Rev. Crystal's Full Moon Blessings

I have found that life continues to move forward whether we will it to or not.  It is the human nature to think that removing one person from the equation would be a pause where life would stop for that moment.  Reality is that it doesn't stop and we have to evaluate our importance in any given situation along the way.

When we have the opportunity to reassess our priorities and where we place them in our lives, it is a chance to choose those things that we previously might have missed or overlooked.  It is essential that we always remember that every moment we are alive gives us the chance to evaluate and choose what path or road we are going to take.  It doesn't matter how far down the road you have already gone, you can turn around or do a detour.

So in light of several experiences this week and the death of a pop star to the overdose of drugs.... it just reaffirms that we make our choices, we have a chance to change them along the way and we ultimately will be responsible for the outcomes if we choose to ignore the open doors that are presented to us.  Whether those open doors are extra time to be with loved ones, a chance to be happier in life, some special time with your children, making time to meditate or ...... fighting for your sobriety...... in the end, life will go on without us and we have a choice to choose our fate all the time, every moment we are alive.

May we all choose wisely.
Blessed Be

It has been an interesting last couple of weeks.  While some things are getting easier and seem to be on track, others continue to be increasingly complicated.  I have had the pleasure of turning in the manuscript for the Shades of Faith Anthology and have already gotten the copy editing sent back to me and returned.  I am now waiting for the cover to be completed and whatever other ends need to be tied before I am looking at a release date.  I am very excited about seeing it in print finally.... it has been a long time coming, with lots of work and coordination.  

For those who don't know, I got into a car accident last year the day before my birthday, when a bee flew into my window and landed on my leg.  And those who know me know that I don't do well around bugs.  It is not my think at all.

So today was an interesting day that ultimately pushed me to look at the symbolism of bees and why I would see two in the same day and in weird circumstances.  On my way to the bank there was a bee on my bumper.  I (of course) being a little frightened, jumped in the car and took off.  I figured it would fly away when the car moved and so I didn't worry about it anymore.

After coming home from the bank, I got out the car and walked towards the house only to find that the bee was in the same position.... on the bumper of the car.  (YIKES!)

Fast forward to hours later, while at a family members house, and we were all hanging out at a going away party.  We took the kids into the house to eat and about 10 minutes after being at the table, the same type of bee started flying around the dinning room light.  Doubles YIKES

So on the way home I thought, "I have to think about what the bees were telling me".  So, I am going to invest in being happy and acknowledge how all things are connected.  I need to enjoy what I do, find happiness in all situations and let it into my life on a more consistent basis.  Life is sweet, even when it stings and life will remain the substance and goodness of our reward for our hard work.

So I am going to concentrate on that this month.  Not only is it the events of today but also a year ago this month that a bee tried to give me a lesson.  I couldn't hear it last year, things were too fresh from my mom's death.  This year I am ready to listen a little more.

And hopefully, since I got the message, the universe will not send me anymore right now..... (shivers)
Blessed Be!

I went to my session today with the hypnotherapist and we set our whole session to be on my relationship with money and feeling as if I would never have enough.  Interestingly I had to look at some of the past images and beliefs that helped to shape my understanding of what is possible and what is not.  I think there are a lot of cultural images and personal images that have helped to shape my relationships with money as well.

Interestingly I could not always come up with specific examples of discussing money in my childhood, or memories around childhood.  I think a lot of that was because my mother did not talk about money and we just new that we didn't have any.  She didn't have to say anything and the responsibility was on me as a child to prioritize the importance of the things I wanted.

So as an adult, I find I am discouraged around the incredible amounts of money that is required to raise a family. How do you have hope for the future stability of money when you have to spend upwards of 2,100 a month for childcare without support?  This is what we have been paying since my mother died and it is hard.  What we discussed is opening up the possibility of having money by changing my limited beliefs around my relationship with money and what I feel is possible.

So, the next steps for me will be around balance, dreams and believes.  I am going to do some fundamental things around balance.... like sleep.  I will start to work on getting more than 5 hours of sleep a night and structuring things better so that Sissy can sleep through the night.  When I have more sleep, I am more optimistic and am not calling for things that will reinforce my limited beliefs around sacrifice.  I will redefine what my dreams look like, especially when it comes to having money and doing things that require money.   And third I will continue to work on my limited beliefs and try to see myself with what we need so that I can continue to provide for all the children.

More to come.

After a wonderful Ostara ritual and time with the coven, I was sitting at home with the hubbie and trying to decide what to do.  I posted such on facebook and the National First Officer of Covenant of the Goddess (and my friend) Peter Dybing posted commented and told me to listed to the Pagan's tonight show because they were doing a telethon for the Pagan Japan Relief.  I tuned in to the show and listened while sitting on the couch and watching the kiddos.

