A Peek at ME

How do you tell people about yourself without being “wordy”? I have no idea. I’ve been accused of being "wordy" so many times in my life that I just accept it now, and I do me better than anyone else anyway. So I’m going to get really wordy in this nitty gritty bio about myself because I literally know no other way.

I had quite an eclectic upbringing with a spiritual truth seeker for a mother and a conservative Navy father. Where did we live? Every coastline and two cross country road trips and a few states in between. I loved being in the car, and as a result, watching the world whizz past from one reality into the next, I changed landscapes into fantasy worlds that begged exploring. I also learned at an early age how to clean baseboards, walls, light covers and the underside of countertops since we were a military family and moved every couple years. It was our job, said my mother… “to make the place look as though we never lived here.” And we succeeded every time.

The major problem with moving every few years is new schools, new neighborhoods and new people. For me, that meant learning how to make friends over and over again. I never had to learn who the bullies were, they always found me. I may as well have just walked around with a giant glowing target on my head, but the mismatched socks (in the 80’s Punky Brewster style), paisley skirts, and neon clothing whenever possible… made me an easy enough target already. Yes, I cried. A lot actually. The thing that made me strong though was my mothers insistence that I had to be ME regardless of the cookie cutter people trying to press me into a mold that I would never fit into anyway.

I heeded her advice like my life depended on it.

My Cancerian crab shell proved to be strong enough, for long enough so that I could exercise my emotions quietly and to myself. Outwardly though, I was an epitome of confidence. This was a blessing and a curse at the same time.

Ok… let's wander my childhood a bit, because that will help you better understand what kind of adult I have grown into. I don't have any pictures of my childhood. They are all safely tucked away in boxes like the past.

My mom carted my sister and I around to every church and religious denomination you could possibly think of. Yes I’m completely serious, LDS, Catholic, Christian, Jehovah’s Witness, Wicca, The Native American Church and my all time favorite The Science of Mind. I have things to say about that one! But I want to tell you first that I added to it over the years with Buddhism, Krishna Consciousness, The Way of Mastery, Self Realization fellowship, Unity Church of the White Mountains, The Occult, Demonology (no I didn’t practice, but studied it) Rosicrusian, FreeMasonry, The Vedas, Witchcraft (which varies from Wicca slightly) and to end this ridiculous list… There are also Druid and Celtic Spiritual practices.

Well, now that THAT is out of the way… It might help explain some of my proclivities for history, philosophy, fantasy and the occult from all over the globe. I write about all of them, and I have absolutely NO taboo subjects that I am willing to talk about with people. This was my mother’s gift, as well as an immense strength and an unshakeable faith that I will forever be grateful for. You can read more about this in My Mother Taught Me

Now, back to the Science of Mind for a moment. I learned here the power of the mind and truly gained telepathic abilities and although I never learned how to levitate, I often tried and wrote about it in school journals. They were meant to be private, but of course a school psychologist was called in and I got to see my mother become a lion to my cause. A moment in my life that shaped me in profound ways.

My dad on the other hand was a Navy man, so he was in and out of my life throughout most of my childhood. Only now as an adult do I see the conservative values and a love for our country that just his presence alone instilled in me. He and I are close now and I value that beyond measure because my childhood was hard for us both. I won’t go into that now. Maybe I will write about it in another Vocal article someday.

My sister has been my best friend and worst enemy all rolled into one. We would play Legos for days, constructing houses for a wide assortment of pets my mother allowed us to have, including but not limited to Anoles, gerbils, hamsters, bunnies, and a sparrow. We were coined “the petting zoo” of the neighborhood everywhere we lived and at one time had 33 ferrets, no exaggeration. We crochet clothes for our My Little Ponies and fought like we were going to kill each other. One time my sister boldly declared that she would, and she meant it. She once handed me a cup of juice that I spit in her face when I realized she’d peed in a cup and had me drink it, unsuspecting little sister as I was. She was my sun and moon and I couldn't get enough of her attention, even though it was highly undesired by her. We mudded the neighbor's house one day in a temporary moment of sheer pleasure and insanity and went to counseling for years because of our strange relationship. As adults we have had a sporadic friendship, and even though we know in our hearts that we love each other to the ends of the Earth, we do not interact much face to face because we live very different lifestyles, and I will have to leave it at that.

I’m only giving my schooling an honorable mention by commending Mrs. Goodrich on her exceptional teaching skills in my sixth grade language arts class in Fredericksburg Virginia. She helped me develop a love for writing, which proved to be the only outlet that could adequately satiate my desire for the fantastic and wonderful world parallel to the reality we walk around in on a daily basis. Debate and speaking was another blessed gift this woman bestowed on me in which I only employed later in my life, in ways that brought me closer to my true self. The last thing I will say… I only went to sixth grade, didn’t finish, and ended up in College classes as a teenager for Comic Book Art Production, productive I know. I slept with a dictionary for several years and I collect words to this day. I am internally driven and my love for learning new things has created an internal discipline that has served me well over the years and many people have a hard time believing that I have no GED, no college under my belt and I never stepped foot in a high school except for when my own daughter became of age and entered into that institute of learning for herself.

I must admit that I learned the most in the twelve years I was a nanny. From the age of seventeen to twenty-eight I got to watch four children be born at home and help raise six kids, in the latter part of that time raising two of my own alongside them from the age of twenty-one on. And because of that, I also chose home births and lotus birthing for both of my own children. I read to all of these kids as often as they would let me, doing all the voices and emphasizing the action parts. We even illustrated several of our own stories and I wrote down what everyone decided the story was to match. I still have those treasures tucked safely away in a binder of memories, even though those kids are all in their early 20’s now. During my time as a nanny I also worked as a teacher's aide in a Montessori school and painted a lot!

