The Pagan Mom Blog

*I purchased this book at a used bookstore and did not receive anything in return of this review*

I got this book called Pagan Homeschooling. I have been considering homeschooling for a little while now. Mostly with the concerns of the snow days and the onslaught of the change in children in 4th grade. My eldest has issues with some of the girls who have turned catty. Nothing physical, my eldest just thinks they are being idiots and these girls are being….well girls. Anywho it has been on my mind for awhile. And I have certain things that hold me back from doing so. More on that in a bit though, want to get to this book.

The title is almost misleading because it isn’t JUST about pagan homeschooling but homeschooling in general. They start off with a checklist of reasons why you may or may not want to homeschool. Only 1 of my reasons were listed. The book also covers resources that are both pagan in nature and those that are secular. The book is written for the pagan parent who does not wish to inundate their child with Christian influence, so the resources are devoid of those influences. That was reassuring because it seemed like every homeschool site I found online was about Christian homeschooling. The book touches on various stages of childhood; kindergarten, tweens, and puberty. Even better is the issue of children with special needs and how to handle that. The book covers using boxed curricula, unschooling,eclectic styles, what supplies you need, etc etc etc. As a bonus the book does offer insight on how to bring in paganism into your classroom IF YOU SO CHOOSE TO. The author makes it very clear that it is a personal decision to bring in religious teachings and that one doesn’t need to feel obligated in doing so in order to homeschool. She offers some pagan exercises to use with your children to help you get started.

So I have to be honest. I haven’t read it all the way through. I did a skimming type read because i have another book review that I am doing that must be posted very soon. After we get through tax time I will be really sitting down with the kids and talking to them about how they feel about it. Especially the older two who have been in public school for almost 6 years. My reasons for doing so are so that I can have them in a year round curriculum, use every chance I can for a teaching experience (ex: grocery store trip), be able to teach them about various religions now, make sure that too many snow days don’t mess them up, and their personal safety is a huge issue for me. After my experiences as a child and seeing more and more school shootings being reported on the news….I do fear for them. Now what I fear most is: I won’t be able to educate them in the manner they need, I won’t be able to work from home, I will get burned out being around my kids all day, and they will miss out on alot of opportunities they get from school. One thing is no more Saturday classes at University North Carolina because they are only offered to the gifted children. To be in gifted program you have to be in the public system. Same goes for Molly’s opportunity to go to Wake Forest this summer for a week, that is only offered to gifted children. Those things I don’t want to take from her because they are amazing opportunities. So I still feel like I am on the fence. I don’t want to mess up my kids, ya know?

Ok so the book info is:

Pagan Homeschooling: A Guide to Adding Spirituality to Your Child’s Education

by: Kristin Madden

published by: Spilled Candy Books

**As of this morning I will be discussing it with my girls this morning. I was very upset to hear of yet another school shooting. I am also extremely disgusted by our city’s refusal to consider year round schooling. Their viewpoint is that since we are a tourist town we must have kids off in summer to be available to work. With the many that are jobless I find it interesting we put off the work onto our students! After talking with my girls we will make the decision and then I will work with my boss on how to remedy the work situation. I am certain we can arrive at some sort of arrangement. He has been wonderful in the past about working with me and I have made sure to keep up with deadlines**

I love music, lots of different kinds too. Except Opera, country, and rap. Although I can stand Taylor Swift. I like music to match my mood but I also use it to control my mood. Music that relates to my spiritual self I find most soothing, even the upbeat stuff. If I am in a bad mood it puts my thinking  perspective. When I am happy it makes me even happier. So I thought today I would share some of my fave musicians and songs that I listen to on a daily basis.

Dead Can Dance – The Snake & The Moon is a very voodoo like song. Always makes me want to dance. Cantara makes me think of gothic bellydancers. At some point in my life I will coordinate a bellydance routine to that song.

