Meme: Day 20 – This month/20. Paganism and my relationship

[witchscauldron]

November

I historically have a love-hate relationship with November. I love late autumn, when the snows start coming in, when the world is all greys and blues and golds. I like seeing the deer and the turkey moving around, and the vivid blues of twilight that come at this time of year. I find the month gives me time to rest and breathe and contemplate, a quiet time. I enjoy the silence that descends. I wish I felt like the 'quiet' time was longer. Every year it seems shorter and shorter.

At the same time...I think I'm the only person who enjoys November, that I know. Everyone else complains about the early darkness, the growing cold, the 'dreary' world outside. It's hard when you think something is beautiful, and the people around you tell you you're an idiot for liking it.

The month has its' perils. As much as I hate to admit, the dwindling sunlight has a very bad effect on my brian chemistry. I fight depression really hard in November, and by the end of the month I'm getting pretty grey. (Especially as the crassly commercial over-cheery fake holiday season starts closing in - UGH. Social pressures and stress and just...ugh.) My enjoyment of silence often turns into hermitage, even from my husband, as I become very withdrawn. I notice, too, that the thicker the crowds get when I have to go out, the more paranoid I become. It's all part of the same cycle.

In more recent years the winter hasn't closed in yearly, so I get more sunlight, and I'm managing to cope with November. Every day has to be taken as it comes, but I think that's part of the reason I get through. If I can keep November 'mild', and manage to cope, sometimes the winter is easier for me. If November is bad...well, sometimes I wonder if I'll see the other side of the winter.




Paganism and Us

barkman isn't religious. He has his own spirituality, but he's not into organized religion. Wicca's probably the least organized of organized religion (an old joke I make), but it's still not really his thing. Still, he puts up with my frequent weirdness and my shrines everywhere, and seems pretty tolerant of my strange doings of things by moon phases and planetary hours. And for a non-pagan, he gets on with Pan shockingly well.

We don't share beliefs, so much. But that's ok. We don't have to. Everything seems to work out fine, as it is.