Follow me.....to my NEW BLOGSITE!

THIS BLOG IS NOW CLOSED......

I found that there was another blog called "An Enchanted Cottage" I decided that I didn't want the "competition" and figured that this new chapter in my life was worthy of a new start on a blog as well....This one has served me well despite my very sporadic posts here.....

A new chapter, a new start, a new Voice, a new Blog; Follow me to: The Witch of Blue Moon Cottage, here's the link: http://thewitchofbluemooncottage.blogspot.com/

Look forward to seeing you there!

The Past Year.....(and a half).....

So....my last post was on April 4th of 2011....If good intentions were dollar bills......

However, the good news is that in the time since I last posted I have been very busy at making my life happen, at making my life the Enchanted Life I've always wanted!

In the past year and a half:

- I turned 50 and LOVING it!

- I have accomplished all my goals regarding my living situation: I have decluttered, sorted and cleaned up 22 years worth of crap!

- I have broken the cycle of 30 years of bad habits, of bad choices....I have given myself a "restart" button...my life begins here, now.....

- I bought a house; actually a tiny cottage in the woods (my witch's cottage in the woods) and it's because of the decision to buy this house that I was finally able to have that breakthrough that I needed to leave this destructive pattern I was living in.

In my last post I talked about my decision to blog about my struggles while working at this "enchanted life"....I discovered that wasn't possible, I could barely deal with it myself, let alone write about it. It was an intensely painful, horrific time in my life, I had to, literally, dig through piles of neglect, hurt, anger and denial, piles and piles of clothes, boxes, stacks of just stuff....all these physical belongings, piled high in a subconscious fort around myself...between the food and the "stuff" I was insulating myself against MYSELF....I was in complete denial about how bad it had gotten....that is until the Goddess created a serious of serendipitous events that lead to the buying of this house, this tiny little cottage that is only 992 square feet of cozy, magickal, quiet, lovely HOME.
The Goddess lead me to my dream cottage, she presented the opportunity to buy it on a moonbeam silver platter, the only stipulation: in order to live there I would have to plow through all my piles of crap and whittle those piles down by 90% to be able fit what I needed into my tiny little cottage....so 22 years of neglected 'stuff' had to be gone through in a two month time span....hardest, but most rewarding, two months of my life. The amount of trash that put out on the tree lawn of that house for 6 weeks in a row was embarrassing...but it's done, I lived through it and came out the other side of it a happier, whole, satisfied person.
I now to get live my dream life, living in my beloved forest, surrounded by the things I truly love, entertaining my friends and just living in peace with myself and my surroundings and I look forward sharing my Enchanted Life with you....

New Post!.....about starting the next chapter of An Enchanted Life!

Oy Vey!.....the last post on my little obscure blog was almost a year ago!......sheeesh!.......that's because in the last year my life has felt anything but Enchanted. I've been struggling with such extreme stress in my life: my work-life, my home-life, my marriage, my health, my spiritual-life and I just never felt like sharing any of this here in my Sacred Space. My life has been anything but enchanted this past year.

On top of everything else going on in my life the latest and most consuming is that my cancer has returned, there is a mass on my right kidney. I find out on today what we're dealing with and what the potential game plan is.


I've pretty much spent these last few weeks drifting, like smoke from a candle, refusing to set down in one mind place too long in fear that the Hysteria will find me and start gnawing at me again.

However, I did have a few moments of life affirming clarity, little flashes of "I-will-be-okay-I-will-not-go-down" moments and in one of those moments, in the shower oddly enough, it came to me that I should write about all of this on my blog, that I should share my journey, stresses and all....

The beaten up part of my Soul sneered at me sarcastically, "Hahahahahaha, the joke's on you! That's what you get for naming your blog An Enchanted Life! There is nothing Enchanted about your life right now."

Then the Goddess in me countered with "But that's EXACTLY why you should share this on your blog, to share with others how you're going to keep living An Enchanted Life not matter what today's verdict is! No matter what the future brings. That's the whole point of the blog!"

So, here we are: Day 1 on the completely new leg of my journey on living An Enchanted Life....and every day IS Enchanting because I am still here, alive and well, to tell you that!

on not letting Life get in the way of My Life......

I was re-reading my posts from earlier this year and was mortified to realize that depsite all my good intentions I have not followed through with many of my plans. Some of it is pure procrastination and some of it is just plan ol' Life getting in the way of My Life. I am realizing that all the best daydreamt plans can't become a reality unless you actually DO them...I guess I thought that because these dreams, these plans were of things pertaining to my own personal life, that they would just magically become a part of my days, my routine...that they would just seamlessly, simultaneously become a part of my daily life and it would effortlessly happen. Ha! The jokes on me, the key word here is effort...silly me, change, of any kind, requires effort, so how am I to make my life more Enchanted unless I apply effort to making those changes that I want to happen for my life. It's time to stop letting Life get in the way of My Life!

House Magic.......

One of my absolute favorite blog writers and most amazing artist, Rima from the Hermitage, wrote about house magic, she is settling into a 15th century cottage after traveling for a long, long time, she talked about sending her metaphorical self out into the house and feeling "as if the walls were sniffing me to see what they think".....I LOVE that imagery....the image of my house and myself melding into each other, becoming a home to each other....