Inkubus Sukkubus – I don’t think this band is together anymore. At least I haven’t found any new stuff by them. My favorites are: Heart of Lilith, Away with the Faeries, Wytches, Craft of the Wise, Beltaine, Samhain, Dark Mother, and Burning Times. If you like rock music I recommend this band!

Laura Powers – Circle of Stone is the only song I have listened to of hers. Someday I will get around to checking out more stuff. I really like it, light and powerful. I hum this alot when I am out and about.

Blackmore’s Night - a recent addition to my fave list. I LOVE Greensleeve’s and their version is amazing. Faerie Queen and Ocean Gypsy are another two that I love listening to.

Donovan – Come on, you have got to love Season of the Witch!!!!

Fleetwood Mac – yes, I know….cliche! I loved the band since I was a kid, long before I heard the rumors. Silver Springs and Rhiannon are my two ultimate favorites!

Loreena McKennitt – another cliche, but I indulge. She has a gorgeous voice. The Highway Man, All Souls Night, and The Mummer’s Dance are on my must have list.

Kellianna – another new addition to the list. Brigid is wonderful and Blessed Are We is intensly amazing!

Emerald Rose – Fire In The Head reminds me of working in the rennaissance faire, love it! Great drumming!

Libana – The Earth Is Our Mother, great song to sing along with. Even better when the kidlets join in.

Chalice & Blade – I Hear You Calling. I actually found this one today. Quite catchy!

Michelle Mays – The Promise, another I found today. She has a dark voice but not dreary. I think of it as being a bit sultry.

Spiral Dance – The Goddess & The Weaver, another (lol) that I found today.LOVE IT! the beat, the vocals, it really gets me pumped!

So what are your favorite songs to listen to when you are in spiritual mood or spiritual need?

Coming out as pagan is always a difficult task. Some are lucky and their families and friends are supportive. Others have a much harder time with the people surrounding them. Often you find pagans online who often ask should I? When should I do it? And the ever elusive how do I do it?

I have never really announced it outloud. My family knows and doesn’t seem bothered by it. At least they have never said a word about it. This could be due to the fact that I am not very close to them and we talk maybe a few times a year. My friends know and the type of people I tend to be friends with, it doesn’t cause any issues. My husband’s family…..well I am not sure if they know or not. I have never come right out and said it but if they did ask I would totally confess. They have seen the altar in my home but I am not sure if they knew it was an altar lol. My father in law has seen tweetdeck open on my computer at work and my name is PaganMomBlog on twitter. And I have noticed that when the discussion of religion has come up, primarily the Christian religion, he will usually ask my husband a question. Not in a snotty sort of way but that kind of way of “you beleive like I do so let me ask you”. And then again perhaps I am reading into it.

Lately I have wondered if I should come completely out to my inlaws. I am concerned in the area of work. At work no one knows. Our clientele is on the elderly side and being in the south the automatic assumption is that they are all Baptists. I know, it’s an unfair judgment but it’s habit. One I am working on. I do know that some of them are Unitarian Universalists (which means very accepting) and I know exactly who those people are. But others  I worry about. I don’t want the business to lose clientele because someone has issue with my personal life.

So why is this coming up now, after 6 years of working there? I saw the look about a week ago. One of our clients has a business near my home and often in the mornings on the way in I swing by and pick things up or drop things off. This particular morning I got there before they open. I saw our client coming up behind my vehicle. Which she was staring at hard. And then that look came on her face. That look of “oh my god” and then I could see her trying to process it ” is she? noooo she couldn’t be”. Then she looked at me, that soul searching look and it was a desperate look. What was it that caused such a look? A bumper sticker. It says “Mother Grove” and has some slogan about honoring the goddess. No pentacles, no “my other car is a broomstick” sticker….just that word goddess glaring at her. I could tell that suddenly she was very uncomfortable. I handled her the way I always had. Cheerful and smiling. I told her what she needed to do with paperwork. I noticed that normally a woman who spent 30 minutes chatting my head off suddenly wanted to get as far away as possible. I haven’t heard  anything about this as of yet. My father in law is an adorable man. I can’t imagine anyone disliking him so I think if she had confronted him he might have been able to smooth things over. But the mere idea that he would have to do that bothers me. My religious beleifs should have no bearing on how well I can do my job.

