I am over the moon to announce the new release in the Seven Sisters of Avalon series. This is book 7 of 8 with Violet (book #8) publishing soon. I completed Violet a few weeks back and that book is now with the editors. The completion of this series fulfills a dream I never thought I would manage, and yet, there they are, waiting to tell their stories to those who love the seven sisters and their tales.

Jasmine’s story drives the series toward the dynamic conclusion that culminates in Violet of Avalon, weaving elements of Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Frankenstein. Ethical considerations come into play with the question not only of can we sustain life, but should we.

Another consideration Jasmine explores is the idea of what it would be like to be a neurodivergent or “on the spectrum” person in Dark Ages. Lily of Avalon explored this concept as well and now Jasmine of Avalon approaches the process from an observer’s standpoint.

I read a review that stated Lily of Avalon was too dark and yes, I am sure it was a difficult story to read. It was certainly a troubling one to write. Like Aster and Iris before her, anytime I attempted to soften the narrative to make it more palatable, I heard that sister say in my head, “Do you want to tell your story or my story?”

From the beginning, when I wrote The Daughters of Avalon thinking it would be a one off, stand alone tale with zero intention of writing a series, I knew the stories did not come from me. They felt channeled, as though someone told me the story and I merely transcribed it. When I got lost along the way, especially with Jasmine, it was always because I did not listen well enough and tried to impose some sort of common sense adjustment onto the information I received.

I wrote almost half of Jasmine before she stopped talking to me and I could not figure out why. With all eight of the books, I literally had no idea whatsoever where they were headed. Contrary to intelligent novel writing, I had no story board, no outline, no plan other than “I think they will end up here,” which is very un-Virgo of me.

I did not know all the horrible things that would happen to Lily until they happened. I felt certain Dahlia of Avalon was book eight until my son and sounding board, Joe Humphrey, suggested that maybe Violet was last, not Dahlia. That was stunning for me. The Cinderella story of course should culminate the series because Cinderella is the encore story. Cinderella is “Stairway to Heaven” that plays after the band pretended they had finished their set. As it turned out, Dahlia became the set up for both Jasmine and Violet and contained important plot points I had no idea existed.

Once I wrote Dahlia’s story, the other two fell into place quickly, so in essence, I wrote the final two and a half books in less than a year. More than anyone, Joe understand the girls and the intricate trajectory of their stories. He knew the ending of the series before I did and I am so grateful for his time and energy investment in helping me hammer out all of the details. Lots of handholding and brainstorming happened over Facebook calls between California and Canada.

Now, I am thrilled to rollout the final two books, starting with Jasmine and moving along to Violet very soon. I sincerely hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Honestly, I wrote them for me because I love the stories and could not wait to see what would happen next. If other people also enjoy their saga, all the better.

You can order Jasmine by clicking here

and you can see the entire published Seven Sisters of Avalon by clicking here. All books are available on Kindle and in paperback. Hardback books and audiobooks coming later.

Violet should be available in a month or less.

We moved there in very early 2004. Delena was going into middle school and the ones where we lived in the Foothill Farms area of Sacramento where not excellent choices. We prayed for another option and as is so often the case with The Universe, our answer came in an unexpected way. Suddenly our landlord of 3 1/2 years was selling our house and we had to be out within 30 days. Eric had just been laid off from his most recent job and was starting his own business with some partners who – as first business partners often will – turned out to be shady. Not a great year.

Delena was 12, Dylan was 7, and Nathan was 5. I did not see the house until after we signed papers on it. Real estate brokers managed to get us a “NINJA” loan (No Income No Job or Assets). In retrospect, there was so much about that loan that was hinky that I wouldn’t know where to start listing. It was during the housing sweep where they were throwing mortgages at anyone who could sign a paper and we were first time buyers with no clue how the process should go.

The U-Haul with most of our possessions in it drove onto the property and I was behind it in our Jeep Cherokee seeing it for the first time. It took two loads to get everything from the old property and when we got back to the house for the second load, most of what we left had been stolen by the neighbors. The property managers illegally kept our security deposit (they waited far longer than the stated time to give us any kind of reconillation of the process) and we didn’t even fight for it. We were just proud to own our own home.

It was lovely. Far up in the mountains, remote, rural to the extreme. The only buildings that were not houses were the school, the fire station, the church, the post office, the rangers’ station and the water company. Not a store, gas station, or restaurant in sight for 25 minutes of swervy driving. For the first year, Dylan and I vomited every time we went up and down the mountain. We had to take him out of traditional school and home school him because he threw up every day on the bus, the poor sweetheart.

We raised our little ones in that house, charting their growing heights on the door frame by the kitchen with a sharpie pen. One by one, they moved out on their own. Nathan, our youngest, moved out in July of this year (2021).

A month later, the house burned down.

We know where we live. It’s naive to the point of insane to live in our part of California and not imagine that a wildfire is coming for you at some point. I’m a Virgo. I had lists. I had a plan. We had in the past gone so far as to have snowflake sized ash raining down on us for days as other places burned. We had been on standby for evacuation before. It always passed us by.

We watched the Caldor fire for a couple of days. It was mostly moving through vegetation and it was reassuring that the wind was blowing it away from us. It seemed likely that the Forest Service could manage it. What we didn’t know at the time was that there was a huge discussion going on about whether the jurisdiction was with the Fire Department or the Forestry Department and meanwhile, an undermanned staff tried unsuccessfully to manage the fire.

The area where the fire started was rough, so we figure either someone was trying to hide a body or someone’s cook fire got out of control. I don’t think there is yet a determination as to what caused it.

As we got through the day of August 16, Eric and I were off work because the shop was closed. We were staying vigilent, but did not go to any extreme measures. Eric even hired a local guy and paid him a grip of money to cut down five trees near the house at the bark beetles had killed. He was glad we would have extra firewood for the winter.

I repotted two legacy plants. One was an ancient pothos that I had for around 22 years and one was an umbrella plant that was around 20-years-old. They excitedly stretched their little root legs into new soil with more room. You could hear them sigh in ecstatic comfort.

I put off my chores until the next day: laundry, organize the laundry room, and clean the office. I was tired. It had been a demanding week at the shop.

People started to leave out, you know, “just in case.” We waited, staying focused on reports of what the fire was doing. As it started to get dark, Eric suggested that we start getting some things together to take to the shop. You know, “just in case.” We leisurely began assembling a pile of things in the living room floor for him to take in the first trip, then he would come back and get more if necessary. We didn’t want to overload the shop’s back room where we would store the items because the risk did not feel that substantial, but you know, “Just in case.”

He started loading up the car later into the night and seemingly out of the blue, we were alerted that there was an evacuation warning. To my understanding, that meant, “Get your shit together, there is a chance we are going to evacuate you until it is safe to come back again.”

So we worked faster.

I moved through my belongings in a bit of a mental haze. What would I need for a couple of weeks away from the house? This necklace. This one too. My medications. Photo albums. Artwork my kids (who are literally artists) did. I have gone back over those couple of hours a million times in my head. Why did I not pick up this... or that? The Virgo list and Virgo plan was gone, out the window in ashes long before the house was.

Eric was halfway through putting the first load in the car when he came back inside, his face ashen. “We have to go now.”

“No sweetie,” I said. “It’s just warning. They will tell us when we have to go.”

“No,” he said, more urgently. “We have to go RIGHT NOW.”

I grabbed a final few things and started helping him take the belongings we had gathered outside. Everything was silent and motionless. The wind was still blowing against the fire, so there was no smoke where we were. But there was the sound… like a jet engine.

Back inside, I started madly tossing a few more things in the bin. I grabbed by load of semi-wet clothing from the dryer and left the clothes in the washer, still agitating. I picked up my purse from my desk and mindlessly left my passport atop my brand new, used twice, 10″ Kindle Fire right there on the desk. I picked up the dog and he grabbed the cat. I wished the tropical fish well and hoped they made it through however long we had to be away.

I left my Santa Muerte altar on the altar in my office, but first, I went to her and said, “I’ve done all you’ve asked. I built a store and a community in your honor. I have made a place where people can venerate you. Don’t let me down. Save my house, save the beloved things in it. I’m begging you.”

She said in my head, “It’s time to go, child.”

As I went out the front door, I tucked a St Jude prayer card behind the corner of the lightswitch. “We go way back,” I said to him. “I haven’t asked you for anything years, maybe a decade or more. Please save my house, save the beloved things in it.”

In my head, he said, “It’s time to go, child.”

I didn’t look back.

Driving away was eerie. The streets were abandoned. The air barely stirred. We turned right. To the left, we could see an orange curtain coming our way. There was only one reasonable way out of town.

Once we were off the highest part of the moutain, which is approximately 1000 feet covered in a mile or so, we could no longer hear the sound of the fire. We were around ten minutes away from the house when the manditory evacuation order came over the phone. No shit, dude. Thanks.

