It is exhausting to try to be all things. That is what I realized when I gave up on my dreams of being an herbalist witch with a garden full of belladonna and a potting shed full of spirits. It wasn’t that I was completely inept, it was just that I was more comfortable dreaming those dreams, rather than divesting time away from what truly made me happy: writing and channeling divine intentions through that writing. I firmly believe that you can be good at most anything, given sufficient time and practice, but you cannot be all things. There simply isn’t time.
I’m 35 years old, now, and let’s be honest: that’s middle aged. Whatever we might like to tell ourselves about living to see one hundred, odds are good I’m going to give out sometime in my 70s, maybe my late 80s if I’m really lucky. If I want to honor the life I’ve lived and the life I have left, I have to stop pretending like I have all the time in the world and I’m some invincible goddess. I have to recognize that if I want to succeed at what I really love, not just what I enjoy dreaming about sometimes, it’s going to take considerable time and energy. And that if I want to have any hope of accomplishing those things, I need to be honest with myself about my flaws.
So, here it is: I enjoy lying to myself. You’ve seen the meme with the dog sitting in the burning house, telling himself “I’m fine. This is fine.” Well … that me. I am that poor doggo. I will burn myself down to ashes rather than admit that I’m failing at something or that something just isn’t meant to be right then. I will howl and shake my fists in impotent rage at the closed supermarket, posted hours be damned, and I will absolute flip a table when a recipe turns out to taste like crap (but never with things on the table … I’ve learned by now someone has to clean up the mess, and that someone is me).
Knowing my mortality and also my limitations, I decided to seek out a spiritual (and herbal) advisor. It’s something that made me nervous because 1) I’d never done it before outside of a Christian church as a kid and 2) all of my books in my library were howling at me that if I was witch-enough I could figure things out on my own if only I would just buy the next book in this series. Well, Ashley don’t have time for that. Ashley has a social media job to job at.
Let me take this time now to plug December Bryant. You can find her on Twitter at @DecemberFBryant , and if you’re very, very lucky, she will have some time to sit with you and get you on firm spiritual footing. Not because you’re not a capable witch. Not because the gods don’t want to speak with you. But because sometimes it’s nice to be able to rest on someone else’s shoulder and listen to more than just your own thoughts on a matter. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to be the expert on everything. And Bryant is infinitely caring, infinitely patient. I am not being paid to say this (quite the opposite, I paid her and was glad of it), but more, she is infinitely capable of guiding you along the path of the gods and spirits.
And if Bryant is busy, or if your path leads you in a different direction, don’t fret. Do check credentials, and do not accept everything blindly, but do open yourself to the possibility that, just as a doctor sometimes needs a doctor, a witch sometimes needs a witch.
[Written by Ashley Nicole Hunter.]