So I am not sure what to do. I have this fear that if I came out to my inlaws that it would make things bad between us. I love them as if they were my own flesh and blood and for them to be upset would hurt me greatly. I think that is what makes this the most difficult. I don’t want people hurt. And I don’t feel forced into a closet, I have always wanted to live my beleifs without being an “in your face” pagan.

And perhaps I have blown out of proportion. Maybe there is some other reason she made the faces and wanted to rush into her store. Unfortunatley experience and intuition tells me otherwise.

P.S. I will be taking tomorrow off. This week is kicking my butt and I haven’t been getting up at 5am but 6 am. So I am going to listen to the body and “sleep in” and not worry about getting a post up. I will be back Friday for my Follow Friday post.

Wednesday already? Jeesh this week is just flying by!

So if you are following me on Twitter I am sure you have seen countless tweets about the upcoming Beltane Brouhaha. Some of us have decided to have a tweetup and chose the Brouhaha as our destination spot. This is an event open to anyone who wants to attend! So I am very happy to announce that I got the email that the registration is now open…..yay!

The event is fairly affordable. $12 early registration fee ($15 at gate), $5 for kids 5-12 yo, $40 for a cabin holding 2-4 persons, $15 for a single dorm space, and $12 for meal tickets. For me and the girls to go it came out to $98. Not really bad for a weekend event.  I have attended some other functions that were much more than that for just one person! Now last year was the first time I ever went so I am not really a big expert but I will pass on a few things I learned.

I personally recommend you get the dorm space or cabin. Dorm space is basically they will shack you up in one of the larger cabins with people that you may or may not know. Basically you pay for a bed. The cabin is good for families or if you know some people and want to share a cabin with. I already know a couple people from twitter are going to share a cabin. The best thing about cabins are they are right there in the middle of everything. There is tent camping space available if you are looking for something more affordable. The people with Church of Wicca can direct you to who you need to talk to at the park for tent camping info. Now the downside to tent camping is that you will have to leave the cabin area by dusk when they close the gate, that is if you plan on driving into the site area. Now if you don’t mind walking in the dark to your tent then you don’t have to worry about when the gate closes. I just hope that you can find your way back to the tent site lol.

Food. I do recommend you bring some snacks and maybe a cooler to keep at your cabin. Bear in mind there are animals in the woods. Last year we had a mouse that literally opened our screen door and came right in and found my stash of pretzels. Lesson learned! Open flame is not permitted on campground except at one designated spot just outside the messhall. So if you want to cook at your cabin, bring your campstove. As for meals I recommend that you do purchase the meal tickets. You are not going to get anything glamorous to eat but it’s not horrible either. Last year we had hot dogs, hamburgers, spaghetti, and my all time favorite….pudding from a huge ass can. You know, one of those ones you find at Sam’s or Costco. They do sell snacks and drinks throughout the day at the messhall.

So what to expect? Vendor row is one. Last year I think they had about 10 businesses with tents set up selling their wares. If you have a business you will want to get in on this event. It’s a great way to meet your clientele! And if you love to shop witchy stuff you will find plenty of stuff to ooh and ahh over. In addition to shopping there are classes for kids which tend to be craft oriented. My daughter had a blast last year making a wand and coloring her own divination cards. There are classes for the adults pertaining to various things. Some were Wicca 101, others were more deeper into theology and then others were craft oriented.  Last year I took a class to sew my own ritual robe. I was the first person who had ever failed her class. I think I felt worse about that for her than about me failing it lol. Also there will be plenty of ritual. Last year we had a ritual the first night, an initiation ritual the next night (I didn’t attend that), and then a maypole dance just before leaving on the final day. In the evening people gathered into a drum circle around the fire pit and just hung out and had a good time. That was the best part, we just had so much fun socializing! I know for alot of solitaries in places that they don’t know alot of other pagans, events like this can be a huge blessing.