Too much info? I sure hope not because I’m not done yet…

Being a parent has been challenging and fulfilling as you will see in several of my pieces like, I am the World and A Mother is Forever, The Queen and Woman. I also went through ten grueling years of depression, high anxiety, doubting myself and never feeling like enough, which I have also written about and published on Vocal, but I’ll let you wander through some of that if you choose to. I have been told that I have a way of expressing things that everyone feels, but most do not dare voice, and in a way that is relatable and helpful for those going through hard times. I know, because I lived it.

I have experienced so much in my forty years on this planet. And I write about it extensively.

• I have known hunger, real hunger. I have been dragged through Court battles with my son’s father and played the game of learning every name of every cop in our small town of Snowflake Arizona. I wish to never re-live that stress again and have a deep sympathy for anyone who has been in that position.
• I am a screaming advocate for the men. They need so much more support than they will ever admit and they get far less credit than they truly deserve in a fourth wave feminist worldview.
• I am outspoken on political matters through Facebook where I can share my conservative views even though I am censored far more than I think is reasonable.
• My favorite and most influential authors have been Edgar Allen Poe, J.R.R. Tolkein, Maya Angelou, J.K Rowling, Brendan Mull, Warren Farrell, Louise L. Hay, Brene Brown, Tommy Donbavand, Issac Asimov, Jan & Stan Berenstain and Shel Silverstein.
• I play crystal bowls when I can, henna my hair with a group of women every three months and dress up whenever possible in the most outlandish clothes our small, extremely Mormon town has probably ever seen.
• I love the paranormal and often watch many ghost hunters on YouTube with my partner William who shares this fascination and joy.

I am a practicing Witch and Herbal Educator. I got to do some public speaking engagements at a local Farm community with my partner in thyme Jennifer Daily. We taught several workshops and I have a small, but happy herbal business called Plant People Heal, and a website on Google. Although I am not currently working my business so I can focus on my writing career, my products have made their way into several local stores and I still ship them across the U.S when they are needed. Back to my witchy-poo ways! My poor neighbors probably think I’m doing some kind of voodoo when I take my feathers, incense and other articles outside so I can set up a salt circle around the perimeter of our home every six months on the full moon. I am happy to report that my homes have never been haunted, and I am not shy to admit that I see ghosts and other entities frequently. I also have a shelf in my kitchen from floor to ceiling of homemade tinctures and other remedies (potions!) and as a result, my children will never trust or eat oatmeal I make because it masks any herbal medicine I have ever had to administer when they were small. Once they learned this though, the jig was up and it never worked on them again.

I have a forty acre, off-grid homestead East of town that I lived on and raised my kids up until two years ago when (court) forced us to move into town for brick and mortar schooling. It was the best thing that ever happened to us, and I look forward to going back out there and living a simple life with gardens and ravens and wilderness in the high desert with William, the love of my life. My mother still lives there and we get together as often as possible and collaborate on land projects and the future of our forty acre paradise, which I am growing trees for here in town, that will one day be planted out there. I have four more years… then my son turns 18 and the flow of life will change once again, the trees will go in the ground and our move out to the wilderness will be a reality. While I’m here, I am enjoying the luxuries of town life, building our home out East, taking advantage of electricity on tap and showering at midnight without having to worry about the power going out. I hauled water for ten long years when I lived out there and the one thing William and I both agree on is that we are getting a tankless hot water heater and a really incredible shower. Some of these luxuries will be coming home with us.

I met my life partner about three years ago and we are absolutely nuts for each other. He too has land near Snowflake and as we began to learn about one another more… We realized that we met when I was seventeen in the back of a truck on dusty country roads, that we shopped at the same stores and my step brother was one of his pupils of martial arts. He would visit our land often to hang out with my step brother and drove by my budding garden nearly everyday in what I called the “noise machine”, as I hid behind bushes every time it drove past (because I gardened naked most of the time). yet… in all that time, we never crossed paths until 2018, on the day of a solar and lunar eclipse and a 6 star celestial lineup that bore witness to our first in-person meeting. Timing is everything right? It was further proven that our union was something special, because on that first day of meeting, we each had gifts for the other that were out of this world! I gifted him a massive Quartz Crystal that I’d had since I was eighteen, and a Raven wing. In return, he had for me, a 500 year old scrying mirror from the Japanese princess Denyo (which my best friend in the entire world nicknamed me, years before William and I met, and he had no way of knowing that). We are both odd in similar ways and that first meeting will be forever burned in my memory as one of the best days of my life.

My life has been unusual, fanciful, stressful and blissful, sometimes overlapping. Normal right?

My biggest accomplishment to date regarding my writing is this. I began a book series in 2015 that I am proud to announce is in the final stage of editing before getting published. Only the first book in a quartet so far, and there are five standalone books to follow that will highlight the life and journey of 5 characters within this Universe that I have constructed, and live in more than reality at times. It is a project that I have the deepest confidence in and I feel blessed to be able to share it with the world upon its final release.

To conclude this lengthy piece, because I could not possibly share everything with you in one essay, I will add a few of my favorite quotes from some of my favorite people.

“When you know better you do better.”

-Maya Angelou

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”

“Life is a journey, not a destination.”

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

-Ralph Waldo Emmerson

“Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.”

“All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.”

“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.”

-Edgar Allen Poe

And with that said, dear Readers, I will leave you now and perhaps we can meet in the places where dreams are made, little girls ride Unicorns and we fly with Dragons! I am, after all, a Witch. Anything is possible!