My Writings-Inona, Resident Witch Part 2

Since this is called my "long" bio, I guess I'll start with a little more background information. I was born and raised in southwest Florida. My parents divorced when I was about 4 and my sister was about 2. My mom remarried shortly after that. She was a stay at home mom, while my step-father was a carpenter and concrete mason worker. My brother was born when I was almost 6 and my little sister came along about 4 ½ years later. My biological father moved to Colorado and met my step-mom who already had two boys. They were both born on the same day, just 4 years apart. They were also only about six weeks older than my oldest sister and brother in FL who were born 4 years and 4 days apart! This gave me 3 brothers and 2 sisters. When I was about 9, I found out that my dad and step-mom had a boy of their own, so I ended up with 4 brothers and 2 sisters. Beginning in 1976, my sister and I visited our dad and step-mom every other summer. It made for some very interesting vacations with us being from FL and then being able to travel all over the western US.

My family in FL was never very religious and, as a family, never went to church. When my sisters and brother and I did go to services, it was at whatever church the neighbors happened to attend. Since we moved around a lot, we managed to be exposed to several different types of services. We spent a few weekends at a Baptist church whose pastor lived next door. The parents of a friend of mine took us to the local Methodist church a couple of times. The Church of the Nazarene was across the street from the elementary school and we attended a summer school program there for a couple of weeks. When I was in middle school, I attended a few Mormon services with friends of mine and then again when my uncle became a bishop in the Mormon church. Several friends were Jewish and, although I never went to services with them, I spent several holiday seasons being stunned by their celebrations.

Throughout all of this, I never found a group of people that I felt I could relate to. I asked too many questions that no one wanted to answer, didn't demonstrate enough "faith" for most, and refused to believe that non-Christians were bad people whom I should stay away from. I wanted to spend too much time learning about ancient history, archaeology, anthropology, and geology. In case it isn't obvious, those are all scientific fields that don't sit well with people who want you to believe that everything in the universe just suddenly appeared at the hands of a very creative God around 6,000 years ago.

It didn't help that I had two very 'unique' grandmothers. I called my mother's mom Nana and spent most of my young life either living with her or visiting her house. She was raised in north east Tennessee on a farm with 12 brothers and sisters. She told us stories of banshees, elves, and fairies that were alternately good, evil, or mischievous. When she wanted us to sit quietly, she showed us how to put peanuts between our toes and wait for the squirrels that lived in her yard to come down from the trees and grab them. She taught us how to make jewelry, pictures, and little figurines out of sea shells, seeds, beans, and nuts. With our Granddaddy, we raised pet rabbits, red wiggler fishing worms, and baby birds that fell out of the nests in the fireplace chimney. Regardless of the dysfunctional family life that went along with this side of the family, we enjoyed our time with her.

Mamaw was my father's mother. She painted beautiful scenes inspired by the mountains, deserts, swamps, and oceans that she visited while traveling around the country with my Papaw. She wore jeans, denim vests, and moccasins or cowboy boots while my friends' grandmothers were in pumps and house dresses. We got to hear the most fantastic stories about wolves and ravens and talking fish while we sat on the kitchen counter watching her cook. She traveled all over the western US with my Papaw and was obviously fascinated by Native American life. She taught us how to make Indian inspired jewelry, God's eye wall hangings, and headbands made out of braided grass and decorated with feathers we found while we were camping.

Although I spent most of my time with Nana, I had a special kind of closeness with Mamaw. She was the biggest influence in my life when it came to things that I now consider inherently Pagan. Instead of shelves full of ceramic or porcelain figurines, she had shelves full of pinecones, rocks, strange shaped branches, colorful leaves, giant acorns, animal bones and teeth, and all kinds of other "weird" things. She was more likely to give us an herbal tea for whatever illness we had than visit the pharmacy. When I was about 4 or 5 years old, she got rid of some warts on my hand by what I can only describe as a combination of folk magic and spell work.

My first experience with "seeing" or "hearing" strange things was when I was with her. She made it seem perfectly normal for she and I to be able to say things to each other that no one else could hear. When I knew someone was coming before they arrived, she just nodded her head and made sure everything was tidy enough for company. If I told her who was on the phone while it was still ringing, she never said there was no way I could know. She answered every strange question I asked and we looked through dozens of books for answers to the ones she didn't know. It was those sessions with books on Egyptology, archaeology, American Indians, dinosaurs, and various other out of the ordinary topics for a girl between the ages of 7 and 12, that got me hooked on everything old and mysterious.

Does this all mean that I think I'm a hereditary witch? A reincarnated Indian princess or shaman? Not at all. I think my childhood left me open to accepting unpopular or unusual ideas about a variety of subjects. I learned about American Indian spirituality before I learned about Christianity, I spent more time outside with the trees, bugs, and animals than I did inside, and I read everything I could get my hands on. With so much information spinning around in my brain, I've never been able to just blindly accept something that someone tells me. The laws of nature have always made more sense to me than the sometimes arbitrary and hypocritical laws of man.

When I felt the need to express my spirituality through some form of an "organized" religion, I did what I've always done - read. I finally stumbled across a questionnaire on the web that was supposed to tell you what your religious leanings were, based on your answers to several dozen questions. (See the Links page) Anyway, my answers were interpreted to mean that I should look into some type of shamanistic or nature based religion. When I typed "nature based religion" into the Dogpile search engine, I got tons of info on Wicca. I had no idea what it was really, just what I had heard through mainstream journalism. It didn't take long to realize I was making a connection that totally mystified me.

After reading several sites by solitaries, The Witches' Voice, Inner Sanctum, and browsing through books at the local Books-a-Million, I finally felt like I was connecting with a spirituality that I could relate to. One of the first books I bought was "Wheel of the Year" by Pauline Campanelli. With more research, I found myself drawn to the more traditional teachings of Wicca, with a few Neo-Pagan and Native American ideas incorporated. My practice is not Shamanistic, but it also isn't purely traditional either. I don't think I've corrupted the original Wiccan teachings to the point that I have created something entirely different, so I do call myself Wiccan. With every new bit of information I gain, I am more convinced that this is the right spiritual path for me.