Officially in Two Shops!

Hey lovelies! I am so happy to finally announce that, after much effort and outreach, TwoLoveBirds is officially in two shops local to me! One is a book store called ‘les Appalaches’, located in Sherbrooke, Quebec, and the other is a cute little gift shop located in Lennoxville, Quebec called ‘les 3 fees’ (literally, the three fairies). Both are very charming and cute places, and if ever you are in the are you must visit them! Also, if you’re wanting to buy one of my books, you can order it from them!

I wish I could continue this post by saying that I am celebrating, feasting, and being quite jolly about this new step forward. But the fact is, I’m terrified. I’m upset and miserable.

The moment I knew that my books were accepted, I plunged into a depression. Self-destructive anxiety came over me, and I just worried about how I don’t have enough advertisements, how my books may very well not sell, and so on and so forth.

The truth is I want this project to keep growing. I don’t want to be set back and told that, in fact, my books won’t sell on a local level. I don’t want to be told that they are too niche and too unrelatable and so on and so forth. I’m afraid, and so I quiver and melt down.

I have been supported lately by lovely people, and I am safe and not in harm’s way, so please do not worry. I will persevere, and I will progress. Hopefully the twolovebirds will, too!

Wishing you all the best. ❤

Happy Esbat!

Yesterday was the full moon, lovelies, and I had a great time. I was feeling well enough to make two types of fudge for the fairies (one gluten and dairy free, and the other with evaporated milk in it!). I did some personal workings with my close friends, and we sat back and talked while the magic did its thing.

But what is an Esbat? For me, it’s very much like a sabbat, except it’s about the moon.

I know, I know, it’s technically not ‘right’. Sabbats are traditionally celebrations, time to ‘turn the wheel’, while Esbats are times for personal workings. But for me, the two intertwine.

You see, I’m not much of a moon person. Sacrilege, I know. Most witches are massive moon people. But I am a sun and daylight person. As such, I find myself wanting to do workings in line with the sun, during Sabbats. For me, I find that these seasonal turnings are a great way to keep my life moving forward.

And yet, the end of this full moon feels like it’s marking the beginning of spring. Here, it is warm now. The sun is shining fully, the snow is melting. After all, the full moon is usually the coldest part of the lunar cycle. So now, with the full moon ended and spring approaching, it is lovely out. I am gearing up, starting my plans, for spring and the garden. I will be setting up my sprouts soon, but not yet!

So in this sense, it feels like the Esbat has taken on the role of the Sabbat, heralding the closeness of spring.

And you? How do you define a Sabbat versus an Esbat? How do you celebrate both, and how do you view them in your traditions?

I don’t have any particular wisdom for you beyond that, but I do wish you all a lovely seasonal beginning. I hope you enjoyed your full moon, did plenty of lovely workings, and are ready for the season to come!

A New Phase…

As I have written elsewhere, I think on Facebook, a very difficult situation is drawing to a close for me. As it comes to a happy end, paperwork and all, I have felt a ridiculously huge amount of stress lift off my shoulders. I felt a sudden ten percent jump (approximately) in functioning! So so much stress was suddenly gone, and now I feel a new shift in myself. I feel like I came to a turning point, was suddenly placed back in the driver’s wheel of my life, and some decisions were made. Namely, I’m going to be delving back into my spiritual practice and trying to recenter. I want to return to my roots as a pagan and Buddhist, and to feel myself grow.

So! I got myself a new sketchbook to make into a BOS, I made some concrete weight loss and spiritual practice goals (including taking a buddhist meditation class from a local Tibetan nun!) And I am trying to be gentler and more mindful of myself in my day to day experience. Oh, and yoga. I have been doing yoga twice a day now for a week, following short “yoga with Adrienne ” videos. I have to say I’m really enjoying her videos, and feel very pleased with myself for doing them!

And yet I find myself looking to my fresh new book of shadows and wondering… what shall I put in there? What would you counsel, friends and new readers? I am thinking of revisiting the elder futhark, but beyond that and buddhist meditations, I feel a little lost as to what to do with my shiny new notebook. Any advice or words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated!

As always, I wish you all the best! Have you recently had any spiritual turn around? Let me know what you did, or what you’d advise to do!

Fire! Its Alive!

When I first started writing Farfadel novels, I did not have access to a fireplace. Fire was a fun thing to dabble with via candles on occasion.