While listening, I hear Peter mention my book and some of the community aspects of what I talk about.  Funny enough, right before this I had asked the chat room how to call in.  After Peter mentioned me and the book, the guests started telling me to call in.  So I took my super nervous butt into the bedroom and called into the show.

I got the chance, for the first time, to talk on a live radio show about my book and have people want to hear what I was saying.  Incredible feeling and very humbling at the same time.  I realized in that moment that all the opportunities I have wanted to bring into fruition are coming to the surface and it is scary and exciting at the same time.  I am honored to be able to create such supportive relationships with others who belief in my work and are being a voice for me in the community.  It is all a bit overwhelming at times.

Tomorrow I am recording an interview with Modern Witch Podcast and next Wednesday I will be on the Sacred Feminine radio show on blog talk radio.  This is truly incredible.

I will post as things are released.  You can get the episode of Pagan's Tonight on itunes or at the website www.paganstonight.com.  It is the episode with the Pagan Japan Relief/Doctor's without Borders episode.  I am at the end of the second hour at the very beginning of the third hour.

I recognize the words of the Goddess as she lays the path before me and I am walking it.
Blessed Be....

I have continued to be very excited and amazed at all the incredible response I am getting post Pcon, including the write ups that are being published.  I thought it would be great to list everything that I could find so that it is accessible for anyone (including myself) who might be interested in reading the reactions that are out there.

http://doingmagick.blogspot.com/2011/02/roberts-review-of-pantheacon-2011.html

http://pncminnesota.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/pantheacon-thoughts-walking-your-talk/

http://www.thorncoyle.com/musings/?p=984&cpage=1#comment-6279

http://www.pagandad.com/2011/02/bridging-gap-by-crystal-blanton-review.html

There are so many wonderful people I got to meet or spend some measure of time with at Pantheacon.  Every year I feel like I meet great people but this year is different because it was around a lot of networking and quality discussions... not just a chance hello or introduction.  Of some of the people that I got to meet, I would like to give a shout out to some that really stuck out to me; Peter Dybing, Star Foster, Jason Pitzl-Waters, T. Thorn Coyle, Luisha Teish, Starhawk and other great people.  

Late night, early morning; up at 7ish to prepare for my 9am.  With about 4 hours of sleep, I got up and got dressed in my professional garb.  The seminar went well and it generated great discussions about Witch Wars, leadership and sustainability.  I enjoyed the seminar and was very pleased by the book sales from the seminar.

After the seminar I spent time shopping, volunteering time at the charity auction, bidding on items in the auction, a book signing in the vendor room and spending time with my friends and family.  Jon decided to stay another night and we spent time hanging out and going to see Pandemoneom perform for a bit.  We spent time laughing and hanging out with our friends in the hotel.  It was so wonderful to just be able to be present in that space and not worry about the demands of the world around us.

The next morning I got up early and went to the Pagan Newswire Collective seminar.  I am very excited about the opportunity to have media that is Pagan centered and what we might be able to build with those resources at our fingertips.  Wonderful things are happening!  In addition, I got to meet Star Foster and Jason Pitzl-Waters.  Very exciting stuff and incredibly awesome people.  I think Jason is a wonderful speaker and very professional in his delivery of information.  Star is vibrant, beautiful and fun.  I thought she had such great energy and it felt like we were old friends.  I look forward to building connections and friendships with both of these great people!

After the seminar I went for my book signing slot, then ate lunch with Jon and hung out in the hotel room.  When it was time to say goodbye to Jon, I had a hard time.  We had so much fun together and much needed bonding time.  After that I went back to shopping, spending time with friends, and hanging out in the live charity auction.  Amber K and Azriel were the auction presenters and Amber K is hilarious!!

We were quite successful at the auction and Kat is the master bidder!  She won a sword, harp and kilt.  Talk about a good time!!

The night ended with a Morrighan ritual done by T. Thorn Coyle and Sharon Knight.  Then off to see Haggis Revenge..... that is a whole other blog in and of itself.

More to come!

There are so many exciting and fun things from Pantheacon this year that I will probably break it up into several posts so that I have a chance to really process all the moments and things that happened.  I had a blast!  Let me first start with saying that and that I met some incredible people and got valuable feedback this year on my presentations and book.  Although it is always scary to write, present and put yourself out there in the public eye; it is a great experience to know that what I am doing can support others in some small ways.  That is the reason that I have always wanted to do this, not because I want the name or recognition (although recognition is nice), it is because I want to be able to support our community in learning what we need to continue to create healthy and productive dynamics with others.  I have been that person coming into the Pagan community and was taken advantage of and hurt.  I have seen others hurt and have hurt others without realizing the ramifications of my actions.  For all of those reasons, I am honored to be able to do this work and write about it for others.

