My 100th Post!!!!

Wow! 100 posts. Why is that something to mark? Don't know, maybe its the symmetry of the number. I have so much to say and I think it is fitting that this post be a sort of re-cap of the last couple of years. Because the more things change the more they stay the same.

Ever have so much to get done that you cannot even prioritize them? If you have children or a family that depends on you then your priorities tend to follow their immediate needs. But one thing I have always said and written about hear ad nauseum is that if Mama, or whoever is the head of the tribe, is not happy then no one is happy. This time of the year is the end of the year for me. I work very much on a lunar calendar and I embrace the fall as the beginning of the new year. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Samhain (the Witch's New Year) all give me an opportunity to leave summer (my least favorite season) behind me and to begin again. This transformation often begins on my birthday - July 31st - which is also the eve of Lammas or the Midsummer in the Witch's world. I identify as so many different traditions and none at all.

Much the way March is a month of deep introspection and my own harrowing of hell, September is a time of beginnings. I am intricately linked to the beginning of the school year. I belong in an academic setting. It is where I feel most alive. Where life is idealized and anything can be tried. So this fall, having no class to teach or to take has filled me with a bit of melancholy. I satisfy that desire to learn and to know by embarking upon many different plans. One or two of them manage to last the entire year and some of them keep coming back year after year having not been fulfilled. Waiting thinking, "Maybe THIS is the year she will get to me." Those orphaned dreams tend to be the ones that directly correspond to my well-being and my personal and spiritual growth. Not this year. All those orphaned dreams are being brought into my home and given refuge. My kids are not first this time. My ex-husband is not first. Cancer is not first. My friends aren't even first. I am. That is my New Year's Resolution.

One other habit I have is to discuss my big plans for myself and publish them for all the world to see. And then when I don't accomplish them I feel like a fraud and a failure. I am a private person by nature but I have decided to keep these wishes and dreams to myself this time. They are my own sweet secrets and pleasures. Perhaps you will see the results of them should you pass me in the grocery store. Or perhaps you won't. It doesn't matter anymore. My joy is not based upon the approval of others any longer. It is based upon the approval of me. What brings me joy. What makes me delirious. What makes my toes curl. All those things done in the name of pleasure and personal growth will be mine. Let your imaginations run wild with that one - mine has.

As always I bid you peace, my tribe, I love you more than can ever be written or expressed. And know that the fact that I can do any of these things, whatever they are, is because you all have been the very best parts of holding me up all these years. Time to love me as much as you do.

in peace