So that is my awesome wisdom to share. If you have question, feel free to ask in comments or email me. If you are attending, let me know here in the comments! If you want to find someone to share a cabin space with, leave it in the comments and maybe someone else will see it and respond.

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!!!

It’s that time of the week…..Twitter’s Follow Friday. I thought today I would do my top five from my pagan list. Unfortunatley it is NOT that easy to pick 5 because I have so many awesome peoples. And some of them are protected tweets, which means I won’t be recommending them as they must have a good reason for holding a private account. So here is my attempt at my 5. If you don’t see yourself listed, don’t fret. I will be revisiting this list again (I have over 100 in this list) and will list another new set of 5 in the future.

So first up I have KitchenWitch. She is such an awesome person. She is opinionated but not so aggressive with it that you want to smack her. She doesn’t shy away from debate and knows how to do it without being disrespectful. And if you have a question about something paganistic, she happily shares her knowledge and experience.

Next is MystStar. Oh. Em. Gee. Sometimes I don’t know what i would do without her. Always cheerful and I look forward to talking to her. She is funny, smart, and a great friend.

Fernwise She calls herself the “Judgmental Druid Bitch”. This makes me giggle! She is opinionated and happil shares her opinions if you ask or randomly if the are on her mind. She is extremely knowledgeable, think Paganism 201/301. If you are a newbie ready to move forward, she has a lot of insight to share.

WittyGirlDreams My fave thing about WGD is her tweets from work. 9 times out of 10 they make me giggle (except when she was outed, that wasn’t cool). Funny, articulate, and just all around a nice gal.

LilithsPriest I made a point to list a guy. Not trying to be sexist or anything it’s just I don’t have alot of guy pagans on my twitter list. I haven’t seen that many guy pagans on twitter honestly. Anyhow LP is a great guy. I enjoy watching him and Fernwise debate. Sometimes I jump in but I try not to cause inevitably I discovered I missed something a long while back. He is intelligent, articulate, and hilarious. I get that sense that when you have LP’s friendship, you got a friend for life…..well as long as you don’t do something to lose the trust.

So there they are, my top 5. Next friday I won’t draw from the pagan list again, I will come back to that later. I don’t want to inundate follow friday with only certain lists.

Check back tomorrow for Blog of The Week!

SO here it is, the first Witchy Wednesday……and I gotta be a Debbie Downer. UGH!

Ok so if you are on twitter then you have probably seen some tweets about a pagan meetup in Salem Massachusetts for sometime this summer. We had started discussing this last month and when I got back from Florida I started checking with a friend in Massachusetts about locations, hotels, etc. Then the shit hit the fan. My car has been in the shop for 6 days with transmission problems (we are going to have to look at buying a new car I think). Last night we ran out of heating oil and I don’t have a clue how we are going to pay the mechanic AND get heating oil in our home! I was hoping for a better year, not one who royally screws me in less than one week of it’s start! Anyhow combine that with payments that have to be made thi year for my trip to Egypt next year, my oldest daughters school trip across the state, Beltane Brouhaha, and a trip to Carowinds (which at this point is probably being cancelled…..good thing we didn’t tell the kids!) I cannot squeeze in a roadtrip to Massachusetts. It really kills me cause I really wanted to hang out with some peeps. But all is not lost. Here are two things we can do to handle this.

1. No matter what I can help people plan the meetup. There is no reason for others not to meetup just because I can’t, ya know? So whomever decides to take over, let me know and I will happily pass on any info I get in regards to hotels and whatnot.