As we drove further, we saw people pulled over on the side of the road chatting as if waiting for a parade. We kept driving. We got to the shop and realized there was no going back for a second load. We knew it intellectually when we left, but knowing it and understanding it were two different things.

Now, all we could do was hope that it passed us by. Later, my son and his girlfriend came to the shop to stay as well. They lived not even a quarter mile from us in Grizzly Flats.

I tried to sleep in my office while Eric spent time with Josh on the front deck. There wasn’t much sleep going on for anyone. The next day, new began to filter in. Reporters were driving around Grizzly Flats, showing every property except ours. They talked about how some houses were untouched. That it was as though the fire came right up to the driveway and just stopped…like magic.

“Thank you Santa Muerte and Saint Jude!” I thought. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

On one of the reports, they focused on a burned out car.

“Honey?” I asked. “Is that our Maverick?”

“Yep,” he said.

Two deer walked in front of the car and the camera focused on them while we begged for it to “look at the house! look at the house!”

The news LOVED that shot of the deer and the car and kept showing it over and over, across many platforms.

Two tweakers drove quickly through the town on a YouTube video, talking about harvesting the copper in the structures. Then they drove past our house with a quick glance that told us it was not there anymore.

One of my students is a cop and was assigned for patrols in Grizzly Flats. He drove by to check out the house for us and confirmed that it was completely gone.

I would post photos for you here, but I really don’t even want to look at it again.

The house is ash to the foundation. The three out buildings are ash to the foundation. Eric’s boat, Eric’s Goldwing, two classic cars that were his project cars and two Volvos that needed repair are gone. The RV is to the ground. All of the manzanita surrounding our house is completely gone. The chimney and the foundation still stand but the mortar in the chimney is powdered and you can push it over without trying. Eric found that his toolbox in the shed survived, albeit warped, and when he got it open, thousands of dollars of Craftsman tools were completely melted inside. The cast iron woodstove is warped around itself. There is ash almost to Eric’s thighs. Two stories of house worth of ash.

Odd things survived.

Eric was finally allowed to go up last week. I had no interest in going. It was hard for him. He found those few things.

We lived in the shop for just over a week, then moved to a camping resort where a dear friend works. We stayed in two cabins there over the next two weeks, then we managed to find a house to rent only ten minutes from the shop. It’s small, only 1200 square feet, but it meets our needs. It isn’t like we had much to put into the house.

People immediately were aggressive about helping out. We appreciated it, but it was hard when they were almost demanding to know what we needed when we were so shellshocked that we had no idea what what we needed. “…everything?”

We had not once piece of furniture. No clothing to speak of. No pots, pans, silverware, plates, not even a pillow between us. We had a lot of stupid stuff that was only secondarily important because we thought we had multiple trips coming up. I had a half-load of laundry and there was not a single pair of panties to be found in it. I left all of my earrings except for what I had in my ears at the time, all of my favorite clothing, most of our magical tools and statuary.

One entire shed was almost filled with books, many first editions, many out of prints. Most irreplaceable.

Waves of grief hit when you least expect it. You go to grab soy sauce from the fridge which you always have and realize your chicken stirfry you are making is now fubar’d because that was at the other house that you always have soy sauce and you didn’t think to but it here. Then the quicktears come over soy sauce.

You remember yet another precious item you forgot to grab. The favorite little clothes my babies wore, the samples of their handwriting through the years, all the cards they made for me, their baby books, the turkeys carefully traced around a little hand, the crochet hook my late grandfather whittled, my mother’s class ring, photographs from actual 35 mm cameras that were not in the albums, the Amulets of the Goddess that are so hard to find, the green dishes my father bought my mother in Holland in 1958, years of handmade Christmas decorations, so… much… precious… stuff.

And yes, it’s “stuff,” as people are quick to remind me. “You got out safely, that’s all that matters.” “It’s only stuff.” Yes. Yes, I know. The night we had the full scope of the loss confirmed, Eric was on the front deck of the shop looking sad and I said, “Hey! Guess what? I’m not a hoarder anymore!” He had always tolerated but made his frustration known over the stuff I kept from the past. At least it made him smile for a minute.

Sixty years of memories, items from my childhood, things that keep me tethered to the past when my memory is already starting to get sketchy as hell. I do not have any people around me who knew me before my first child was born. Those items reminded me that I was once a little girl and a young woman. That I existed before I was a mother and a wife.

I recently posted on Facebook that this was my first Halloween in sixty years without decorations and I grieved it. Well-meaning people were bubbling that I could start over! I could rebuild! The task of rebuilding a collection of items to use twice a year (Halloween and Christmas) feels extraneous and odious. It’s just gone. “We’ll make new memories.” I’m sixty… how many more memories can there reasonably be to make?

My father died at 51. My mother died at 60. By this coming February, I will have outlived them both.

Eric and I worked hard to embrace the excitement of, for our first time, building a home together for just the two of us. When Eric married me, I already had children and a full house of furniture and memories. He brought his few boxes of belongings and fit them in around us.

People stepped up in an unreasonable and humbling fashion. Within a week, we had every piece of furniture we needed to the point that we had to gratefully and lovingly refuse some because we could only fit so many beds and recliners into such a small house. We had dishes, pots, pans, appliances, silverware, clothing, ritual ware, jewelry, and personal items, all we needed.

Other than the picture we saved going on the wall, the house is all set up now.

I love the house. It has a locked gate at the end of a driveway that is maybe an eighth of a mile long. No one can get in unless I know they are coming or they are family and have the gate code. The gate has a Texas star on it that looks like a pentacle (it even lights up!) and large pieces of quartz in the brick columns that support the gate. In front of my front yard are acres of horses. I am not a horse person, but they are great neighbors. The house has a full raised-bed garden that is in complete harvest flourish. There is a deck in back for Eric’s mancave time. I have a guest room for the first time in my life.

The air conditioning works. The house is one story and my poor knee is grateful. The shower is amazing. The only sounds I ever hear are this symphony of wild animal sounds that remind me of this scene in “PeeWee’s Big Adventure”: (skip ahead to 4:24)

Being this close to the shop is such a blessing. I can get there in 10 minutes instead of 50.

Literally everything in my life is better now that I am off the mountain. And yet, I still feel broken. I am intellectually thankful to everyone who helped us – so many people – but I have trouble feeling anything. I am numb inside. I smile and clean myself energetically and do my work taking care of other people and then I come home and collapse. Right now, I sit at someone else’s desk wearing someone else’s clothes in someone else’s house.

There are no cues to help me to feel like me. Yes, I am evolllllllved and can look into my spirit and see me there. But home is home and the feeling that comes with home is not here anymore than we can really feel at home in a nice motel.

We were very well insured. That is not an issue. Due to Eric’s careful financial acumen, we were over insured. Eventually, he will have his dream of owning many acres with a nice house on it. One thing I can feel is to be so happy for him and so grateful that he took such good care of us. We have a year’s lease on the rental property and there is little doubt that the buyer’s side of the housing market will look much different in a year, so I am sure his dream will be a reality.

I am grateful this didn’t happen when I had to wrangle kids or other pets. I am beyond thankful for the people who showed their love and helped us know what we needed when even we couldn’t think straight about what we needed. I am grateful for the patience of our customers when we had to close the shop on Wednesday and Thursday of each week in September while we did endless paperwork for allowing FEMA to take care of the property and to manage the insurance claim and things like that. This included listing every. thing. in. the. house, assigning it a monetary value, and also showing photographs of the house through the years with all that stuff in it. I thought that would kill me going through those old photos over the past seventeen years. It was a multi-hour, brutal process.

I have lots of trauma responses now that I didn’t have before. Hearing helicopters overhead triggers me. Smoke in the air freaks me right now. For some weird reason, I am also now clautrophobic. Don’t know where that came from. I have trouble caring about anything or attaching anything because there is no longer any kind of sense of permanence. I feel in a daze much of the time. I have racing, intrusive thoughts that are hard to shut down. It only happens at night when I am home. My loved ones are diligent about giving me frequent spiritual cleansing and keeping my energy flowing right so I have the best chance of effectively processing all of this.

Someone I trust recently told me that there are people in the community who are taking credit for my house burning down. All I could do was shake my head. I truly hope they got what they wanted out of that, whether they caused it or not. I cannot imagine being that kind of a person and thankfully, never have to. If anyone indeed ever thought such a thing, much less said it out loud to others, I pray with all I have and all I am that God blesses them to such fulfillment and joy that they are never again so miserable as to have to formulate such a thought. May the heartbreak of another person never again be what brings them comfort, status, and satisfaction.

I confess to a temporary crisis of faith. I went to the large Santa Muerte statue after we confirmed that the house was a loss. I put my arms on her shoulders and looked into her glowing eyes. “You Cabrona,” I said. “I asked you to take care of me. Why? Why didn’t you take care of me?”