But now? Its been two years of living with a wood burning stove, and this winter I’m actively trying to keep it alive and burning to heat our tiny home. And, well, I’ve noticed a large change in how I approach fire.

Maybe its my overactive imagination, but I’ve started enacting rules from my Farfadel novels around my own fire! For example, I do not speak to the fire, unless I am certain what I say cannot be taken out of context to cause damage or silliness. I am cautious, really, not to speak disrespectful things around the fire. You wouldn’t want the Fire Lady to appear, in spirit of course, but I wouldn’t want to piss off the element of fire!

It sounds silly, right? But I’ve really come to see the fire as a living entity within my home. I cajole it quietly some days, trying to get it to burn higher. It burns my hands when I try and feed it without my thick gloves on. I wake up grudgingly to feed it at nighttime, and relay the care thereof with my wife.

Now, I can’t say this has affected my writing that much. But it has brought my writing about fire to be more… alive? For me, at least. It has brought what I thought of as a silly, fun thing, into a real life application!

I dont have great shards of wisdom to share about this. On one hand, I do feel like this brings my novels eerily into a realm of reality im not sure I want them to be. In another, it reminds me cozily of the truth and reality that permeates all things. So… I have no great conclusion. But I wish you well, wherever you are, and hope you are warm and safe 😊 ❤

Discussion on Mental Health and Paganism – Where are the Disabled Folks?

I saw an article the other day, in a free pagan magazine. Yay! It was about mental health and paganism. Wow! I was so excited!

Yay, yay, yay, I thought as I first saw the page-long article. Something interesting to read! Finally, some in-depth something on the topic!

Uh, yeah no. After a few sentences, then a quick skim-through, I was instantly depressed. Because apparently, just because we say ‘merry meet’, we’re a welcoming bunch. And the fact that we do fire gazing? Wow, that, like, taps us into ourselves and allows us to be grounded and shit. And the way we say ‘so mote it be’? Well, that allows us to accept things as they are. So, basically, (according to this author) we pagans are well equipped to deal with mental health issues because of these three things.

I was floored. What. The. Fuck.

This article, in my personal opinion, was like saying you get your vegetables from a pumpkin spice latte (Hint: there’s no pumpkin in most pumpkin spice lattes). I mean, really? Really? Not only was this a super-shallow discussion on the topic which failed to acknowledge SO MUCH of the discrimination that happens in neopagan circles, it felt like it was written by someone who had NO knowledge on the topic.

Now, maybe that person does have lots of insights and experience, but that their one article was just poorly written. Because really, it felt like a lazy slap in the face. It was just like a cotton-candied fluff of an article saying ‘don’t worry, it’s all fine, we’re the best, and here are my poorly-researched reasons as to why’.

Ughhh. Here, let me recap for you: most pagans don’t believe in medications, which are essential for most mentally ill people. Most pagans not only demonize psychiatric medication, but they also straight-out prohibit people taking certain medications from entering into their circles. Oh, and many pagans think mental illness ‘doesn’t exist’, so it’s all fake and we don’t really need clinical help. We should just, go trip out with a shaman or something and tada, we’re all cured. (this is a simplistic recap, by the way, but it would be a HUGE rant if I got into details about it).

I guess my point for this article is to vent, and to really say -> please don’t brush off this topic. It’s a real, vital, topic. It’s not something to be taken lightly. It’s meaningful and deep, and has repercussions for people’s mental health. To claim a hostile environment is, in fact, safe, juts because you haven’t experienced the discrimination as a non-mentally ill person is… flabbergasting? To put it nicely.

Also, why is it that there are so few wide-spread articles on paganism and mental illness from seriously disabled mentally ill peoples? Why is it that the articles I find are from people who had mild depressive bouts, not people who are schizophrenic to the point of a disability, crippled by anxiety to the point of a disability, or people with uncontrollable OCD? Why don’t we get people talking about their experiences as Wiccan or pagan in a psych ward?

It feels to me that our discussion, which should be written by very disabled and chronically ill people, is instead being discussed by abled and at best temporarily incapacitated people. Even the course I’m taking on self-healing at Woolston is not led by an ill person, but instead by an abled (to my knowledge) practitioner, and I find it shows in their approach. I really wonder how the discussion would look if we instead had all the disabled and chronically ill through mental illness folks sitting at this table. If you do have resources that are written my disabled folks, especially blogs and such, I’d love to read them. But for now, I’ll just grump and brood in my corner.

