Memories, Trauma, and Coming Full Circle

I haven't been a Heathen very long, comparatively. I have been fairly successful at learning quickly because once I found Heathenry I threw myself head long into it. I read anything I could get my hands on, I learned to read in Old Norse, and most importantly, I talked to other Heathens. That is always the fastest way to learn. You can absorb all the knowledge others already learned much faster through a discussion. We need to encourage more discussions in Heathenry, and help them to flourish. Discussions can get heated without being debates. The thrill is the depth, not being right. That was what drew me into my Kindred, I was willing to challenge ideas, but be polite about it. I wasn't going to follow blindly, but I could accept being wrong. And I have been wrong a lot over the years. 

I recently had the opportunity to go home, to where my family lives in British Columbia. In 2017, I moved back with my mom. I had been a shut in for 3 years at that point, after teaching up north and having a traumatic experience. I was fired unjustly from my position up north, but that was not the reason for my trauma. It did make it even more difficult to process though, because how do you move past something that defies logic? After 3 years my (later to be) husband didn't know how to help me so suggested I move in with family because I needed a stronger support network. I didn't really have that many friends in Manitoba at that time, and certainly none I felt I had a strong enough relationship with to burden with my problems. My problems consisted of staring at the walls for hours without even realizing it, being unable to leave on even the simplest errands before 2pm, and nightmares about wolves. I also had trouble applying to jobs because I felt shattered and didn't know how to sell myself. I cried when I called mom and asked if I could come stay with her.

In BC, I tried to access mental health care. I had been seeing a cognitive behavioural therapist in Manitoba but the sessions were expensive and not covered by insurance. Eventually with me not working enough hours we couldn't afford them. In BC, there was free mental health care available... in theory. In practice, there weren't enough therapists available. I had one session with someone and they told me their caseload was too full. They kept trying to put me in group therapy, but it was a small town and I didn't need my dirt getting out. They offered me phone sessions with someone 3 hours away. I took those until I maxed out. The sessions weren't all that helpful but they would send me free workbooks. In the last session, I requested as many workbooks as they would send me. That was helpful. I learned from that that my symptoms were more like anxiety than depression. From there, I went back into paid therapy. The person my husband found sounded like a great fit, but in the first session I felt it wasn't working. However, I booked a second session to give this person the benefit of the doubt. I accidentally lost the appointment card. I still showed up on the day of the appointment at what I thought was the right time. I waited for 20 minutes, but the therapist didn't come out. I slipped a note under the door that I had forgotten my appointment time and apologizing and asking to rebook and how to square up the payment with her. Less than 30 minutes later the therapist called me back and yelled at me on the phone for wasting her time and not being serious about therapy and accusing me of trying not to pay her. I paid her. I never went back. I probably should have reported her for malpractice.

That day, when the therapist called me to berate me my best friend from grade school was there with me. She could hear this woman even though the phone was not on speaker. After that she took me out for ramen. After our food came she sat across the table from me and looked me dead in the eye. She said, "We can keep having ramen every week like this until you are better." That was the turning point, knowing I had people I could rely on.

I still had to do the work to get through it though. Having community is important, but ultimately you still have to do the hard work. 

The North

There is an urgent calling in the middle of the night,

That the north still owns my soul.

It is like the growling of a pack of restless, wild dogs.

It plucks me from tender sleep,

To a nightmarish land

Defined by isolation and the peculiar characters

The stillness draws out.

Babies cry,

Wind howls,

And we are separated

By shifting, shattering ice,

And blowing storms.

I batten down the hatches of my mind,

To weather out the worst of it.

My spirit takes on the edge of survival.

I feel the frost-bitten burn of desperation.

Children cower,

Wolves circle,

Enter in the dark of a midwinter's day.

The north holds me in its frozen jowls,

And I can never slip away.

I didn't feel anything. I needed to feel again. I would go out into the mountains on my days off. I would walk until the trail ended then keep going. I usually brought no food (sometimes if I was lucky, I would find a handful of berries on my trek) and just a small pocket knife and a water skin. I climbed sheer cliff faces in the rain with no gear, my fingers slipping. There was no cell service and I didn't care. I could almost feel something there, the shadow of something. The ravens would guide me off the mountains, show me the safe way down. I would return usually 6 hours after I set out, when I was so exhausted I shouldn't have been able to stumble home at all. (I told this to my best friend on my recent trip to British Columbia and I apparently had not been clear previously the extent of my risk-taking. She had only known I went hiking and the ravens would lead me home.) Somehow, after a while it started to help. 

One day I realized that in order to get better I needed to improve myself in every way. I needed to improve myself mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. That last one was the key as it turned out. I had been neglecting myself spiritually for a long time. I had delved in Paganism briefly in high school and early college but was only really aware of Wicca, which just wasn't for me. I had developed relationships with a few deities, some were Norse, including Odin and Kári. Others were not. I had redoubled into some sort of Agnostic-Christian mentality in early college, mainly due to bad college friends. However, I had throughout been interested in a variety of religions and more so, what is often erroneously called Shamanism, due to lack of words to describe such practices. (I would now use the word Animism.) I had a strong connection to the spirits of place as well as having a strong ancestor veneration practice, without realizing it. However, I had lost touch with all of this. First because I had focused too much on my university studies, then because I was overseas in Thailand, just taking in the local traditions there, and then because when I was up north the community had a strong Christian overtone, which made it unsafe to practice anything else. One of my coworkers from another community knew traditional healing methods. She gave a woman Muskrat root for menstrual pains and after that was shunned as a witch. She was a Christian woman and she was heartbroken. 