In my head, she said, softly and firmly, “Daughter, why in the world do you believe I am not taking care of you?”

• I am no longer chained to an unmanageable amount of stuff I would have to move to leave the mountain.
• I no longer have to worry about all the things the house needed done to it.
• I will not have to go through another freezing, snowy winter in Grizzly Flats.
• I no longer spend almost two hours a day driving.
• I no longer have to make getting a gallong of milk a day trip.
• I am closer to most of my kids.
• I was able to see first hand the appreciation of people for the time, effort, love, and spirit we have invested in the last twenty-five years of service to the local Pagan community.
• I no longer have to go upstairs to go to bed.

Many things that were wrong in my life were fixed in one awful night’s time.

I had a home that looked like a beautiful Pagan temple or museum. I had a home that was an homage to my children and to sixty years of love in my life. I had a home that felt safe and like a refuge from any harm that could come. Everyone who came into the home felt it and often fell asleep in its embrace just because it was so welcoming and comfortable.

Now I just have to wrap my head around the knowledge that all of that is gone. It isn’t just “lost” or “taken.” It no longer exists… at all… anywhere. I have a perfectly lovely little house to live in, but if I am honest here – and why not be? – I don’t know that I will ever feel safe again or at home again. I hope so. I truly do.

Today is not that day.

Tomorrow isn’t lookin’ great either.

People keep asking, “Are you going to rebuild???” No. In fact, I am never going back to Grizzly Flats again. It’s been done. Frogs can only jump forward. I am like Lot’s wife now. If I look back, I will surely get lost in there and be doomed. I will be a pillar of salt, frozen forever looking backward.

I am going to metaphorically wander the earth like Cain and do my best to find something to fill up this empty space where some part of my heart and spirit used to be.

Also, because of who I am, there is a decent chance I will shake my snakes at anyone who tries to subdue me, perchance with my titties out.

This is the equivilent of “I’ve come here to kick ass and chew gum and I’m all out of gum” since I do not have any snakes and will never have any snakes. Snakes and I have an agreement that whensoever we encounter one another, we will run screaming like mad in opposite directions from one another. I have fulfilled my end of that agreement well and presume they have been doing the same. I did not stay to find out.

(Actual footage below)

Publishes in August 8, 2021 by Llewellyn Worldwide. Available now for pre-order on Llewellyn and Amazon. Launch party on August 8, 2021 at Crossroads Metaphysical Store.

From Llewellyn: Anyone can be the target of a psychic attack, whether it’s an intentional curse or an incidental crossing. This book shares effective techniques and practices for recovering from psychic attacks and protecting yourself in the future.

Katrina Rasbold shares how to identify the different types of attacks by their symptoms and provides tips for managing an attack with IOB techniques, which stands for Identify, Objectify, and Banish. Discover step-by-step instructions for setting up a healing space, ritual baths and showers, egg cleansing, and working with sacred sprays and smudging bundles. Learn how to do a chakra check and work with spiritual tools such candles, stones, and incense. You will also find advice for cleansing the home, an important step for recovering from many types of intentional crossings.

Negative energies initiated by others can have a strong influence on vitality, relationships, and prosperity. With Katrina’s guidance, you can uncross yourself from intentional psychic attacks and incidental entity infiltrations, past and current traumas, hooks to unhealthy relationships, and destructive habits that create obstacles to your success. Whether you are suffering from a curse, hex, haunting, possession, the evil eye, or even an accidental self-crossing, this book is a powerful guide to healing and recovery.

Advanced Praise For Uncrossing by Katrina Rasbold

“When people know you are a Witch, they will come to you for protection and to break curses and attacks, real and imagined. I’ve been fortunate to see Katrina Rasbold work her cleansing and uncrossing magic firsthand and I am grateful to have her teachings, tips and methods hard won from years of experience in one place where we can benefit from her wisdom. Let her guide you in helping yourself and helping others if you are called to do the work of uncrossing.”—Christopher Penczak, co-founder of the Temple of Witchcraft and author of The Witch’s Shield

“If you’ve been crossed, jinxed, or hexed, you need to clean up that mess! Katrina lovingly guides you through all the means and methods from various magical paths on removing negativity from yourself, your loved ones, and your environment. I consider this book to be a ‘must have’ on any magical bookshelf and am confident that it is one that you will turn to again and again to change your bad luck to good.”—Madame Pamita, author of The Book of Candle Magic and Madame Pamita’s Magical Tarot

“Just as you wouldn’t head out on a multi-day hike without a first-aid kit, so, too, you wouldn’t practice magic without having the tools to treat a psychic attack. Life happens, and whether because you have enemies or you’re your own worst enemy, recovery from malicious magic is of paramount importance. With Katrina Rasbold’s experienced step-by-step advice on how to heal from everything from curses and hexes to psychosomatic self-sabotage, Uncrossing is your indispensable magical first-aid handbook for not if you fall victim to psychic attacks, but when you fall victim to them.”— Tomás Prower, author of Queer Magic, Morbid Magic, and La Santisima Muerte

“Uncrossing is an important work in today’s uncertain times. Katrina Rasbold’s clear, concise style is refreshingly to the point and ultimately practical. Uncrossing approaches energetic involvements from the receiving end and the delivery point and carefully considers the issues involved in working one’s will or blocking another’s. Their review of healing and after-the-fact are so important not only to this topic, but for life in general. I highly recommend this work to practitioners across the board.”—Rev. Jean (Drum) Pagano, Archdruid ADF

“Uncrossing by Katrina Rasbold is a must have for any magickal practitioner—novice or experienced. As a professional witch myself, I talk with clients on a daily basis that are worried about being cursed, hexed, or crossed. This book answers all the questions you could ever have about hexes and curses; from how to diagnose them, to how to clean them up and keep them gone. Rasbold shares what she has been teaching her students and clients for years all in one handy book. When it comes to curses, never fear, just have this book handy! I will be recommending this book to all my clients and customers.”—Phoenix LeFae, author of What Is Remembered Lives and Walking in Beauty

“I had the distinct pleasure of diving into this book in the early days of this chaotic year. Uncrossing by Katrina Rasbold is a detailed exploration that reflects the author’s experience as well as practice. The chapter on determining whether an attack is actually happening or not—’Is This An Attack?’—is worth the price of admission. This book will be valuable for the newcomer, as well as the professional.”—Byron Ballard, witch, priestess, author Roots, Branches, and Spirits

Released June 9, 2020. Available on Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Llewellyn Worldwide.

Featuring hands-on exercises, simple techniques, and how-to instruction from a professional bruja, this beginner-friendly guide is the best choice for understanding and practicing Brujeria―the healing witchcraft of Mexico and the American Southwest. The Sacred Art of Brujeria is adapted from a twelve-month series of classes and presents a wide variety of topics, including magical tools, the body’s energetic systems, and effective spellcasting.

This remarkable how-to book is unlike any other, covering everything from the history and divine figures of brujería to the healing, protection, and money magic that you can utilize in daily life. Explore power words and breath work, treat spiritual maladies, perform different types of limpia (cleansing and clearing), and learn about brujería as a business. Professional bruja Katrina Rasbold gives you an insider’s look at this sacred practice and how it helps others as well as yourself.

Thank you to all of you who love the Seven Sisters of Avalon as much as I do! The plan has been to have a total of eight books in this series. Last Valentine’s Day, we released Lily of Avalon, volume 5.

My muse and I have been hard at work and have drafted out the next three books and they should be released starting this year. I was contracted with Llewellyn to write a few non-fiction books and I just turned in the first draft on the third one this week. This leaves me available to start working on book #6.

The girls are chomping at the bit to tell you the rest of their story, so I am sure you will hear from them soon. My goal is to have the next three books completed and the series finalized within 15 months’ time.

Want to hear more about Katrina or connect with her? You can find out how to do so here:

(more…)

I am excited to announce that the 5th book in the Seven Sisters of Avalon series, Lily of Avalon, is now available on Amazon.com in paperback and in e-book version.

It has been a while, oh yes, it has! I have not updated this blog as much as I should or as much as I would like to. Life has changed a great deal for me and then changed again, so I have been trying to keep up and mostly failing, feeling overwhelmed and awe-stricken in equal turns. Regardless, life is good and adjustments, even painful ones, are usually for the better, whether we see that at the time or not.

Where the heck were you?

To be honest, I can’t remember what I last wrote about and I am too lazy this week to go back and read and find out. I am going to arrogantly presume that most of you who read this blog know a bit about me or at least have the energy (if not the interest) to look back over some past posts and see what went on from A-Z.

