Of Children, Paint, and Unplanned Sabbats

June 6, 2015

Originally posted to Pagan Families, 9/22/14. When Beltane came, we’d planned to dance a May Pole at my older daughter’s preschool.  Not exactly pagan, but I don’t know many pagan families locally, and the school May Pole was as close to traditional as we were going to get.  Well, my daughter lost all interest in […]

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Off To School Altars

June 6, 2015

Originally posted on Pagan Families, 8/19/14. Last year my almost four year old spent the first event of the school year in hiding.  She’d enjoyed preschool in the Spring, but now that school was about to start again, she was worried and didn’t want to talk about it.  I felt helpless.  Her initial transition into […]

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To The Gates Of Dreaming: Using Guided Meditation to Help Children Sleep

June 6, 2015

Originally posted on Pagan Families, 7/16/14.  I’ve spent countless hours helping my daughters fall asleep, nursing and bouncing, massaging and singing and praying, lying absolutely quiet or else reciting Mother Goose.  By the time my eldest was preschool age, I turned to magic.  I began using guided meditations with my daughter around the time she […]

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What Color is Your Pain? Magic for Pregnant Aches

June 6, 2015

Originally posted on Pagan Families, 7/5/11. Midway through the second trimester, my ribs started hurting around the bra line, like something was cutting into them.  It wasn’t my bra’s fault, though, because taking it off didn’t help, and changing bras didn’t help.  It messed with my ability to exercise and cook dinner, and after a […]

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Self-Excavation Tour 2007: The Elephant in the Room

June 6, 2015

Originally posted 8/29/07. Three years ago, I couldn’t talk about my religious life. I mean, literally, I couldn’t. I’d try to open my mouth, and a lot of times I wouldn’t even be able to get words out. We didn’t really talk about religion in the first person when I was a kid. What I […]

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Sibby Baby

March 29, 2014

It’s funny to think, but what I knew about Sibyl a year ago was that she had lots of dark hair and a vigorous sucking reflex. We didn’t even know her name. Now it seems like she was born for people, language, and music–maybe three faces of one Mystery?–maybe the fruitful void she’ll spin her […]

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Place at the Table

November 23, 2013

Normally my ancestors’ stories sit just below the surface of everyday life, and the rhetorical whitecaps show you where. For example, when I was pregnant, Rebecca objected to the idea that the baby would use her old high chair. She used to stand on its flat wooden seat to reach the counter and cook, but […]

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The Space Between Worlds

September 21, 2013

Several of you asked me how I was doing after Sibyl was born, and here, almost six months later, is an answer.  It’s a bunch of things I wrote in the first two months postpartum, all stitched together and edited.  It probably has a harsher slant than it would’ve if we’d talked in person, since […]

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Fingers, What Are You Doing?

September 7, 2013

This is a game for when your creative energy’s running dry. Rebecca invented it at the beginning of the summer when it became obvious that I didn’t want to hear “Tell me a story” any more, especially first thing in the morning. Instead, she asks, “Pinky, what are you doing?” Then she asks each of […]

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Book Review (Lengthy): Healing Stories For Challenging Behaviour

June 23, 2013

In Healing Stories For Challenging Behaviour (Stroud, UK: Hawthorne Press, 2008), Susan Perrow writes about the success she’s had using stories to inspire a shift in children’s behavior, in the contexts of parenting and Waldorf education.   Healing Stories gives advice for creating your own stories, as well as fifty plus stories that Perrow’s used.  The […]

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