This is yet another attempt at me trying to describe myself for an introduction. I often have a hard time doing this because I find it is easier to say what I am not than what I am. Such as; while I am a witch I am not a New Age witch.... Which is fine except that people might want to know who and what I am instead of what I am not. So, this is me trying to describe myself to anyone who wants to know about the posts they are reading from.
To start with how I came to be me, the easiest way is to say how different I am than most people. I am seventh generation farmer and was raised very poor. While my family had a great deal of land, they had VERY little money. Before I went to college at age 17, I had electricity in my life for only 1 year and 4 months. I was not raised with running water, or lights that just flicked on, or kitchen appliances, or...and this is big...TV. Before my twentieth year I could count how many time I had watched TV on one hand and all of that was in school. This is a huge difference between my and most Americans because TV regulated society for a very long time (now we have to add the Internet as a regulator of society) and not watching it means I did not receive that regulation. I have always been a bit odd because I wasn't told how I was suppose to live as a child when those lessons are cemented into our brains.
My parents are another thing that makes me the strange person that I am. My mother was uncomfortable around any religion. I tried asking her why once and THAT made her uncomfortable. So, needless to say, we were not raised in a religion. How I always describe us were that we were non-practicing atheists. Though atheism would have probably made mom uncomfortable too. When I began to look into religion after I went away to college I was literally starting with a clean slate. Because of this I tend not to have as many religious laws and rules as most pagans and witches do. I have always felt that people do good things because they are good people, not because they are afraid of a religious law. If people want to do bad things, no religious laws will stop them because they can justify their ideas within most religions. To put it another way, we can kill in the name of God just as much as we can love in it.
My father was a swamp rat. I always joke that he was the wild man who fell in love with the farmer's daughter. Dad was raised in the bottom of a skiff (a boat for shallow water) and spent most of his life traveling in gypsy style up and down the waterways of the Mississippi River. The old codger, as he and now I like to call him, was more comfortable living out of the rivers and swamps than he was living in the human created world. He passed this trait onto most of his children. I have always felt more comfortable in my canoe gliding through back waters and blackjacks than I do walking city streets. I am less frightened of the bears that I shush out of my gardens than I am of people. Human wolves are more scary to me than canine wolves.
Despite all of this, humans are still companion seekers. My friends are truly the greatest people in the world because they see all my weirdness and still accept me as I am. I would die for both my friends and my family. My friends accept that there will be times that I just disappear into nature and they have had to learn not to worry about me. They know this is just they way I am. I will be there for any of them, but sometimes I have to have that very important alone time that helps me breath through the bad times.
Hmmm, what else about me....I live surrounded by an Amish community and can drive a horse and cart as easily as I can drive a car. I believe in being as self sufficient as possible because I don't like being at the mercy of big business. I am not a prepper, per say, because I am not trying to survive some future disaster, I am more staying true to myself by trying to not be owned by those who use modern society's addictions (oil, electricity, easy food, clean water...) against it. I spent a good part of my childhood living with an aunt who was the neighborhood healer so I enjoy practicing herbalism and natural healing. I live on a 652 acre farm, plus I own another 100 acres on a hidden creek which is my bug out cabin. I am off grid, using most solar and wind for my electrical needs. I raise Scottish highlander cattle for milk and meat. I do butcher because predators are as much a part of the natural world as prey species are. I also raise pigs, sheep, llamas (guard animals), horses, chickens, turkeys, quail, geese and ducks. I have 5 dogs, three of which are flock guardians and two are bums in the house. The normal amount of barn kitties call my barns home. My rule for cats are they can stay, I will feed them, but if they are on my land they will be spayed or neutered. Don't let your prized breeding cat near my farm...:-)
So basically I am a nature centered witch who believes in being self sufficient and living with the natural world. My spirituality works with nature's laws, not man made religious laws. I have no true belief in a deity because I was not raised to believe in the invisible, but I do feel the connection of all things, because without each other, none of us exists. We are anchored here by our diversity not our monotony.
I guess this rather long post is it then. This is me in a long, rambling nutshell. It is hard for any of us to put our whole life into words. Especially since, because we are part of life, we are always changing finding new things that excite us, discarding old things we no long follow, and creating new memories that will forever make us who we are. Thank goodness for this because we would probably get bored with ourselves if we didn't. LOL
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