I closed my shop at Denio’s Farmer’s Market after just over three wonderful years there. The book contract with Llewellyn meant I would need a lot of focus for writing and would likely travel a good bit for book signings and such, so I wanted my weekends free again. The venue had raised parking prices from $2 to $4, which had a huge impact on our customer flow and increased our online sales (www.twosistersbotanica.com) since people could pay a bit more than parking and not even leave their houses to shop. After we closed down at Samhain (Oct) 2017, the other vendors who stayed said we left at the right time because traffic in the venue dropped off even more.

OK, then what?

I wasn’t sure where we would go from there and I contemplated the many life changes that hit during that year. Not going into detail, but it was staggering with people who I thought were life-long friends turning out to only be there for what I could do for them, not out of any sort of affection for me. It was clarifying, to say the least, but it was also wonderful to identify the black holes where my energy was going. When you work as a spiritual leader, often people have no interest in the “real” person, but only in what you can do for them. Your own needs have no part of the equation. I never saw this more clearly than in 2017 and truthfully, I am grateful for that lesson because it taught me to be very careful about where my energy goes. The whole “cast not your pearls before swine,” thing. I realized that I want people in my life who interested in a mutually supportive dynamic rather than one that is one way and in the months since then, I have worked aggressively to refine my relationships so that they better reflect and support that lesson.

I was blessed in March of 2018 to find a place to share my products from www.twosistersbotanica.com and that led to a place to teach, which was my greatest dream, and later to a place to heal, which has been a profound blessing in my life.

At LightWeavers Academy in Citrus Heights, California, the owner generously opened up an entire segment of her shop for our products and Eric and I began teaching free classes on a variety of subjects every other Friday. I then started renting a room there where I could perform intense cleansings and energy realignments for people called “limpias” in the Brujeria tradition. My apprentices assist me and our team does good work that makes us all proud and excited.

Who the hell is Marla?

I had the honor and privilege of meeting a woman named Shannon Del Fiorentino-McLeran who owns Sacramento Healing Tree. She also works out of LightWeavers and we became friends. She asked me if she could try out a new energy technique she was pioneering that focuses on energetic weight loss. Well hell, I’m definitely down with anything that helps with that, so YEAH, let’s play!

She told me some pretty profound things in the treatments I have had with her. One was that I was barely in my body, which I would scoff at normally except that I had previously scoffed at a wonderful healer a few years back who told me the exact same thing. One wonderful healer I can scoff at no problem when I know they are off base, but two wonderful healers who do not know each other telling me exactly the same thing? Yikes, Mama needs to listen. …and so I did. She helped me with a soul retrieval process and worked with me to build up my aura, which was slackalackin.

I won’t go into much detail because her techniques are new, cutting edge energy stuff and proprietary info that she deserves to keep between herself and her clients, but I will say that part of the work involved two really major processes. One was the eye-rolling, unicorns farting glitter and rainbows chore of “healing Little Katrina.” When we started working with Little Katrina, she was a little thing of maybe 5-6 years old, curled up in a ball and crying.

Shannon asked me, “Why do you keep making yourself smaller so people will be more comfortable with you?”

Well, holy shit. Yep, I did that. I thought about my tag line for all those years, the quote from Storm Large, “People tell me I’m too much, well maybe it’s just you’re not enough.” Yep, needed that reminder. Of course, just like when you buy a particular model of car and start seeing it on every road you drive, once I had that in my head, I kept noticing all the ways I make myself smaller for the comfort of others. It was a LOT.

Of course, this came up in an energetic exploration about obesity, so the obvious correlation is that I make myself big on the outside to compensate for making myself so small on the inside.

What happened next?

I spent the time since January 1, 2019, working on my nutrition. I also finished a book, Lily of Avalon, that was two years in the making and is about guess what? The Alice in Wonderland story where the protagonist is bigger than the should be and smaller than she should be and ultimately, actualizes to exactly where she is supposed to be.

Nope, no metaphor going on there and no mystery as to why I couldn’t finish the book for so long.

Week 1, I dialed in the eating between meals and reduced the carb intake a bit. Nothing specific, but just tightening things up.

Week 2, I used Intermittent Fasting to get rid of the cravings, limiting my eating to a 6 hour window each day.

Week 3 (last week), I used Dr. Eric Berg’s more intensive version of healthy Keto eating and went to only salad (7 cups minimum a day), meat, and eggs with occasional cheese included. This week is a continuation of that process, refining and perfecting.

At the beginning of Week 3, I went looking for Little Katrina to do some work with her and I found she had moved out. (?) To date, I have been unable to find her anywhere. I will have Shannon check when I work with her again, but nope, she has left the premises. Instead, I found Marla and it was a complete surprise to find Marla where Little Katrina had been. I opened the door inside me where Little Katrina lives and saw a woman standing with her back to me.

She turned around and said, “What do you want?”

At first, I was a bit mortified since Marla is one of the most clearly broken fictional characters in the history of ever, but then I came around. Marla owns her flaws. Marla takes no crap. Most of all, Marla is a grown up with the damage that comes from what a lot of us experience in the process of growing up. Within the movie, Marla herself grows.

Bottom line, I’ll take it.

The other side is that eating this way brought on a wave of depression that ate up a couple weeks of my life. When you have exactly one coping strategy for stress and that coping strategy goes away, there is only stress, sadness, shades of gray, and a suggestion of hopelessness. I think I am coming out of that now and the good news is that my skin and nails are healthier, my insides feel better, my sleep is on a healthier cycle, and my cravings are gone. I lost five pounds and a half a percent of body fat, but more inches than those numbers would reflect. I’m calling it a win and moving forward.

I have always quit when it got too hard to bear and that was often. Sometimes, the quitting was abrupt and dramatic and sometimes, it was a slow and subtle return. This time, I am going to do my best to hang in and see what is on the other side. For now, I’m still in the Wizard of Oz “pre-door opening” gray, but at least I am awake and the cyclone is over.

Ego is such a bitch; an insidious little bugger that sneaks up on you when you least expect it. I have battled this monster repeatedly over the years and by now, almost fifty-seven years into this life, I thought I had it beaten. I know the difference in ego and self-esteem. I know what is healthy and what is not. I know humility is important but can be just as destructive as an inflated ego. After all that time polishing the ego lesson stone, I really thought I was in the homestretch. Apparently not. Ego waited, then struck hard.

Ego in early 2018

This year has beaten the crap out of me and I have complained and whined about it incessantly on social media and in this blog and will likely continue to do so. Verbosity and petulance are NOT the vices I was called on to improve in these raucous months, thank you very much, so verbose and petulant for the win and ego for the challenge.

This was the year I found out that people I dearly loved were not at all who I thought they were and instead were the people everyone else insisted they were. I didn’t listen; I defended. I waited to be proven wrong. Spoiler: I was proven wrong. My ego about being a good judge of people took some hits, let me tell you.

I found out I have a pain-in-the-ass disease that jacks with my balance and makes my ears ring nonstop. It saps my energy and it limits my mobility due to vertigo that happens if I move outside of a certain range. My ego over being robustly healthy took a beating.

My husband’s business folded and our income was cut down by around 75% and I had to seriously pick up the pace on the products and services I offer well before my own business was prepared to carry that kind of weight. My ego over never having money problems again hit the ground.

I had to face the fact that I could not do a quality job on the Llewellyn book on which I had a hard deadline and also get the next Seven Sisters of Avalon book out on time, or even six months late, so Lily of Avalon got back-burnered. My ego over being a “prolific writer” was pummeled.

A very promising and potentially lucrative business I was starting with a friend fizzled and has apparently died a quiet death without even a whimper or a moan… just a silent death. My ego over being able to market what I do died just as quietly.

My friend George found a ton of errors, typos, etc, in the Seven Sisters of Avalon books already in publication, so I had to stop everything and fix those. That was after the books had been through no fewer than three editors/proofreaders. When I get the books back from my proofreaders, I do not check them because I have long since stopped actually seeing any of the words by the time I finish writing the books. My ego over my fantastic series of novels took a temporary dive.

Those are just the highlights. So… much… more… agh… But c’mon, I’m still standing!

Ego and the July midterm

I looked forward to the General Hospital Fan Club Weekend (GHFCW) all year long. Last year, I went with Eric for the first time (I have always gone alone or with Delena in the past) and we had a great time. I knew that this would be my last year to attend and I was sad about that but happy to get to go at all. Letting go of this part of my life was a hard choice to make, but we cannot hold onto the past forever or we rob ourselves of opportunities. This page has needed to turn for a while and with the 55th anniversary of General Hospital promising a wonderful array of events, I felt I could work this year and then step away. It has been a long haul, longer for some of us on the staff, but for me, it has been since 2001.

I work the actors’ lines to make sure every fan gets their photos and autographs, which also means I make sure whatever actor I have gets their booze or food or whatever they want and that their line closes out and they are free to leave when they choose. I am the Fan Club’s webmaster and I also work as a kind of guest liaison throughout the year fielding email questions about the GHFCW, among other virtual assisting jobs I do for the president. I also work with other staff members to set up the events and to check fans into the individual events. Each August, I publish the General Hospital Fan Club Yearbook with photos and stories from the GHFCW.