2. There is always Beltane Brouhaha. I am currently awaiting an email to be sure it’s on and at the same place (more than likely). Really my email was to push them to hurry up and announce it so I can start paying for a cabin lol! Anyway it’s held in Kings Mountain State Park in SC. The Church of Wicca is the organizer of the event. It is usually an entire weekend and you can rent a cabin or bring a tent ( I recommend cabin as it puts you right there with everything). There are classes, meetings, vendors, rituals, and so on and so forth. The oldest and I went last year and we had an amazing time. The family wants to go this year and I am loving that! Anyhow it is not a luxurious hotel stay but we could do a pagan tweetup/meetup there. I will post links and what not as soon as Church of Wicca posts their info.

So yea, life is being rough right now and I am trying to prioritize. Think about it, comment, let me know what you are thinking.

Circle Sanctuary has a wonderful program going on for our Pagan troops, Operation Circle Care. This is a year round operation but I am just now hearing about it due to Yule coming up. Much like any of the the other military care packages, Circle Sanctuary is looking for items to put into care packages to send to our bretheren overseas. Things like pagan music cd’s, small altar cloths, herbs, incense, pentacles, ankhs, and so on. Circle Sanctuary is also in dire need of cash donations to help fund the shipping costs of these packages. In addition they have an amazing pagan prayer card program for our armed bretheren. These cards are free and you can obtain them for your loved ones whom are overseas. And if you do have someone overseas, you can have their name added to the list of soldiers who receive these wonderful packages!

If you can help at all, please do! This is a wonderful program. I personally can’t wait to go shopping and pick up a few items. If I can ever get around to finding a 2nd job, I will be sending them some money as well.

I don’t know if you have heard of this blog but 2 Witches Blog is pretty cool. For any newbie they have a wealth of info on witchcraft, paganism, and Wicca. For parents they have lots of info on pagan parenting. And  they even include some links to activities for kids and info on raising kids withing paganism. I plan on returning often to read up on their info and get some activities for my own so they can learn more about my celebrations and why.

Also right now they are doing an awesome giveaway featuring a witches calendar for 2010. I highly recommend you head on over and check them out!

My posts recently have been somewhat heavy duty. I love writing about those things that get me emotional or revved up. But there is always a need for some downtime. So I am just going to do a more mundane “this is what I am up to” type post.

First off last night I had  a girl’s night out with some local Twitter gals. We went to a great wine bar called Sante. Never thought I would ever get around to doing girl’s night out, but look at me now peeps!

After much laughter and drinking at Sante we went to Tressa’s Jazz Bar, where this pic takes place. All in all, it was a great night!

Friday I have an Honor Roll celebration to go to for the oldest. She has yet to not be on Honor Roll lol. She fluctuates between A/B Honor Roll and A Honor Roll. The middle gal missed it because she got a C in science. But it’s her goal to bring that grade up so she can be on the next Honor Roll. This is where sibling rivalry can be a good thing.

Saturday I am picking up our groceries from the church that we ordered. The org is called Angel Food Ministries. This is the first time we ordered from them and I plan on posting about how well that works out for us. If it does work out then we may buy a month’s worth of stuff next time, but we will see.

Sunday I will be at a potluck lunch for Mother Grove. We will be gathering to discuss what needs to be done to get the Goddess Temple built and how we play a part in that. Plus it’s food lol. I think I might make a spinach quiche (which I have never made before) for this event.

Monday I am buying movie tickets for Molly to see Twilight: New Moon. We have a group going and she is ecstatic.

And Sat the 21st is our town’s holiday parade. We are planning on going and kids are thrilled. Last year they had a Winter Solstice float, made my heart smile!

Also I have been asked to review a product for a company. I am not naming names or product as of yet but I am looking forward to trying this out. Actually I think Mr.P is more excited than I am lol! I was given a choice between two things and he really pushed for one of them, after a family vote he got his wish. More on that later when I do the review of course. Oh and in light of a recent post I did, I will be disclosing the endorsement and claiming the income on my taxes.

