Today is international Pagan Coming Out day. I’m out – I’ve been out for fifteen years – but if you didn’t know, here it is. If you’re going to click through and read it, don’t bitch to me later that I’m posting personal life shit on my own blog. You don’t want to read it, don’t click through, kthnxbai.

When I was 12, I read what I’ve come to know was probably Drawing Down the Moon, a book I found on the shelf at my uncle’s home. He died that year, and with him any vestige of what I thought god was at the time. Feeling more in touch with the pagan deities helped me work through all the family crap for the next three years… until I discovered that booze and drugs were more numbing. Even then, they didn’t abandon me.

Morrighan blessed me in the summer of 2002, sending her messengers in groups of three; ravens, crows, magpies, cranes all came to the little farmyard where we were living. Each visit was in threes, and never did they shy away from me, often seeming to seek me out. In late August of that year, at a moment of severe crisis, a beautiful golden eagle settled near me as I sat crying, pondering my life and my marriage.

She made comforting little noises as she stood on the bale next to mine. “Why?” I asked. With all the whys running through my mind that night, she knew. I was immediately filled with calm, with understanding, with knowing. I had to take that next step, or forever be in that horrible pit of despair. When I was fully in control of my emotions and my energies, she spread her wings slightly, raised her beak a bit, and nodded. A few minutes later she took off.

Later that night, I asked my then-husband three questions. Only one was answered truthfully, maybe… I’ll never know for sure. And he left the house immediately afterward. I’ve never known the full details of what happened to him that night, but he was only gone for an hour, maybe less. I know what I could see from where I stood. No one but a pagan would ever believe me, and even then they’d probably wonder.

The following Monday, I filed for divorce.

My grove and my faith were with me that fall as my life spiraled downward, and helped me climb back up, and they’ve stuck it out with me ever since. They’ve become my family, as has Morrighan. I talk to her often, though I’ve rarely since received the answers I did that summer when I walked with her the most, I feel her presence all the time.

Morrighan as a comforting mother figure. Imagine that. <|;^) PS – cross-posting to Sacred Triskele… <3 JL