This event is a four day weekend where General Hospital fans can mingle with their favorite actors and enjoy the company of other fans. We all have friends that we only see once a year at the GHFCW and now I go more for the people than for the actors. I never get starstruck. Never. Ever. The actors are just people to me and truthfully, a good many of them are not very kind people.

The last time I got really starstruck was a few years ago when Jonathan Frakes (Commander William Riker from Star Trek: The Next Generation) showed up to pick up his wife, Genie Francis (Laura Spencer on General Hospital). It was a colliding of the worlds and of the fandoms for me and even though he was only there for a short time and technically, not even at our event, I did get my photo (right or above, depending on your device). That is a story on its own and one that I have told way too many times.

This year, I had it bad. I was nearly breathless and – true confessions time – actually lost some sleep over information that came my way about a week before the event. I learned that Nathan Fillion was confirmed for the One Life to Live Past Cast event we were hosting on Friday night.

Ohhhhhhh Lordy. My gootness. My. Oh. My.

I emailed our volunteer coordinator and the subject line of the email was “Begging Time.” I usually do not care what actor I am assigned to and will work wherever I am needed. This time I cared. A lot. I would have given our volunteer coordinator anything she wanted to assign his line to me.

My husband and kids watched “Firefly” together in its entirety… twice. Aiden, my grandson, and I watch “Lemony Snickets: A Series of Unfortunate Events.” I watched “Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog.” Delena and I watched “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” together. People, brace yourselves. I own “Slither” on DVD. I have posted internet memes of this guy. I have a shirt with his image on it that says “Captain Tightpants.”

I sat on this valuable information for a week, sworn to secrecy and knowing he was going to be there, confident that if I could not be assigned to his line, I could at least take a quick break, flash my All Access Pass, and step in for a quick photo. I would at least get the photo.

Ego and Friday night

Friday night arrived, as did the actors and… no Nathan Fillion. It was disappointing, but life moves on. It was too much to hope for anyway because he is a pretty big star now in several fandoms and as they say, the show must go on. Lots of people paid a ton of money for a good night with former One Life to Live stars and I was determined to shore up my heartbreak and make it happen. I was assigned to James and Kassie DePaiva. She is from very close to my hometown in Kentucky and I told her this when I introduced myself. She was not particularly interested in this fact and they were both what I would call Typical Overall Ostentatiously Soap Actor Distant. I kind of hoped the hometown thing might warm her up a bit, but hey, that’s how it goes. Very occasionally, an actor is warm, kind, and loving to us as staff and we get to see the mask drop. More often, they treat us as a functional and unfortunate necessity to the event. The DePaivas were not unpleasant at all, but yeah, I was furniture and I am used to that.

Past Cast events are my favorite and they have a very different vibe than the events we have with the actors currently on the show. Current cast members are not required to attend the Fan Club events, but they are strongly encouraged by the studio to do so. I have watched characters and careers made and broken based solely on how the actors interact with the fans. Most actors are VERY affectionate and loving and gracious to the fans. The fans believe it is because the actors loooooovvvvve them, but it is because actors are trained to pretend they feel something they do not feel. They are likely acting more at these events than they ever do in front of a camera. There are those few, sure, who are genuinely cool… but only a handful. Most are predictably Typical Overall Ostentatiously Soap Actor Distant (TOO SAD).

The Past Cast actors, however, are there because they actively choose to be and usually they come to reunite with former cast members they never see, so they are mostly there for their own interests, but in a different way from the current cast. Since most soap actors do not go on to be crazy famous, they get really excited when people remember and cheer for them… and everyone does.

The DePaivas are very popular and the line was long the entire night with people waiting an hour or two to meet them and get an autograph and photo. They are very interactive, so each person took maybe 2-3 minutes and when you have 50-60 people in line, that adds up fast. It is up to us, the line managers, to make sure the line moves so the actor does not have to be the hardass. Ultimately, whatever the actor wants, the actor gets. My back was barking from standing for so long and I was eating Motrin like Pez.

About a third of the way through the event, a huge cheer went up and son-of-a-gun! Nathan Fillion was there… and I was trapped in a line. Hope did not spring eternal. It leaped like a happy little Jack Russell terrier. I kept trying to see where he was stationed and lost sight of him in the crowds. I texted Eric, “He’s here.” I have a professional photographer who works the events for me and she was also on high alert. “Come here now, please,” I texted her between taking photos for guests.

Then, Lord have mercy, the man walked directly to my table to see the DePaivas and knelt down right in front of me, talking to them for probably 10 minutes of the 20 minutes or so total that he was at the event. During that time, I had Eric on one side of him waiting and my photographer right beside me while I made the guests in my line wait as the three actors had their conversation. Ten minutes is a lifetime in one of these lines, but I kept things stable, assuaging the guests with comments like, “But you get to look at Nathan Fillion. Look, everyone, it’s Nathan Fillion!”

I got the attention of the security guard escorting him and mouthed to him all intense-like, “Ron, please, I have to get this photo. Please…please.”

Nathan Fillion turned to go and I said directly to him, “Excuse me, can I please have a photo? Please?” The DePaivas motioned me forward and he just turned and left. “Mr. Fillion,” I called after him, loudly and strong, “One photo, please.” He walked away from me and my broken heart.

I watched him go and took a breath. Then two. My eyes stung. Gone. That close and just…gone. After all the photos over seventeen years that I made sure our guests got, mine got away. He was on two lists for me (“was” being the operative word): my bucket list, right between “go back to England” (done) and “publish a book with a mainstream publisher” (done) and The List of freebies within my monogamous relationship. For the bucket list, it was just a photo.

I pulled myself together and started the line moving again. Kassie said she had been taping all day and was exhausted and needed to leave at a particular time. The long line finished three minutes before her deadline and our event staff descended to get their photos with the DePaivas. My eyes stung again as they got their photos that they wanted. The DePaivas turned and left. I am used to actors not smiling, not saying, “Thank you,” but just walking away with the security staff that will take them to their cars in the parking garage …and that is what they did.

Bing, bing, bing… my Facebook lit up with guests and staff members posting their photos with Nathan Fillion… including the staff members who had not one clue who he was when I mentioned him earlier in the night. “OMG!!!!!!! NATHAN FILLION IS HERE!!!”  …yeah… he sure was.

This is my photo of Nathan Fillion and represents the full extent of my interaction with him (you can click to enlarge if you want), along with Eric’s message to me afterward when I was still stuck in line and unable to follow Nathan Fillion, grab onto his legs, and let him drag me weeping across the hotel carpet as he sic’d security on me:

  

Poor Eric knew I was devastated and had no idea how to comfort me. To him, Nathan Fillion is just a guy, but like the good husband he is, he hurt on my behalf. I got the look that told me he would gladly kick some Fillion ass if I said the word (or would at least give it some heroic effort). My champion. Bruised and defeated, I limped my dying ego back to the hotel room and pouted fiercely.

Ego and Saturday

Saturday was our Main Cast Luncheon and the primary event of the weekend. I did not really care whose line I got because there are around forty stars and for the most part, one is the same as another.

Except not.

I forgot about William deVry.

Shit.

The Main Cast Luncheon is so important that we have a huge meeting of all the line managers and escorts just before the event so we do not inadvertently screw up something vital. That is where we get our actor assignments.

I got William deVry.

Why does it matter? Because in 2003, I was two years into running Eye on Soaps, one of the top four websites covering ABC soaps. William deVry was just getting started on All My Children as Michael Cambias and he was unreasonably and viciously mean to me over a photo I posted of him that I had full permission from ABC studios to use. There was no, “Hey, I really don’t care for that picture, can you use this one instead?” Oh no. He went OFF on me.

After he aggressively chewed my ass, I assured him that I would remove the offending post and photo and that he would never have another SYLLABLE of coverage on my website. Eye on Soaps thrived until the cancellation of All My Children in 2013 and for those ten years, we never once mentioned William deVry. My writers did not even refer to his character by name. They called him, “the rapist” or “Bianca’s rapist.”

In all the years he has been on General Hospital as Julian, he was a bullet I managed to dodge at the GHFCW for so long I forgot about him. For that matter, I am sure does not likely even remember his interaction with me. Hell, he likely did not remember it after he hit “send” on the email all those years ago.

When the actor assignments were read and I got William deVry, I was stunned and I am ashamed to say I was expressive in my dismay, still stinging from the previous night’s overt dogging by my former favorite actor. Our volunteer coordinator was mortified that I was upset. I was mortified that I caused her any moment of distress because this woman works herself crazy even before the stress of dealing with my neuroses, which are insignificant in the big picture. The fact does not escape me that my neuroses are insignificant in the little picture.

