When I left academia it was partly because I found it frustrating the way new age religions were dismissed and became sites of no holds barred kinds of critiques that would never have been applied to any of the major religions. I actively tried to push up against this almost contemptuous way of pulling apart and explaining the deeply important…
Category: Blog
When You Need to Stop
This week I stopped. Everything. It wasn’t my choice. I was sick and I surrendered. I was also pretty down and needed to give myself the space to work through it. This is how I gave myself that space: I watched water and did nothing. I spent an entire day doing one tarot reading for myself. Slowly. Because I had…
Let Everything Happen to You
“Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” -Rilke I’m sick, premenstrual and feeling really down. This quote helps. I don’t normally share when I have tears on my face but today I just wanted to say I’m sad and be in it with you, even though one of the things that is…
Being Mindful of Ethnocentrism
I’d like to say something as an anthropologist of religion. I think it’s wonderful people are questioning beliefs, where they come from and spiritual practices right now. We should always be thinking critically. That’s a good thing. I also want to say that it’s important to honour the integrity of people’s choices when it comes to their beliefs. There isn’t…
Rebel Empath
I like to live on the edges. There is freedom there. And what that means is I’m not constrained by the ways things have been done or the ways people think they ought to be. Even in choosing to do out of the box things with my life, I do them in rebel ways. I get along really well with…
Have I Lost My Voice?
I’ve been up for two hours writing and, I’m not going to lie it’s been freaking, want-to-throw-my-computer-across-the-room, painful. 500 words later (a quarter of my writing speed) and I fear I’ve lost my voice. I went back and read some of my old academic writing. I had a very strong voice then. But it just made me sad because I…
Untangling from Fear and Rage: May There Be Peace
May there be peace. May this peace come not from burning everything and everyone to the ground but from a true desire to see each other as whole and worthy of dignity. May we love each other and the earth so much that our hearts burst with the simple desire and wish for each person’s happiness, as they understand it.…
Mermaids & Belonging to Yourself
I’ve been thinking about what it means to belong lately. For so much of my life, I’ve felt the pain of separation and not fitting in. It’s felt like looking on from the outside wishing I belonged. Like my face has smushed up been up against this invisible glass window. So many times I’ve tried to see my reflection through…
Tarot is a Bridge
In 2012 I was finishing my Ph.D. and I found myself building a bridge across a cliff – that was what starting a business instead of becoming an academic felt like. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined where this path would lead me and how much joy, enchantment and wonder I would experience along the way. Tarot cards…
A New Drum
This is an Irish bodhrán drum I’m just learning to play that I got at the Gaelic College in Cape Breton. I’m hoping to take lessons next spring/summer there. Drumming is a big part of who I am even though I still have so much to learn. The drum I use the most was made for me in a Northern…