when we lived in Colorado, there was no one there that I was afraid to offend or hurt with it. I wasn’t afraid to be discriminated against because I had an alternate religion, but I still didn’t tell everyone I knew. We went to a church, after all & I had to know that Troy & the kids felt welcome there.

When we moved here, I actually gave all of my books about Paganism away. I went back into the broom closet, afraid my parents would find out and spend the rest of their lives praying for my soul. I didn’t want them to worry, and I knew I could never convince them that I wasn’t worshiping Satan, because they’d think I just didn’t know that I was & that would stress them out even more. I’ve been here for 14 years and they still don’t know. I just never saw the need to upset their lives. Yes, it makes me a liar & a hypocrite, it also keeps the peace in a family that has had way too little of it over the years & so I’m okay with it.

My closest friends know that I’m Pagan. Most of them are, too. They didn’t really start out that way, and I didn’t “recruit” any of them (as a matter of fact that was one activity I always hated when I was still going to church), they say that I was just a good example of being true to oneself & they wanted to be like me. Mostly we are each solitary practitioners, there is a drum circle and they do rituals at each Sabbat, I have begun attending those with other friends and my daughter. Troy will go if he isn’t working, because they are his friends, too.

And just for the record, I raised my kids without religion. I didn’t influence their choices and for most of their childhood, they didn’t even know what my religion was. They knew that Troy was Catholic & he answered all of their questions about his beliefs. I let them go to church with my family & their friends, if that was what they wanted. After I told them what I believed, I answered their questions about that, too. Erin is agnostic and my daughter is Pagan with a lot of Catholic leanings, too.

If you’re curious about what a Pagan believes, there are some links in my About Me page. You can find that in the sidebar.

Now what am I going to write about for the rest of the month? Any questions? Anything that any of you want me to expand on?

Troy & I got together shortly after I kicked ex-3 to the curb. I had been in love with him for awhile, but never did anything about it except to be the best friend I could. We had a lot of discussions, and a few arguments about religion, including the two hours I raked him over the coals for being Catholic. I pretty much blamed 2000 years of church history on him, but he took it well & realized that we could never go any further in our relationship if I wasn’t allowed to speak my piece.

We got married and moved out the house I’d been living in & into a 1 bedroom house in an alley. It had once been a garage & someone had converted it into a home. It was tiny, the kids shared the bedroom & we slept on a mattress on the living room floor. We had a lot of talks about what to do about church,our kids and religion in general & we decided we’d try a church that neither of us were affiliated with and see how that went. We chose the 1st Presbyterian Church & visited it one Sunday in October or November. We really enjoyed ourselves & it seemed a good fit for the kids, too.

We were very active in the church, joining a choir, getting involved in study groups, women’s & men’s groups and so on. We ended up getting a job & apartment from the Methodist church across the street through out pastor & association with that church. I joined their bell choir and played with them on the Sundays that they performed.

There were issues with certain individuals and we had to get a nursery worker fired for making a report to CPS against us without discussing it with the pastor first, but my biggest problem was that I felt like a hypocrite. All the time. I knew that I wasn’t being true to myself and I knew I needed to get back to who I really was & what I really believed.

When we moved to Utah, we went to church here a few times, but my daughter never did really well there & so we eventually stopped going altogether. It was hard enough being a Presbyterian in small-town Utah, but I was ready to find out what being a Witch in small-town Utah was like.

Tomorrow: Back in the Broom Closet

I have to take a break from the story of losin’ my religion, just for today. The last few installments have been hard on me, dredging up the past that way isn’t easy when you had a normal life, let alone the one I lived. I had to pick & choose what I wrote about, because we’re talking about my religion, and why I chose it and not domestic violence. If we were talking about that, I’d have mentioned the only female friend I had in Salida. Her name was Missy & her family had moved there from Branson, Missouri. She was 16 and had been married a year. Her husband, Kevin, was our age & slapped her around on a regular basis. I physically threatened him one night and told him I’d kill him if he ever hit her again, but yet, I stayed in an abusive relationship for almost 4 years. Strange how that works out, isn’t it?

Anyhow, I have something else I’m going to post today, if I finish it. I’m definitely going to be working on it off & on today.

When I left ex-2, I took Garrett with me & moved back into my parents’ house. I didn’t go to church & I didn’t follow their rules, I came & went as I pleased and wouldn’t discuss it with them. Within a few days ex-2 was already threatening to take Garrett & put him up for adoption or never let me see him or whatever. I finally realized that what he was doing was terrible for a baby & told him to keep him. I regretted that decision before very long, when he’d bring him over to spend the day with me & he was filthy with a wet diaper. My parents moved to California at the beginning of October of that year and by the end of November ex-3 had convinced me that the only thing to do was kidnap Garrett & make a run for San Francisco, where his biological mother & brother lived.