I turned it around quickly and took back my empowerment, stating aloud some affirmations that I will not repeat here but the escorts and line managers will probably recall for quite some time. Basically, it was a “suck it up, buttercup” approach and I did.

The day went well and William deVry was pleasant enough in that TOO SAD way. He left early, so I got off work at 2:30 pm instead of 3:00 pm. Mostly, the day passed without incident and I learned the lesson that it is stupid and petty to stay angry with someone because they were awful to you fifteen years before when they do not (likely) even remember being awful to you.

OK, Universe… I hear you.

Ego and the curtain call

Throughout 2018, I have had quite a curtain call of people who have hurt my feelings deeply in the past, who hurt me to the point that it changed who I am, come back into my life, usually just long enough that I am forced by circumstance to spend time with them and find an accord. I’m OK with that, especially when that lesson is juxtaposed against a situation where someone (Nathan Fillion) who I adored from afar, who I had always heard was great with fans, and who I held in tremendous esteem as an actor and a human,  fell so far from grace in the matter of a moment.

Encountering undeniable evidence that I really do not know people who I really think I know has been an ongoing theme for me this year and, as hard and painful as it is, I am grateful for it. The ego factor that tells me that I am right about my impressions of people is up against the evidence that says I have more to learn.

The Nathan Fillion thing, of course, was not really about the actor. It triggered feelings I thought were long dead. Those feelings are about not belonging, not being important, not being a real part of anyone’s team, and of being pushed aside.  It is about not being cool enough to be in the cool kids club. It is every time I was overlooked and disqualified because I am fat. It is every time people thought I was stupid because I have a Southern accent.

Ego came calling and triggered all of this. So what if I was not important enough to a man (who had no clue who I was) that he would stop what he was doing and take thirty seconds of his time to cross himself off my bucket list? Why did it matter? Because it really was about every time I was not chosen for dodgeball in middle school.

I hate that stupid “wounded child” story, but it definitely came out for me this time.

I am over it now and far enough away from it that I can see it all objectively and work with it to learn more and become more and know more and blah blah blah. It was a rough month and July is pretty much is the icon of the folder on my mental desktop for 2018. I am still standing tall in that “thank you, sir, and may I have another?” kind of way. It builds character! It makes us better people!!  Meanwhile, it stings and it sucks.

Thankfully, on Sunday, the Universe decided I could rest from all of the lesson-learning and I got to spend it taking care of Gregory Zarian and Dylan Cash, my buddies. I reconnected with my friend, Blake Gibbons, and visited with Graham Shiels who I took care of years ago when he was on Night Shift. He even remembered my name. (Hey, I was important enough!) Eric and I ended the LA experiences with a wonderful dinner at our favorite steakhouse, Damon’s, then headed home…thankfully, blessedly home.

When my grandson came over for his weekly Wednesday visit, his first words were,  “Did you get that photo with Jacques Snicket?”

Sigh.

Now, I have to burn my Captain Tightpants shirt. I can also hook you up with a copy of “Slither.”

I touch the fire and it freezes me, I look into it and it’s black
Why can’t I feel? My skin should crack and peel.
I want the fire back.

Now, through the smoke, she calls to me to make my way across the flame
To save the day or maybe melt away. I guess it’s all the same…

So, I will walk through the fire cause where else can I turn?
I will walk through the fire and let it… burn. Let it burn.

–Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer “Once More With Feeling” – condensed slightly

---

2018 has been a hell of a year, hasn’t it?

As a Bruja, I hear the stories people bring to me, looking for ways out of their difficulties. Sure, most people do not consult with a Bruja for answers during their highest highs, but often do during their lowest lows when there is no other recourse. Brujas tend to be everyone’s dirty little secret.

For that reason, I hear less about people’s successes and joyful moments and more about their times of pain and outrage and fear and disappointment. This also puts me in a unique position to see the panoramic overview and mark some trends of challenges people experience at certain times. It is fascinating how much they all tend to parallel one another.

The trend for 2018 is that it pretty much sucks.

There are some wonderful parts of 2018, don’t get me wrong, and truly, the outcomes will be even greater. But for the most part, the challenges we face, while quite necessary, are not what we would likely choose to endure.

We are becoming more of who we truly are than we ever dreamed of being

What I see for 2018 are people who are being forced into the fire. They are good people for the most part; sometimes, too good. They are people were given signs that they should change their lives in some vital way: end a friendship, leave a job, change a habit, leave a toxic relationship, or in some way, take a step that for whatever reason they did not want to take. They could be afraid to leave the familiar. They could be worried about hurting someone else. They could be hesitant to give up a comforting crutch.

In 2018, the Universe took hold. The Divine got tired of waiting and said, “OK, Dears… I tried to be nice about this, but you are picking and picking and picking at the edge of this bandaid and I am running out of time.”  Rrrriiiipppppp

I see people forced into taking action they did not want to take. I see people forced into confronting parts of themselves they never wanted to meet. I see little birds shoved from the family nest and furiously flapping their wings to try and fly despite stark terror.

Get into that fire!

The Universe has said, “Put up or shut up. It is time for the rubber to meet the road and we no longer have time for your whining, your resisting, your excuses, or your stalling tactics. F**king MOVE.”

Did you know you needed to eat healthier and exercise more and only piddled around about it? Here, have a big ol’ heart attack.

Did you know it was time to downsize, simplify your life, and purge your hoarded treasures?  Here, have an unexpected foreclosure.

Did you know it was time to leave your job and you refused because you are this|close to retirement?  Here, you’re fired.

Did you know that in order to grow and to embrace your manifest destiny that you had to leave a relationship and you refused because you would miss that person? Because you were afraid you would hurt their feelings? Here, they are going to take what they know about you and use it to hurt you in the one way that is completely unforgivable.

This is a year when all the cards are going onto the table. We see people for who they truly are, including ourselves. Never have we seen this more clearly than in our national condition right now where people are showing their asses, their ignorance, their prejudices, and their fears in a more public and undeniable way. In the past three years, people have paraded the ugliest, most despicable sides of themselves out for the whole world to see and STILL good people dodge by saying things like “I will  not let politics destroy my relationships.” I got news, Lovey. It’s not the politics… It’s not the politics at all. Politics is only the microscope.

Man, stripping away what holds you back hurts

I have been let down more times than I can count this year by people who I truly thought had my back. By people who I defended with all my heart right up until the moment that I was looking at the underside of a big ol’ bus, still feeling the warmth of their hands on my back.

I am not a person who lets people into my heart easily. I have a big heart and there is a lot of room in there. I have many friends who mean a great deal to me. But when it comes to those special friends who you really let into your world, I rarely have any at all. There’s a lot of damage going on in there and when your house isn’t clean, so to speak, you tend to not give people the grand tour. I did, and now I fight an ongoing battle to not have the words “this is what happens when you let people get close to you” burned into the walls of that “house.” I was forever changed by that situation and I have to make sure the change is a good one.

No more excuses

That really is the crux of it, isn’t it? When we go through the fire, when we are forced to do it and when there is nowhere to go but through, we have to stride through it like a Queen, not crawl through it like a baby.

Like I was telling a friend (one of those “real” ones) last night, “if you have to go through the fire and there is no way through but through, make sure when you get out the other side, there is some serious Dark Phoenix shit going on.”

We can be consumed by the fire or we can be forged by it, but Goddess help us, if we sit down in the middle of it and pout, if we stand in the middle and try to fight the fire, we are going to be ashes and nothing more.

My most recent turn around happened today

What I have been fighting for thirty years now is my weight. I have written exhaustively about it. I have tried so many different eating plans and workout regimens. Fat loss has consumed a huge percentage of my thoughts and energy for three decades. It is my shame. It is literally the burden I carry every day. I am in good health. My healthcare providers tell me that. I am happy in every way but that. I feel pretty in every way but that. It haunts me. It is my Achilles heel. If anyone truly wants to hurt me, there’s your cheat sheet on how to do it.

Today, I prayed to my patrona, Santa Muerte, and asked her to take away whatever is wrong about how I am proceeding with this journey. For 2018, I have worked hard on this. I have embraced the Keto lifestyle and worked out regularly. I have walked and walked and walked these hills. I do strength training every other day, several times in that day. I drink lots of water. I feel healthy inside. I have not lost any weight. My clothes all fit me the same.

I went to an acupuncturist and he worked on me for 90 minutes. He gave me some good insight. But nothing changed, at least outwardly.

So it came down to praying. It came down to saying, “Please Mami, whatever I am doing wrong, whatever is blocking this progress, whatever is in the way, please, I beg you, remove it. Here. Here is a dead, dried up lizard. I know you love those. Please take away whatever I need to release in order to make this right.”