I arrived at the Con on Friday about 12 and we checked in with little lines and got to our rooms to settle in.  After a small hotel room assignment mix up, we were on our way and I was excited to finally be at the event that I look forward to all year long.  My first seminar was at the 3:30 time slot and I thought that it would be a small crowd since people are just arriving and some are still working at that time.  To my surprise, the room was packed!  Thank goodness my husband, friends and other awesome people helped to put out more chairs and support the process.  I was so surprised by the amount of people that I became a little flushed and overwhelmed.  LOL!

The workshop (circle restore; Restorative practices in covens and circles) went very well and it seemed that people were interested, engaged and could relate to the issues at hand within the community.  This was exciting for me since it was validated to confirm that the lack of conflict resolution methods and training in our community has led to such hurtful situations all around.  Everyone participated and I got some great feedback.  I sold some books and it felt as if there was a nice buzz around the types of concepts we could extend into our community.

For the first time, I got to meet Peter Dybing (National First Officer of Covenant of the Goddess) in the workshop.  Peter reached out to me a couple of months ago after buying my book and has been such as awesome supporter for me since then.  He attended the workshop and was able to give me some constructive feedback to support making it even better.  (Thanks Peter!)

It was wonderful to have my friends and Jon there at the workshop to support me.  I felt great about the experience, even though I was so nervous I was sweating.  :)

After the workshop, I got to hang out with everyone, shop in the vendor area, eat dinner with the hubbie and go to the Pomba Gira (I waited all year for this).  We dressed up and went dancing for an hour.  My husband had such a great experience in the Pomba that I spent a lot of time trying to keep him on this side of the plane instead of being ridden all the way by the Umbanda Gods for the first time.  He loved it and I loved seeing him so engaged in the spiritual aspect of himself.  Pcon has a way of doing that for people.

After Pomba, we went to the room, hung out and spent some quality time nursing our feet after almost 2 hours of dancing.  I loved every minute of it.

That was the first day of a wonderful 4 day weekend experience.  More to come.

The last year changed life for me and the family dramatically.  The new year has brought a lot of beautiful things along with some sad moments of realization, understanding and facing of mortality once again.  While there continues to be a lot of adjustment on the parts of almost everyone in our home, there is still a lot to do in the area of healing and adjusting to all the changes that have happened in our lives over the last year and a half.

A year ago my mother died and this past week I have gone to the hospital twice to visit my aunt.  She was in remission from breast cancer and it has returned.  In addition, she is very sick with other issues that are even more pressing than the cancer and the doctors are battling several issues at once.

I won't go into all the gruesome details of my feelings and the reminders of sitting in the hospital with my mother.  Instead I will say that it is a wake up call that the ebb and flow of life's trials are constant and it is not about being able to stay at one place in life for long.  Change is the only constant, right?

I have been working hard at coming back to my spiritual self over the last year and have made great strides in the past several months.  Hypnotherapy is one of the things that has really pushed me beyond the limits that I set myself within.  Once again I am looking at my aunt and thinking that I must prepare to fall back into the faith that I have been rebuilding.  The Gods are guiding me in learning how to love, live and let go.  Some of the hardest lessons I have ever had to learn.

So while I am considering what it means to hope you are not looking at the end of someone you love, I am also putting my faith in overdrive and pushing forward.  I know it is important for me to be present in this process with her and although it is a harsh reminder of the memory of my mother dying, it is also a honor to be there and sharing love when I can.

Finding spirit in the tough times can be one of the biggest and most difficult challenges there are but ones that can also propel us towards understanding things on a whole different level of spiritual connection.

This weekend marked the one year anniversary of my mother's tragic death and it was a relatively good weekend.  I did not think it would be but I am coming to remember some of the deeply spiritual things that I use to love about this time of year and I am trying to infuse them together with the memories of what I have lost.  I have been working a lot with the hypnotherapist around removing blockages and not allowing those old memories to taint the hope that I once carried so firmly.  It is working and little by little I am feeling more myself and more able to belief in the power of my own manifestation again.

So this weekend I celebrated the turning wheel of Imbolc by going to the gym and being present in the needs of my body.  Three days in a row at the gym was very uplifting and I feel great!  I have stopped smoking and tomorrow will make one week.  Thanks to Jenny (the hypnotherapist) planting the seed in my head that it would be a great present to my mother on her death anniversary.... it stuck and took hold.  I feel good about it and it is one more thing I am letting go of that is a result of her accident.  I started smoking again when she was in the hospital.  It was one of the only vices I had to take care of myself while dealing with the horrific situation.