The house I presently live in, I have lived in for 20 years, and it has never been my home.....the first years were spent being a mom to three small children and trying to keep them healthy and growing, my "dream home" was just that a dream while trying to keep a house full of kids with a husband who was already beginning his life long descent into a bottle....then there were the divorce years where just keeping our heads above the proverbial water and just keeping us in the house were my only concerns.....then there were the "finding me" years....I managed to make a personal stamp, here and there, in my house and I was starting to find a thread to follow when I met Jeff and my relationship with him and enjoying all that he brought to my life took front seat....now we're married and that thread that I was following has a new thread added to it, actually many new threads and now I need to take those threads, weave them into a beautiful tapestry of my new life. It's time to turn this house into a home and of course, while doing so,I need to make some "house magic".....

Bibbity Bobbity Boo!..............

Living up to a name.....

I had an epiphany yesterday, that I need to: a) blog on a regular basis, I really miss writing, and b) I need to take my blog and steer my writing of it towards fitting it to the name I have given it...An Enchanted Life.

All blogs are personal, however it can become easy to use a blog for a self induced pity party, that was not my intent when I started this blog. Life does have it's ups and downs and it can be cathartic to write about them, but I think it would be more cathartic to concentrate on lesson's learned from those dark times and the new light that is revealed.....So now that I've ridden the waves of the some of the roughest times of my life, I've decided that it is time to celebrate about how Enchanting life can be!

Enchante!

Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.....

I LOVE this picture, every time I look at it I just go "ahhhhhhh" and I can feel myself wanting to lay down in my yard and let myself sink into my Mother's bosom...and right now, in the dead of a Cleveland Winter (if you live here you know it demands a capital "W")...I really could use a good Earthly Momma's Hug.

I haven't posted since my surgery in August and back then I had mentioned the roller coaster ride of Life I had been on, in fact just about everyone I know had a wild-ass ride in 2009. I've been itching to start posting again but couldn't seem to find my starter thread, then this morning I came across a comment posted way back in July by April and I was so deeply touched. Thank you April, for your comment, you have no idea how much it meant to me. You are the first stranger to post a comment and I was blown away by what you had to say. My family and friends have posted comments before and I'm touched by what they have to say, but they are my family and friends so their opinion of my postings are a tad biased, but to hear how my writing has touched a complete stranger, well, it lit a fire in my heart and I am honored to have such an effect on a person whom I have never met.

April commented on my "Like an onion" posting and wondered how things were going for me since then and it's the perfect thread and one I was trying to pull at all along to get this blog started up again.....but first, a tiny side trip....in that blog I talked about cutting my hair and letting it go gray and April wanted to know if I would post "before and after" pictures.....so here they are, along with an update on the "peeling" process.......

Me, before the "peeling" began, Fall 2008.....(sorry, couldn't find a larger pic)...

Me, last spring, after all the color and curls were cut off.....

I was so proud of myself when I cut all the color off, as you can tell by my saucy little pose above, but as time went by I realized how washed out the gray made me look, so I opted on the side of vanity and had it colored for my wedding

....(I don't regret my vain moment, love how my pictures turned out...but now we're back to the health debate, especially now in my life, over whether I should keep coloring or not.....I'm leaning, again, towards being the brave, sassy silver haired wench....)

Yes, the Wedding finally happened!...Jeff and I both laugh now as we look back and agree that it seemed to take SO long to get here and now it's been 3 months already and it seems like yesterday.......the wedding was BEAUTIFUL, the day was gorgeous, it had rained ALL week and was supposed to rain that day, but the Goddess loves me, so She provided a beautiful, cool fall day for us...

We have survived this past year and all it's dramas and have come out closer and happier and more in Love with each other BECAUSE of it......

As the New Year begins I have been aching to pick up where I left off last spring with the Peeling Process...despite all the drama and detours in the last year, the Goddess is quite determined to keep me pointed in this direction and I am more than happy to follow Her lead...

In the middle of the graduation and all three weddings I became very ill, found out I had a malignant tumor in my bladder (explains three years worth of constant UTI's and lower back pain). I had it removed in August (my last post) and have come through beautifully. Because of the tumor and the subsequent post op infections I took my diet changes even further and became a Vegan...(very interesting, creative challenge in a house full of "meatatarians" who all make faces at my food...but they are being extremely supportive of my decision for ME...as long as I don't make any of them eat "that stuff"...lol)

I was DONE being sick!!!!

I am determined to purge my body of whatever junk I can, so I can know that I did MY part to cleanse my body from the inside, at least.

There are always things that happen that are beyond our control, but I am a firm believer in doing all you can on your own behalf to make things better...whether it be your health, your job, your finances, your life.....YOU are responsible for your own happiness and well being, NOBODY and NOTHING else can make you happier or healthier, if you don't start with yourself first!

For the New Year my whole being has gravitated towards the word "Simple".....I am exhausted from the past year and want to slow down my life, considerably and that is my goal for this year, my "word" for the year...I want simplify my life, less drama, less stress, less STUFF...I'm going to spend the next year simplifying, purging, cleansing, clearing, opening, renewing, re breathing, restarting the peeling process...

Last spring I invoked Oya, the Goddess of Storms....She blows Chaos into your life so that it may blow away the crap and expose the hidden garden lying underneath the dead weight in your life......and boy did she give it to me.......yep, She is a Powerful Bitch Goddess and I love her.....I am not sorry, at all, that I asked Her to work in my life....it's been quite a "storm" this past year, but now that particular "storm" is over and the sky is clearing, I'm going to go out into my Life and see what new growth has been brought into my life...Oya brought to my attention a whole lot of "dead weight" that was cluttering, choking my life and I am working at clearing away all that dead weight so that the new growth, the new things, new people, new mindsets, new opportunities will have a place to grow and flourish in my life.......

Let the Peeling Process begin....again......

Blessed Be.