Wednesday 8 July 2015

Cancer and Chaos

It has been a while since I've blogged and I wanted to let you all know what has been going on.

My husband's mother has been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and the cancer has also gone to her lymph nodes. My husband found out he more than likely has a condition called Marfan syndrome, which is a disease of the connective tissues of the body and can cause heart problems. There's a 50/50 chance that if he has it our son does too. He needs to undergo more testing.

Throughout this ordeal, someone in my life who I thought was a friend has shown their true colours and proven that they were actually never my friend, and it was all about them. At the ripe old age of 30 I am learning valuable lessons about people and how to know who you can trust. I now understand why some people are standoffish and wary of people, instead of open-hearted and friendly like I have always tried to be.

My mother-in-law is busy seeing both oncologists and other specialists as well as naturopaths to look at what her treatment options are. If she is going to get through this she needs to be focused and positive and do everything she can. I need to be strong for her, and to do that I myself need to be focused and have the right people around me.

I don't anticipate that my current life problems will deter me from keeping up with the requirements of IDGAF, on the contrary: I am finding myself turning to my spirituality almost more than ever. I am feeling a pull towards the dark goddess, which is something I am exploring through study, meditation and divination. I am still reading the book Shadow Magick Compendium by Raven Digitalis, which is brilliant. It contains stories from the mythologies of various cultures and traditions, information about shamanistic practices such as animal spirits, spirit guides, herbalism and dream work, and shadow work (both in the Jungian sense and the nocturnal/dark witchcraft sense). When I got up to the part about totems/animal medicine I reached for my copy of Totem Magic by Yasmine Galenorn, which I am now reading as well. It's not a comprehensive guide to working with totems and animal spirit medicine (like Scott Alexander King's Animal Dreaming or Ted Andrews' Animal Speak, but it is an extremely practical starting-off point for beginning to work with animal spirit guides. I read in one of the two books (can't remember which) that Samhain is a great time to work with animal magic, which is interesting as that was my focus this Samhain.

I meditate daily and I practice something simple almost daily. Larger workings are reserved for when I need them, and I celebrate the wheel of the year and sometimes lunar cycles (I love the new moon but often feel icky around the full moon). One thing I have been focusing on a lot is divination using tarot and oracle cards. I am thinking of getting my runes out and starting to study and use runes again. I have been making a fair amount of YouTube videos, and I recently gave away a reading to one of my subscribers. The reading went great, it flowed well, felt comfortable, and I got great feedback from my quearant. It's something I'm thinking of doing more of soon.

The next holiday coming up is Imbolc, which I am looking forward to. Imbolc and Lammas/Lughnassadh are often overlooked in favour of certain other, flashier holidays, but this year I have been paying more attention to them and enjoying them a lot... perhaps that's a topic for another blog post?

That's about all for my update. I have more posts in store, so hopefully it won't be so long between posts next time. Thanks for reading, and blessed be. xx