I spent some time with a witchy friend and reconnected with her over coffee.  It was wonderful.  I have spent some time taking care of business at home and preparing for Pantheacon.  All things I needed to do for one reason or another.

So, with this turn of the wheel and the creeping energy of the sun peeking through, I chose to enjoy my weekend the best I could and honor the Gods for giving me another year to remember my mother with.  I know that if I continue to honor her in her life with me then she will truly live forever; as do the Gods and the ancestors.

May your Imbolc be blessed and filled with the knowledge that the dark half is ending and the light will once again return.

Sometimes a chain of events will lead to what feels like moments of chaos and unexpected series of events. That is what this week has been for me. With the combination of coping withtje anniversary of my mom's accident, dealing with sick kids, huge decisions and a stressful week at work, I am more than ready for a week of calming energy ti help rejuevinate the soul. While 2011 is going in the right direction to bring closure to the hos of last year, it is weeks like this that serve as reminders of what was almost all of last year.

I'm the new year I have made it a conscious decision to acknowledge that I am grateful those days are done and hopeful that when periods like this do happen, I know it is just a moment. I have been doing a lot of internal work to recharge the batteries that became so drained from the emotional demands of last year and those are the things I want to continue to be grateful for. Today I feel like I have some direction again and even though it is not all the way clear, I have some ideas as to where I am going.

Redefining a dream for myself has been one of the biggest challenges I have struggled with, my old dream depended on having my mom here and freedoms I no longer have. With that, it has been hard to see the visual but it is getting a little easier now.

So this weekend I am focusing on decluttering the last week from my energy, planning next moves and staying in a state of mindful gratefullness so that I cam be in a place for manifestation. And just maybe the full moon will support my weekend journey.

This has been an overall good weekend.  I was able to spend some time at the movies with the hubbie on Friday and going out to lunch since we had daycare.  It was nice to get out and be just adults.  Friday night (new Years eve) we stayed at home and drank sparkling cider with the kids and my two nephews.  Jon, Robbie and I did our little new year prayer for peace and happiness in the new year and then we lit candles.  

I went today to get my first session of hypnosis and NLP (neuro linguistic programming) after much consideration and thought.  I have looked into hypnotherapy a couple of times, starting about two years ago.  What better time to do it than when things are at the most overwhelming and I have had so many things that I am working to overcome within the last year of chaos and upset.  

I am not a huge around the thought of new years resolutions and wanting to be something different at the beginning of the year.  I have the usual thought that people use that one point in the year to be different than they are instead of working all year at making necessary changes.  This year I have the same beliefs and do not feel that I need the new year in order to make some decisions about myself.  Instead I would like to enter the new year of 2011 with a clean slate, leaving behind some of the things from 2010 that it is time to release and move beyond.  

I am excited for the end of 2009.  I look back at this year and see total overhaul from the previous year and all the goals I set for myself were suddenly changed.  While most of my goals last year revolved around completing my book and finding success in that accomplishment, at the end of 2010 most of my goals revolve around finding some level of peace and serenity.  The addition of two children and the loss of my mom has changed life as I know it and the family is finding ways to settle into the new course we have been set on.

I never considered life without my mom, it was the unimaginable task and yet today I find I am living it.  Although it doesn't feel real at times, I know that I am going through the stages of loss and contemplating who I am without her now.  I remember saying to one of my therapist friends at work that I wanted to go back to being who I use to be and he told me something that was told to him by a therapist when he was dealing with grief.  He told me that I was not that person anymore because that person had a mother.  I know what that means today.

So, I have survived one of the most rewarding and horrific years of my life.  I have written, completed and saw my book be published; a dream I have had for a long time.  And I have also suffered a loss that was so heartbreaking and traumatizing for everyone in my family.  As I move into 2011 I am working hard to hold on to all those things I love about this year and allow the universe to cleanse the rest.  I hold on hard to the memory of my mother as well, the good ones, the ones she would want me to remember and not the images that I saw from the last two weeks of her life.

Maybe if I can do this then I can pull the rest of the family along to a place of healing that continues into 2011.  That is the plan and the goal.

As the growing light of the sun creeps into longer days, it is the reminder that darkness and light exist because of each other.  One does not exist without the other.  So I will use the darkness to shed light on how grateful I am for the many blessings that I have and for the ones that have not come yet.

Blessed Yule, Solstice and New Years to everyone.  May your dark times shed a beautiful light that illuminates everything that is wonderful in the world.

Today's Thanksgiving and this is a huge day for the family.  We have not yet figured out how this is going to work for us but we know that today would've been the day that we celebrated with my mom and the whole family, like we had every other year.