I start re-evaluating my life and my goals every year right around now, either intentionally or not. Years upon years of training in my particular path of paganism has made it habit, I suppose. For you muggle types, this time of year marks for many witches the time when we are ramping down toward the new year at Samhain (Halloween). It’s harvest season: foods, ideas, goals, dreams. It’s out with the old, in with the new, self reflection, and adjustment. And this year…I am forcing myself to really look at what I want out of my life next because I think when we come out the other side of this current crisis..most of us are going to have to do that anyway. It’s a big year for all of us. It’s going to be a big decade.
And so…I pulled out the piece of paper I wrote when I was still a baby Witch of 16 and re-evaluated the way only a woman who has matured almost 2 decades can. The younger version of me and who I am now are largely the same. I still hold to the idea that optimism can change the world. That love can change the world. That part of my duty for my lifetime is to bring light and peace and grace to those who often don’t. I don’t know that that will change ever, or at least I hope not. It has evolved, though, in that I now understand the barriers that each of us has to work with when we hold that world view and the negativity that comes with it…but not just that. I also now know that no matter how pre-planned your strategies are, things have a way of going sideways.
My #1 goal as 16 year old was to get married and have a family. I wrote it all out. I wanted 3-4 babies by the time I was 29 and I was going to find the man of my dreams to make that a reality with. That was a very vivid dream for a very long time…until faced with this paper and a realization that it was time to remove that as a goal and opportunity for this lifetime.
Now, I hear you in the background all balking at this: I’ve been told my whole life that I’d be an amazing wife and an amazing Mom…that I do great things, that love is my superpower. And it is. And it is that superpower that also makes me realize that my “destiny”, or whatever you want to call it, isn’t going to include my bearing children of my own. There are officially too many barriers to that, and realism won’t allow me to continue having that as a dream that will be forever down on paper. And if someday I am blessed with a beautiful man to call my own who wants to create our own little human….awesome. And if I am someday blessed with a beautiful man to call my own who wants it to just be us? Also awesome. I just can’t pretend that it’s an inevitable blessing for me anymore. I will hold out hope, but it will not be a direct goal.
What will be a goal from now on is finding my little slice of happiness with whatever time I have left here…to bring peace…to bring light….to fight for all of us to have that opportunity. To be that beautiful human that I always wanted to be for others.
What are you removing from your life? What has come to fruition for you? What’s next?