In addition to that I received a great email yesterday by a soon-to-be launched pagan parenting website. They wanted to see if I would work with them and be their Pagan Of the Month. I replied YES naturally and I am currently waiting to hear back. I was very surprised and honored when I read the email 100 times in disbeleif. I will of course post about this when the site is launched.

I am STILL looking for work. Nothing yet. I am planning on targeting a few more places in the next week. Other than that, not much else is going on. Hope all is well in your families. Please share if you have something exciting coming up!

This post is dedicated to my pagan readers. Of course my non-pagan readers are welcome to read and comment, it could be easily skewed to apply to anyone.

One of my twitter pals, RedBeanSidhe, has a blog over at Pumpkin Queen and her Pumpkin Patch. She wrote this post that gave me a moment of clarity…an epiphany if you will. To be brutally honest I have been feeling a bit disconnected lately. Something I am sure all of us go through. My monotonous routine has been wearing me thin. I get up, do a load of laundry, check email, get girls out the door, check social networks, take lil man to school, go to work, sit on a computer all day with twitter, work, and the 50 billion links I click through twitter. And when I am done work I go home, cook, check email, check social networks, blog, write articles, check email one more time, go to bed. In between all of that I might tweet or twitpic while I am around town on a lunch break or something. And yesterday I had this thought that I can’t beleive I actually thought. My Book of Shadows (BOS) has been sitting ignored. I haven’t written anything in it in months. I haven’t even looked at it. So what did I think? Why, I should transfer that to the computer! I mean I am on it all day already, so why not? Right? And I am knocking those pagans that love putting their BOS online, I just actually enjoy handwriting mine. RedBeanSidhe, bless her heart, she pushed an issue in my face that I have been purposely ignoring for at least a month now. I am too plugged in. I mean internet is wonderful, blogging is wonderful, twitter is wonderful….but wonderful things should be held in moderation. Is that not what all pagans seek? Balance? And am I balancing right now? No. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO, I am not. And that is why I feel like crud and mush and major dog poo (although I almost blamed it on swine flu). The last few days I have avoided the computer even though I did get on to tweet about V in the evenings. It is time for me to rethink things and get back to some good habits.

RedBeanSidhe makes some pretty hefty suggestions. Even down to no stovetop cooking. Now, I will be honest….I probably won’t stop doing that lol. But her idea is in the right place, get back to basics. Get back to simplicity. And it couldn’t come at a better time, we are in the New Year! Change is supposed to come, we should be embracing it and preparing for it. So here is what I am going to do *takes a deep breath*

1. On weekends I can only post a blog in the morning, BUT the blog must already be written. Lots of pre-writing I must do if I want to have one post a day.

2. On weekends, NO COMPUTER. Nope. No email. No twitter. No twitpic’ing. No games. The only exception of course is to make sure that a blog post is published in the morning.

3. Weather permitting we take a walk outside in nature at least 3 times a week. Weather permitting meaning no rain. It being too cold is not an excuse. We can bundle up.

4. In the evening, candle lights. Not only will we be energy conscious but it will encourage us to get creative with our time. Of course this brings me to…..

5. No more than one hour of tv time with at least two hours of no tv in between. Yes, I am a bad mom. I let my kids watch too much tv and this to me is cutting back.

6. Write in my BOS at least one hour every other night. Encourage my daughters to start their own diary, journal, or BOS.

This will all begin….right now.

And that is all I can think of for now. I must give thanks to RedBeanSidhe for her post. She sent me her link letting me know she thought I would be interested, little did she know how much I needed to read it!

And now for all of you….write your own blog post if your up for the challenge of getting back to basics. For my non-pagan readers, you can post about perhaps how to become more unplugged. Let’s get a movement started! If you do write a blog post, please come back here and link in the comments. I want to be sure I see what your doing and others can see what your doing as well.