Magic and Mental Exhaustion/Depression

I saw my psychiatrist recently. When she asked me how I was feeling, at that instant, I couldn’t tell her. Even when I was tearing up, I couldn’t get in touch with my emotions. Well, she said, time to get in touch again.

And so I’ve signed up for an emotional healing course at Woolston. Long story short, we were doing a fire grounding exercise and it made me feel sick. But the important thing was that when I did the next exercise, I realized that I didn’t have the inner energy to shield myself.

Now, a little idea clicked within me then. Maybe a bit dumb, but it bears laying out for those of us with magical lifestyles. And that is that: when you’re mentally/emotionally exhausted, you won’t have the energy to draw on for energy/magical practices.

Be it writing into a candle, or reaching down into the earth, I found that it was inaccessible. I did not merely feel tired, but I had no energy to reach within to tap into. The pool inside was empty, to the point of making me feel sick when I tried to expel/use some.

Alright, so? What’s the use of that?

The use of this is, if you are depressed and chronically ill/fatigued, do magic that doesn’t require you to have any inside of you. Wield the magic of the runes, of the woods you live next to, or what have you. But if you feel dead beat tired and emotionally spent, you might just have no energy, and your spell work may hurt you more.

So be wise, and be a vampire! I’m joking, of course. But really, try and find passive ways of doing magic and grounding. Ask the gods for aid, use elemental magic, and do grounding techniques that don’t require you to output energy first.

Currently I am trying to do grounding and body check ins (as is instructed in the class) and I shall see if any more insights come from that.

I hope this helps someone.

Life Update – Teaching!

Yes, that’s right! I have a job! Teaching!

I have been lucky enough to land a job teaching at a local pagan school – ‘Runes et Magie’. I’ll be teaching about Discernment! Yayyyy!

I am so excited for this (sorry if I’ve already told y’all, I can’t remember if I have yet or not)! I have been working SO much on the course, putting it all together and making a PowerPoint presentation to go with it and making an exam and all that good stuff. It’s exactly what I want to be doing – so it should be a good thing, right?

Well, yesterday, I spoke with the head of the school about my class. She was super nice. It went super well. After hanging up with her, I almost called a hotline, I was so wound up. So anxious. So, so, upset at myself for my minor fixes that I’d noticed needed to be done in the course. It was awful. I received another call from a relative, again a positive thing, and I could barely hold it together. I was a wreck. I sat down to watch TV for several hours, and the room began to spin. I had to lay down almost two hours early from my usual bedtime.

Today, I was no better. I woke up to care for the dogs, fed them and took my medication, then went back to bed until 4 pm. I literally spent the day in bed because I felt so fragile. Now, after taking a walk with the wifey, I feel alright. I can still sense the fragility there, but I’ve got a lid on it now.

All that to say that – I can barely do this teaching thing. I think I can, but only because the lady in charge is SUPER NICE, and that it’s something I LOVE doing. My anxiety about it is just ready to slip out of control and to sink me all over again. But, I think I can do this. I think if I’m careful, keep myself calm and rational, I can do this.

I may not be having as much time to write, though. I’m not sure I still want to post my writings here, even. I – I am not sure how I want to balance my author and teaching sides, actually. I am giving up on writing as my main source of income, and deciding to relocate it as a passionate hobby. I just don’t think I’ve got what it takes to be a full-time author, no matter how much I like it. I’m just not ‘breaking through’ to a yuge audience to make a zillion dollars. That being said, I still want to write. I still want to draw. I love getting feedback and talking about my story with people. But … How will I do that? How will I balance the writing and teaching? Blah. I’ll figure it out.

Anyways, I wanted to give y’all a little update. I’m anxious, but life is going very good! Hopefully you will still keep getting writing posts from me, or at the very least life rants. I hope you all are doing well ❤

Feeling Disenchanted Again…

I know, I get too invested in things. But is what I want really too much to ask?

I want maturity. I want pagan leaders to pay attention to what they are doing, and not be on some fantasy ‘witchy’ trip.

I want people to know their stuff, and not to just have regurgitated stuff they found online.

I want depth. I am sick and fed up with Llewellyn’s 100 some odd superficial books. I know, they have some less superficial ones. Good for them. But seriously? That number is ridiculously low. Come on, people. Let’s debate. Let’s get serious.

I want charity/activism. I’m so bloody fucking sick of ‘schools’ that just teach stuff that is largely based off of UPG. Can’t they give back to community? Host rituals for charity?