When I realized that I needed to improve myself I started looking online for something that fit what I believed deep down. That was when I first stumbled across the word Heathenry, and it felt like I had been drowning up until that very moment, and then suddenly I realized I could swim all along. 

Shapeshifting

The wild dogs are there,

To bite away the parts

That no longer serve me. 

Each bite frees me from myself,

Until I am just the fire of spirit.

I rise from the ashes

Of a misguided past,

As a phoenix, reborn.

 

I am present.

I am aware.

I am a tree,

Whose roots reach deep into the earth.

My branches stretch up tall.

My leaves brush the heavens.

My core beats in time,

With Mother Earth.

Our heartbeats are the same.

I see through her eyes,

Each living thing,

Tinted with the hue of serenity.

Each flaw,

Makes us perfect.

Late in 2017, I started pouring over everything I could get my hands on when it came to Heathenry. Most of that was online, and as many of you are aware, the internet is not a great place to be a new Heathen. There is a lot of gatekeeping and people just fighting for the sake of fighting. And everyone will tell you their one true way to practice, and none of them will be the same. I was looking for an in-person community but there was none nearby. I knew there were racist groups in BC but they also didn't seem to be nearby. I found one Heathen about 3 hours from my location on social media, but I realized he and I were not compatible and decided not to meet up. Meanwhile, I was strengthening my personal practice, learning Old Norse, and still reading everything I could get my hands on, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I have pretty good discernment, so that was really helpful. And I talked online with Heathens elsewhere. Some of them were nice and helpful, they were just harder to find on the big world wide web.

At some point, I realized that although there were no Heathen groups near me, I was planning to move back to Manitoba. And it was then that I stumbled onto a Facebook group for Heathens from Manitoba that seemed quite active. I read articles and watched videos that were posted there and commented on the threads. This was how I drew the attention of the Chieftain of my current Kindred. He was excited to find someone who was so engaged in Heathen topics and would discuss them with him. He reached out with an invitation to attend Sigrblót in the Spring of 2019, which I had to decline because I was still in British Columbia at that time. He asked me when I was returning to Manitoba, and I had barely settled in here before I met up with the Kindred for the first time.

Kinship

Set me on fire tonight.

I flush with the warmth

Of a fluttering heart,

Uncaged.

Emotions caress me.

Can you tell me

How do I let this fire consume me?

I am so afraid to burn,

But now that the smoldering has started

It mustn't stop.

I long to live 

Among the flames,

Curl up in the warmth

Of the glowing embers,

And never be

Cold and alone again.

And that was the beginning of something wonderful. I had been nervous to meet up with a Kindred because I had been very aware of the unsavoury ones out there, but I found instead, community, kinship, and shared belief. I found a sounding board for my own thoughts, and a place to push them further through collective knowledge. I found the strength to get through the harshest parts of the isolation caused by the pandemic in 2020, because we built online spaces to continue to share and grow together. I found my cheerleaders, pushing me to do things I hadn't believed possible for myself. I became a Councilor for the Heathen Confederation of Canada, because my Kyn believed in me. Later, I stepped up to become Chieftain of my Kindred.

Kindred

I waded into your well,

Drenched there

In your memories,

Until they became mine.

And we recounted

Those days long past

As if they were yesterday,

And saw them through the same eyes,

Shared the same body.

And those memories shaped us

Until we spoke the same stories,

Sang the same songs,

And became

Inseparable.

I hadn't been back to my mother's house since 2019. I had been back to British Columbia only once, for a funeral. Covid, and then finances, kept me away. This year my mom insisted my brother and I come home with our partners. It was nice to be back, to see my family there, to share it with my husband, and my in-laws as well. So they could see the place that had shaped me. What I didn't realize is how it had shaped me as a Heathen as well.

My Kindred does a series of short online rites over the Jól season, a practice we started during the pandemic. One of these rites fell while I was in British Columbia. I stepped out into my mom's garden. It is a terraced garden that is carved out of the rock face of the mountain. At the top is a tree, or was once a tree. Now it is a stump. But it was a tree not that long ago. I remember because it is the exact place that I first started to do blót as a Heathen. This time however, I wasn't alone. I was able to share the view with some of my Kyn, even though they were thousands of kilometers away. My Heathenry has come full circle, and I can see how much I have grown.

Connection

Will I sip this sweet mead of poetry tonight?

It has been too long, and you hid in the shadows,

Like you do, always watching.

But I saw your face among the oaks,

And I saw your cloak between branches of the elder,

And I saw swift movement behind the birch,

And when I stood in a grove of ash.

I found myself being watched.

I sang softly to myself, willing you to appear,

But instead

Only a bird took flight from the branches.

And I stood disappointed, knowing you could see

But would not speak, and then

I dug my feet into the Earth,

Grew roots, and listened.

And the deer wandered to me,

Curious in their grazing.

And the birds landed

On my arms like branches.

And the squirrels chattered excitedly,

Running up and down my legs,

Like the trunk of some gigantic tree

Whose branches reached higher than the heavens,

And whose roots ran deeper than the deepest Earth.

And you stood there smiling, as if you'd always known,

Fráríði,

And I saw you more clearly,

Ygg,

And so,

I saw our story cycles around

To be told again.

Sources:

All images and poetry are my own and not available for reuse.