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On February 21, 2015 my second son, Galen, was stillborn.

I wrote out the whole traumatic story, then found myself reluctant to share it.  I wish what happened to me would never happen to anyone else.  So I'm not going to share the details in blog form.  Maybe in my next memoir.

I’m waiting here, on the precipice of another rebirth, contemplating what I’ve learned during this long, quiet gestation.  Any day now, I’ll be reborn as a mother of two, and this baby is already teaching me, and reinforcing lessons I learned from my first, like how to relax when confronted with things beyond my control. 

Today I find myself reflecting on the most important lessons I’ve learned since becoming a mother of one six years ago.  In no particular order, here are my top three.

(Blog image by Tom LaBaff)

This is my first Valentine’s as a self-married woman.

To this awakening goddess, celebrating holidays has more to do with personal history than traditional roots.  Imbolc, the modern Pagan celebration of an ancient Gaelic festival, means so much more to me now than it did when I first started studying Wicca and Paganism thirteen years ago.

Thirteen years ago, I found a home in Paganism at my very first public ritual, which was a celebration of Imbolc conducted by popular Pagan writer Ann Moura and her Ladies Tea Circle.  I entered my first circle at that festival, and won a raffle for the first time in my life – an amethyst earring and pendant set and an hour-long session with a psychic who would become my mentor on my path to developing my own metaphysical interests and abilities.

What if the outside world is just a reflection of what is going on inside you?

Maybe the behaviors you witness and experience that upset you are a message to you about how you are treating yourself.

I got so many compliments about how well behaved and wonderful my son was at the Florida Pagan Gathering last weekend, mostly from people we don't know. I refrained from telling them all that he is that way because I practice positive discipline, as I didn't want to either come across as preachy or spend an hour explaining what positive discipline was to each of them, but I do want to explain how positive discipline works in my family, to my community.

Recently, a 14 year old boy shot himself in the head in the boys’ restroom at his central Florida middle school.  His family had moved here all the way from New York to escape bullies. Turns out you can’t end bullying by moving hundreds of miles.  You can’t end bullying by talking to school administrators or teachers.

You can’t end bullying by fighting and punishing bullies because fighting and punishing IS bullying.  Imagine firefighters trying to put out fires with flamethrowers instead of water hoses or buckets of earth.