Let’s just say that we were back in Colorado my the new year, trying to find a home. We eventually ended up back at my parents’ house. By March I knew I was pregnant with Erin and had to plan from there. We decided to stay together & eventually get married (I was still legally married to ex-2). I sold all of my parents’ furniture (tons of antiques, I have a lot of regrets now) & we moved into a small house on the west side of town.

He was a very violent person, and he was the very first person I’d even known that claimed to believe in witchcraft, although he practiced a whole different brand than I was even interested in & had a fascination with Aleister Crowley. Whether that was for show, or he was really into that, I’ll never know, he was also a pathological liar. I was terrified to actually commit to a Pagan path in the beginning & it took several years before I would even claim that I was one, I was afraid I’d end up like him.

He hit me the first time on Mothers’ Day of 1988 & the last time on December 11, 1988. On Pearl Harbor Day that year, he tried to strangle me to death (Erin was in protective custody at this point & Garrett was back with his dad, too), I tried to leave him that night, but came back the next day & swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin. He kept me tied up for the next three days and beat & raped me when the mood struck him. Then it was done. He started lying to me after that, telling me he wasn’t drinking anymore.

There were many other things that he said & did through the next 3 years that convinced me that he was about as close to true evil as I ever wanted to meet, from abusing Erin when he came back home & things that his former friends wouldn’t tell me about because they were afraid of him.. it was terrifying. Through him, I did meet other people who were Pagan & not like him, and that eased my fears. I also would have never met Troy if I hadn’t been with him, so I owe him that much, I guess. My daughter was born in 1990 and ex-3 & I were married 10 months later. It lasted a whole 2 months before he was screwing my best friend & wanting a divorce. I gained a good grasp on my religion, 2 great kids and a new love in the whole deal, so it was a relief more than anything.

Tomorrow: A Colorado Witch in a Presbyterian Church

The next book I read about Paganism was by Margot Adler. It was called “Drawing Down the Moon.” Reading that book not only finished what Sybil Leek’s “Diary of a Witch” started, it rocked my whole world. I couldn’t believe that there were so many other people in the world who didn’t buy into standard, mainstream religion. That other people believed in other gods, reincarnation, other forms of worship and prayer & I wasn’t all alone. It was a very liberating book, but I was terrified, all at the same time. What if they were wrong? What if my parents were right? I would go to Hell and be forever separated from my loved ones. What if my parents were wrong? I might be forever separated from them anyway.

I would sit in our tiny living room with ex-2, eating our dinners on our little TV trays, with Garrett behind us in his high chair. He’d be watching TV, I would be reading & Garrett would be playing with his food. I’m pretty sure that ex-2 had no idea what I was reading, he thought all of my books were stupid because I wasn’t reading a text book to learn how to do something. If he only knew, I was reading about how to change my life. There were a lot of books after that, I read every book our library had, and with every book I became a little more confident that my beliefs weren’t completely insane & a little more comfortable with them.

At the same time I was becoming more at home with my beliefs, I was becoming less & less happy with my life with ex-2. I knew for sure by that time that I didn’t really love him, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t want to be a single mom. I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want to move back to my parents’ house. I took to sneaking out & driving randomly after he & Garrett were asleep at night. I’d go to the places I went as a teenagers and sit in the quiet night, crying, wishing I could see a way out. I wanted to go to college, and ex-2 promised he’d find a way for me to go. Instead, he found a way to go himself and left me at home. He met a new friend in the classes he was taking. A friend that would ultimately give me the excuses I needed to walk away.

This person carried with them an element of danger & while that wasn’t something I was generally attracted to, I was in that case. I got to know him and started relying on him to break up the monotony of my life. I started drinking, a lot again, like I had when I was married the first time. I only cared about having a good time at that point & was tired of having to be responsible all the time. I ended up walking out of my almost 2-year marriage for this guy, who became ex-3 & the truly Hellish years of my life started with that choice.

Tomorrow: I Know the Face of Evil

I remarried a few days after my first divorce was final & the next day we (my mom, dad, husband, brother, SIL & nephews) all moved to Salida, Colorado to start a new life. My parents had bought a janitorial business and the rest of us were going to work for them. There was a lot of training involved in the first few weeks or so, which was good, because we were living with my parents, too, and it kept my mom’s mind off of making me go to church.