Oh, and why don’t they do actual research? Why?

I know, I bitch. But I feel so tired and annoyed. I love the Aquarian Tabernacle Church so far, don’t get me wrong. They feel like an oasis of decency in a plastic garbage heap. What the hell, pagans? Why have we become so commercialized? So self-centered?

And finally, my last bitching point to the universe: why do I want to host a ritual so much? Yeah, this is personal. But I miss leading rituals, for the sense of numinous and community and charity. I miss it so badly, it’s all I can think about these days. I just want to host a ritual, maybe for Samhain or something. But I don’t know how to go about it.

Part of me wants to be a rebel and host one on my own for all the queer and polytheist rebels out there. But then, part of me tells me to save my energy, to not overload myself. That this desire to hold a ritual is selfish, that it’s all going to blow up in my face as my last ritual group did.

I don’t know what to do. Any insight would be greatly appreciated, actually. Part of me feels tired of pagan culture, the nonsense of it all. But this is my religion, my beliefs. Why are the people I should share so much with so… so… I guess the phrase would be ‘not what I want them to be’. But to me, they feel so careless about their beliefs and community, like it’s all just a big party to them. Don’t they realize there are people out there who need help? Don’t they want to help? Why aren’t they serious about their religion and community?

Anyways, whatever. I’m going to brainstorm. I’ve got some ideas coming to me, so yeah, we’ll see what I do.

Much love to you all, take care ❤

News!

So a lot of stuff has happened in the past few days. Namely I’ve been offered a job teaching at an esoteric school, to teach via video conferences, and I’ve discovered and decided to join the Aquarian Tabernacle church and enroll in their seminary program for clergyhood!

So first off, the teaching! The teaching sort of fell from the sky, actually. I contacted someone I knew quite randomly to say hi and boom! They offered me the job (as they run the school). I thought seriously about it, but decided that this would be entirely feasible for lil ol disabled me. So I am in the process of agreeing! Papers need to be signed and sent around, but my mind is made up. I had also done a tarot reading on the subject a few days ago and it seemed entirely favorable! So that’s fun!

In this school I will be making the courses up. I choose the topics, run it past the head, and then once j get the go ahead, I teach that material for a year. Yes, I am fully intending to do a course on mental health. Y’all will be invited, I will share the link here once I do do that course!

But for now the courses i will give will be on slightly easier material, like… magic in history (for which I plan on doing a mega ton of research) or the art of discernment (also research, but less academic).

The courses are unfortunately going to be paid, so I wont be able to give yall free access, but that will pay me and eventually get me financially on my feet (hopefully!).

As far as the Aquarian Tabernacle church goes, I actually found them because they shared my giveaway post! I then investigated them, and was like lo! Behold! A wiccan church that is getting organized and doing stuff like I’d love to do! So I got very excited and contacted them. And wow! They answered! They were nice! So I ended up attending some coffee chats online with them and yeah, I really like them and their mindset. I think their course for clergyhood will be a great growth process for me!

Finally, today was the last day of my birdie giveaway! I am a bit relieved, as it was stressful trying to organize posts and people (many of whom didnt quite do as many posts as I hoped). But hey, it’s a learning process. In a few weeks I’ll do my second giveaway for my ya fiction novel!

But for now, I’m going to close by sharing a nice selfie I took when I put makeup on yesterday for my video calls. I have to say, I do really like the look and enjoy seeing myself with a beard and makeup. It’s very euphoric for me and I feel great! I cant wait for my beard to fill in more!

So for tonight, have a great time lovelies! I love you all and wish you all the best 😊💕

GiveAway Begins!

Hey everyone! The Giveaway for the TwoLoveBirds account is LIVE! What does this mean?

1. This giveaway is not affiliated with anyone like Facebook, Instagram, or WordPress in anyway.
2. This giveaway will last until the 23 of July (so a little more than a week), when I will do the draw of the three winners from a hat.
3. There will be three winners drawn in total across all platforms.
4. The second and third prizes will be revealed during the week, but the first prize is the children’s pagan activity book that I made!
5. To enter the Giveaway, you must follow me on some sort of social media, and comment on the giveaway announcement post by tagging three people. So if you are on Facebook, you must tag three people on my Facebook post that announces the giveaway. If you are on WordPress, same thing, but on this post.
6. I wish you all the best of luck! If you want to see more giveaways from me in the future -> Participate!