With Santa Muerte, because she is the saint of Death, you do not ask her to give, you ask her to remove. I literally stayed up all night last night praying and went to sleep around 5:30 this morning. My skin, my blood, my spirit, all felt “enflamed with prayer.” I felt on fire.

I woke up around 10:00 am. I had my usual breakfast, bacon, and eggs, and it was delicious. I felt full and satisfied. I went to get my usual lunch: a broccoli and chicken alfredo steamer with under 200 calories and only 4 carbs. I heard her say, “Is this what you want?”  No, what I wanted was salmon. I didn’t have any salmon in the freezer, but I had salmon in a can and I could have salmon croquettes. But salmon croquettes have crackers and cornmeal in them. Not Keto friendly. She said, “Eat the salmon croquettes and enjoy it.” So I had salmon croquettes and green beans and it was a delicious meal.

Then she took me to my supplement supply. I have prided myself that I do not take any medications, even at age 56, than what I need for managing my Meniere’s Disease. I do, however, take a shitload of over-the-counter supplement to try and adjust my metabolism, my insulin resistance, my adrenal responses, my leptin levels… you name it. Take garcinia cambogia! Take chromimum picolinate! Take saffron! Take Forskolin! Take kelp! Take fish oil!

This is what I took every day, some of them two or three times a day. I have an excellent phone camera, but the photo I ended up with was terrible. I kept this photo rather than taking another one because it best represents the situation. A blur of pills and pills and pills all piled up together.

I told my body I was sorry I stopped trusting it. I was sorry I battled with it for decades. I was sorry I had not loved it enough. I was sorry I had divorced myself from it and made it my enemy. This body carried and nurtured six beautiful children. This body stayed healthy despite all odds. This body took drastic measures to tell me it was out of balance by giving me a balance-related condition. It screamed at me for help by causing pain in my lower back and left knee, also affecting my balance. It begged me to pay attention to the fact that I was out of balance. This body protected me, even when I treated it like garbage and despised parts of it.

I trusted nothing it told me. I believed it betrayed me. I treated it like it was my enemy.

I asked my body what it wanted. I opened up to it to hear its wisdom. What do you want? What do you need from me?

Now, this area looks like this:

This is what my body told me it wants.

I will listen to what my body wants to eat, how it wants to move, when it needs to sleep, and when it is thirsty.

I will trust my body. I will love and honor my body. I promised my body I would hear it and give it what it needs without judgment. I promised I would love and protect it. I promised I would honor its phases and its moods.

I will listen to the Universe when it tells me to move, when it forces me to see what is right in front of my face, and when it demands action from me. I will not wait until I am on fire to take that action. I will trust my body. I will trust my connection to the Divine, and I will trust my own inner wisdom.

I will release the mourning for what I have lost this year and embrace the peace that comes in the aftermath. I will own my life and stand proudly in my sovereignty. I will be fully and completely… me.

I also realize now, just writing this, that reclaiming my natural hair color after many years of dying it was the first step to this authenticity and that happened way back in January. It was a harbinger of this change that I did not even recognize at the time, even though I could feel the empowerment of it and still do.

Today really does feel like the first day of the rest of my life.

This has been a challenging year and every time I get pushed into the fire, I am by God going to stand up and walk through it and out of it like a walking inferno.

Inside that fire, I will galvanize myself to my own power, which I have denied for a long time. I have been afraid to step into it for a number of reasons. No more. As I am so fond of saying, “Hold my beer. I’m going in.”

As an aside, if you want to see the full video, just for reference or for wonderful memories if you are a Buffy fan, here it is. It is a truly beautiful segment:

Also, for those who follow, I think Sophie makes a great Dark Phoenix:

The winds of change are blowing for me. I think of the Mary Poppins song:

“Winds in the east, mists coming in

Like something is brewing about to begin…”

It’s exciting and interesting and I find myself studying my own life like it’s an interesting bug.

Art depicts life

At first, I thought the changes were external when I got the book contract, the shop closed, the circle transitioned, and even more things, truth be told. But then, as is always the case, I saw that changes were happening inside me as well. I became and am becoming more so… sensitive.

I have always been a hard gutted kind of girl. I raised five normal active boys and one normal active girl who was as hardcore as any of the boys when it came to putting me through the paces. I have cleaned up so much poop and puke and deceased animals and blood and good lord, you name it and I’ve wiped it. I don’t flinch easily. I watch horror movies and action movies and love an exciting roller coaster.

But the winds of change are blowing. In a way, I am becoming they.

It started with TV. I love entertainment. I love movies and TV shows and I am particular about what I like, but what I like I really do like. I used to watch “The Walking Dead” with Eric on the regular. He bowed out and I kept watching.

Then I stopped.

It wasn’t changing. It wasn’t progressing. Nothing good ever really happened. It was depressing beyond words. So I stopped not long after Alexandria. Terminus was particularly awful for me. It was just brutal, unapologetic, violence for violence’s sake.

It was the first time I shrank away from an entertainment project and said, “That is just too violent for me.”

Winds Blowing: And take 2

I love the Marvel series of shows on Netflix: “Daredevil” (my favorite), “Iron Fist,” “Luke Cage,” “Jessica Jones,” “The Defenders”… Loved them. They were violent but it was going somewhere and the good guys won. I looked forward to the Punisher. I loved the Punisher story from old. I even loved the Dolph Lundgren version for what it was. I love Jon Bernthal and enjoy his acting.

The winds of change are blowing.

I watched maybe twenty minutes of the first episode and said, “I can’t watch this anymore. This is doing something to my spirit that I don’t enjoy. It’s contaminating.” I turned it off.

Winds Blowing: Shall we go for 3?

I got excited that the new season of “Vikings” released. Vikings has gone through some growing pains during its time on TV. Eric, like many others, calls it, “Sons of Anarchy…on Boats” and calls Ragnar Lothbrok “Viking Jax.” He gave up on it many seasons back, but I kept watching. I got not even twenty minutes into the season premiere (twenty minutes seems to be my magic window of abandonment) and turned it off when they sacrificed two young boys to bless their raid. Vikings were assholes. I get it. I just don’t need to watch it.

Those winds of change…

Winds Blowing: And 4 makes it a trend

I love to read, but lately, audiobooks are my thing. I let credits build up in audible.com and then I go wild adding audiobooks to my account. I listen to audiobooks as I drive. I listen to audiobooks as I go to sleep. I listen to audiobooks as I work out. A few years ago, I got into a series of books by J. R. Ward called “The Black Dagger Brotherhood” series. The books are a technical disaster, breaking every rule of good writing possible, but I love them. I am all caught up with them and there are many. I started listening to a spin-off series by the same author and the second book involved a character who is in a sex club. I love sex. Sex is just grand. I’m good at it and it likes me right back. I don’t shirk away from sex any more than I do from violence. Both are realities of life. I never thought of myself as vanilla. The Black Dagger Brotherhood books have a lot of sex in them and I found I would kind of space out during the sex scenes because I was eager to get back to the store and did not care what one character did to another character’s “core.”

When I listened to this one, however, the ongoing lengthy, never-ending discussion of all that went on in the hallowed halls of the sex club bored me beyond what I could stand and I turned it off. I just didn’t care.

What? Am I a prude now?

I watch shows like “Frontier” and “Penny Dreadful” because the violence seems to be part of the story rather than the story propping up the violence. I watch for the story. I listen for the story. If a story needs sex or violence to make sense, I’m all about it. Bring it on. If sex or violence is the story and the other events are secondary, it no longer interests me.

So I guess it is less that I’ve turned all Pollyanna and more that I demand more from my entertainment. Put some work into it already.

What I watch now surprised me.

Dylan (my son, who is 20) came up the Saturday before Christmas to spend a couple of days with us and it was a joy to see him. He said, “Mom, you have to watch this show” and he turned on “The Great British Baking Show” which was on Netflix. I bake, but I don’t love it and the last thing I want is some critical analysis of my cooking. I don’t watch cooking competition reality shows because of how horribly everyone seems to treat one another.

The winds of change, I tell ya.

If not those, then what?

Now I watch The Great British Baking Show. People are kind to one another, the contestants among each other and the judges to the contestants. People are doing what they love and opening themselves up to critical evaluation. People are often proud of what they do. People are excited to learn more. Ultimately, someone wins and the others are happy for them (at least on camera). I love it. It makes me happy. Even Nathan (18) will watch it with me.

Yep, the winds of change blew me right into “old.”

Eric asked me what was for supper tonight and I said, “A classic, really. Chicken pot pie featuring freshly cut vegetables and boneless stewed chicken in a rich low-salt, bone-broth gravy topped off by a light puff pastry.” I even speak in British baking now.

This is representative of an overall change I feel. Isn’t it always? I am excited for what 2018 brings and grateful for the charmed life I live (that I worked my ass off to get).

I always liked the winds.