All good things come to an end, however and the search was on. I don’t even remember where it was, but we ended up at a church with a pastor who was called “Brother Neptune.” He was a pretty good pastor, from what I recall, in spite of the cult-leader name and I have no memory of why we left that church, or if we didn’t & he left. I’m thinking he must have. We ended up at another storefront church in Poncha Springs. I don’t remember the pastor’s name, only that he immediately began pressuring us to have a baby, because it was God’s will and birth control was a tool of Satan or some such nonsense.

In the early months there, we worked and went to church. We didn’t have any friends and no social life to speak of. The 2nd ex husband & I cleaned the public library, the forest service offices and the gas company offices on a daily basis. For me, the worst part was cleaning the bathroom, especially the bathroom vanities, where nasty, wet hair collected through the day. I still have a hair phobia that stems from those days.

I learned to hate the pastor at the new church like I have never hated another one. He was the most sexist man I have ever met. His daughter’s were not allowed to do anything a normal child should be, while his son was spoiled & given all of his attention. He paid no attention to his daughter’s at all. Shortly after Garrett was born, the pastor & his son went out on four-wheelers, hunting or playing or something. It was dusk when they returned & someone had closed the gates with a cable. The pastor didn’t see it in the bad lighting & when they hit it, his son’s neck was broken & he died instantly. He was a shell of his former self, acting as if he had no reason to live. The doctors had forbidden his wife from having more children (she’d had about 6 or 7 in a very short time) because she was so worn down from having so many in so short a time, so he had no hope of another son.

Ex-2 & I moved back to Pueblo shortly after that. We were no longer working for my parents at the time, me because I was being a mom & him because he didn’t get along with my dad on the job & he was lazy. We didn’t go to church anymore. I had access to a huge public library at this point & no more parental interference, so I started researching the occult. In my search, I read a small book by a woman named Sybil Leek that changed my life. I was 20.

Tomorrow: Drawing Down the Moon

It actually started in my mind when I was almost 15. I was a few days away from my birthday when someone from my post-molestation days raped me. Immediately following my molestation, I had been very promiscuous, but never went “all the way,” because, as I’ve stated in earlier posts, I had to be a virgin when I got married or, in my mind, God wouldn’t love me anymore. I ended up going to high school with one of those boys & he found out where I had moved to and started calling me, trying to get me to have sex with him. When I refused repeatedly, he came out to the house, waited for my parents to leave & raped me. I wasn’t a virgin anymore, and my thoughts were all twisted up & I was a tormented soul. God didn’t love me. My parents wouldn’t love me. No man would ever want to marry me. I had nothing to live for. I tried to kill myself, I’m sure my parents were shocked, since I never told them about the rape, still haven’t to this day. They never mentioned my suicide attempt after I came home from the hospital, they never asked me why.

I questioned my actions later and I still wonder why I placed so much importance on a tiny membrane. Not having it has never actually made any difference in my life, relationships or well-being, but my religious upbringing lead me to believe otherwise, to the point that without it, I was worthless. In my mind, I believed that any religion that made me feel that way about myself wasn’t worthy of ME, but I didn’t voice that thought for many years.

I started doing drugs that year, too. Not for recreation, but to help me get through all of my classes, my extracurricular activities and church and still be able to function. I did a lot of pharmaceutical speed for a few years. I started drinking my Sophomore year, and driving way too fast. I still wanted to die, I just wanted it to be an accident.  I started dated the first ex husband my Junior year & had dropped out of school at the end of the 1st semester of my Senior year. We got married a month later. We went to church together, at my mom & dad’s church. Sometimes we were hung over, sometimes we were still drunk and sometimes we didn’t make it. We taught Sunday school together & I felt like a hypocrite. I listened to the teachings and believed it was my duty to submit to what my husband wanted and ended up doing things that he asked me to that I was ashamed of (and that eventually ended our marriage). He also used to hit me. When he finally kicked me out (into a snow storm, with no transportation & strep throat) I never wanted to see him again. I was broken, in more ways than just my heart. I cried myself to sleep every night & when I tried to talk to people at church about it, I was the bad one, because I wasn’t trying to get him back. My Sunday school teachers kept making me call him & beg him to let me come home, even though they knew he had been abusive. He would tell me on the phone how much he hated me and that he didn’t want me calling him anymore. I starting seeing someone else a few months later, just because I couldn’t handle being alone & I lost my job at the church’s daycare center because of it. Apparently, moving on with my life meant I was living in sin. I stopped going to church at that point & didn’t go again in that town for a long, long time.

Tomorrow: Brother Neptune?