It is October, right on the brink of the season of the Crone and here I am, crawling over the finish line into my own Cronedom. If life is a marathon, I arrived here with my nipples bleeding, devoid of sweat to lose, and likely having lost control of my bowels at some point. Fortunately, most of this may be filed under “metaphorically speaking.”

I intended to write a post about my Croning, which appears to be official. As I am wont to do, I went into Google Images to search for an eye-catching, marketing appropriate Croney image, without usage restrictions, of course, to use as a header for this column. Guess what I found as an official result when searching for the word “crone?”

That is correct. Right there next to the baby toilet or bidet or whatever that is, some lovely besoms, an erupting volcano, and a feel good sunflower, I found…me. Well, holy shit. Since Google is the Encyclopedia Britanica of our era, it must be true. I am croned. Had I known it was coming so quickly, I would have baked a cake. Goddess knows if I had, I could have eaten it before I went carb free.

The photo actually accompanied an article I wrote that received some attention called “Romancing the Crone” sometime back when I thought I had a clue about going into Cronedom.

My last period was in July, so I guess that qualifies since this is October. I am not officially menopausal until a year without my uterus making every place I rest for more than ten minutes to look like someone should call in a CSI team. This is, however, officially missing enough periods to be rolling quickly down the Hill of Aged. I contributed well to the population with six healthy babies shooting out of my body over the past forty years, so I have no regrets or longing where my fertility is concerned.

The youngest of my six got his drivers license today, actually at seventeen instead of sixteen. My nineteen-year-old moved out of the house the first week of this month and shows no interest in visiting. He relishes his independence, has a great job, and is full of success and vigor. This means the two youngest of my birdies sit perched on the side of my emptying next, ready to jump.

So what are my Crone symptoms?

Besides Google identifying me as a search result for “Crone?”

My youngest grandchild of my two just turned twelve.

Only one of my children lives at home for the first time since 1980.

The senior menu at Denny’s is mine for the taking if I choose to do so and get a senior discount at the thrift store I frequent.

I have outlived my father by four years and in five years, will have outlived my mother.

The people I went to school with are starting to drop dead like flies.

I eat according to the Keto diet to lose weight not due to vanity, but because my left knee is irritable. I do not wish to stress it to the point that it makes me immobile again. My weight loss journal, is at www.fatasticjourney.com and there is a Facebook group you can join for it as well.

Without my reading glasses, I am blind as a bat.

My memory is not what it used to be.

I hate talking on the telephone and will sometimes yell, “Get offa my lawn” when someone phones me and hang up. Sheesh, text or email me already.

When I drop something critical onto the floor, rather than swoop down and grab it immediately, I look at it and think, “Damn.”

Clothes shopping involves the prime directive of, “Can I sleep in this?”

Although my patience is completely shot, my ability to give a shit about most things is also depleted, so it is kind of a toss up.

It’s official. I am old.

Like Tony Soprano’s bullet, I did not see it coming. I thought of it as a concept and embraced it fully. Truly, I still do, but that makes it no less surprising to find it is here. I have always loved getting older and I still love everything about it except for that whole mortality thing. My younger years hold little appeal for me except to correct some real screw ups I made. I like myself so much more now.

And yet, I feel the Death Crone sniffing around, even though women in my family often live to triple digits old.

I feel something slipping out of my grasp that I need.

The suspicion that I wasted so much of “it” lurks in my mind and I can’t shake it.

Meditating and praying these thought away helps, but does not cure.

One blink and it was almost gone.

The Crone Me is here and I do enjoy her company, although many do not. My nurturing side does not come forward as much. My filters are a bit sloppy.

Part of me wants to cry, “Please don’t forget me. I might disappear.”

Another part of me wants to set the world on fire just to watch it burn.

Another day has passed and the thought lingers that I did not engage enough, did not do enough, did not create enough, did not experience enough.

I suspect that once I get the flow figured out, it will be time to cross yet another finish line.

As is easy to see, I have not updated here for a long time. There are the “on top” reasons and there are the “underneath” reasons, just as there is with anything. The main on top reason is that a nonprofit organization with which I am involved hosted a major fund-raising festival in June and for a few months before that, not only did I have a ton to do for the festival itself, but I had to create an inventory surplus for my shop, Botánica de La Reina, because we were vendors at the festival. Since I last wrote here, two apprentices blessed me with their time, Hunter and Dena. Dena was ill for the month before festival, but Hunter worked long, strenuous hours helping me get ready, then after the festival was over, Dena helped me rebuild the shop – we had to strip it out for festival – and has been in the shop with me working since then. My shop is only open on weekends, but we spend the other five days making product. I think few people realize the demands of running a shop where you make the majority of the inventory yourself. I sure didn’t get it before I actually did it. For weeks, I did little but make incenses, potions, spell kits, candles, and other products.

In the midst of all of this, around the first part of May, Eric, my husband, went back to work after a fifteen-month break. The fifteen months were wonderful because he was home all of the time and got to spend quality time with our sons, who are sixteen and (now) nineteen. It was really good for their relationship with their dad. He and I got used to being around one another pretty much 24/7.

The time off without his salary was challenging financially, as you can imagine. Losing a primary income can definitely show you where the rubber meets the road. So there were blessings and there were struggles, but we made it through and for that, I am truly grateful.

He is now the electrical contractor and license holder for a new solar company in the Sacramento area called Sunfinity. It is growing quickly and performing well, so it is quite a blessing to us. He works more than full time and is suddenly gone most of his waking hours. He also comes into the shop with me on Sundays so that we are not apart all of the time. It was an abrupt change for all of us and we are still adapting. They are also hiring installers, electricians, and salespeople, so if anyone is local to Sacramento and needs a good job, private message me and I will give you the details.

Less than two months before Eric stopped working at the Veteran’s Building in February of 2015, Nathan started homeschooling and Dylan graduated high school and began online college classes. I went from having quiet days alone, the status quo for years, to having everyone home all the time. That also was quite an adjustment. Now, it is only the boys here with me during the day. Alone time never happens unless I make a point to leave the house. I eventually got used to that as well.

Since Eric returned to work, there has been a flurry of catch up, of getting bills current, of purchasing necessities like tires for the cars, a new bed for Nathan, ingredients for the inventory I made for the festival, and such. This week was the first in months without a lot of extraneous stuff for me to do and where I could, theoretically, focus on my writing. Here it is Thursday and I have taken care of busy work. I updated this website structurally and revamped the page for Tarot consults. I watched a full season of “The Tudors.” I did the usual housework. I did consults for clients. I started a purge of sugars, flours/gluten/anything processed from my diet. I wrote an article for my iPinion column. I did everything except work on my books.

In fact, I have written on my books, two of which are due by the end of the year, only a handful of hours this year. I am still looking to see what I am running from there since I love to write and it fills my spirit in a profound way. I keep making excuses and finding other things to do.

Eric asked me how I felt recently and the most accurate description I could give him is that I feel like I never stop running from a pack of wolves. I am tired to the point of collapse, but I do not sleep nights unless I am medicated. The things that used to bring me joy like writing or my shop leave me feeling empty and numb. I cannot seem to work up the positive emotions that used to be so much a part of my life and my personality. All things good feel drained away from me.

Exploration of the spirit, of emotions, and of the psyche in general are not foreign to me. I help people do it all the time and I am good at it. I have used all of my standard procedures and cannot seem to pinpoint anything in particular that is dissatisfying or out of sort. It is not simply reaction to change. I got over that a long time ago, which is quite a feat for a Virgo. The very air around me feels off. I have done the walk back I recommend to clients, where I go back to the last time things felt right and then move slowly forward, looking for the ways everything seemed to go off course. I have found nothing significant or notable. I have done this through meditation, so I could be assured that I was going in deeply and not just on the surface level.

My inclination is toward seclusion, because I feel edgy and irritable and I worry that I will cause others to feel uncomfortable when I do not intend to. Everything around me feels tenuous and fragile, as though the whole thing could just break into a thousand pieces at any given moment and this way of being in the world is not characteristic for me. In fact, it is pretty much opposite of me.

I know I will bounce back and find “me” again. I will stop feeling as though my skin is in constant fight-or-flight and my spirit is looking anxiously over its shoulder every few minutes. I will find my way and I will find my sovereignty again. Apparently, I will not do that today.

For now, I feel like I want to stop running, lie down, and let the wolves eat me. I fantasize about being the woman who one day, just stops what she is doing, walks out to the car with nothing more than her purse, and just starts driving. Fantasies rarely work in reality, but this one is a favorite.

Hour by hour, moment by moment, I know I am walking surely toward my peace of mind again. Even when I do not feel well and whole, I know I am on a journey to that wellness and wholeness. I also know that the journey is as much a part of life as the destination, so even in this sense of unease, I intend to live to the fullest and sift out the joys.

I just hope the wolves find me to be sweet.