(25% of all sales of my Bloom Where You're Planted artwork for the next month will go directly to the Voices of Children Foundation in support of the Ukrainian children)
Sometimes I feel disconnected. I feel as if I have no roots.
I've had this discussion with so many people. They feel no connection to where they are. They don't feel connected to the land they're living on. They feel as if they don't belong.
I want to feel that connection. I want to feel as if I belong here and not as if I drifted in like a weed, unwanted and unloved.
I've done the Ancestry DNA tests and the 23 and Me. While it was interesting to find out that I'm Scottish, Welsh, Irish, and Hungarian, I know enough about the stories of my ancestors to know where they came from and the sort of lives they led.
Searching for that connection, I read the Irish myths that my ancestors believed in. I interacted with Google maps and looked at the homes that my ancestors lived in: the butcher shop that my great-grandfather apprenticed in, the brownstone in Jackson Heights that my great-grandmother rented a room in. I wanted to find that connection. I wanted to find where I belonged.
I enjoyed learning about my ancestors and where they came from. I loved the myths and the stories of their places of birth, but those aren't my places. Those aren't the myths that I grew up with.
I don't have that rich history or that connection. I live in a land where my people have lived for roughly a hundred years. My ancestors pulled up those roots and left their homes looking for a better life.
I appreciate how brave that was; how resilient they must have been, but it left us, their children, their descendants, without those connections, without those roots, in a strange new world, on stolen land.
How do I reconcile that? How do I find a sense of belonging in this place and time?
That search led me to the creation of my new Oracle deck: Bloom Where You're Planted.
(Like the coming of spring, I'll be launching my Kickstarter in a few weeks)
In 1954, Gerald Gardner reintroduced witchcraft to the world and, around the same time, Ross Nichols reintroduced Druidry. They knew the old tales and they felt a connection to that ancient myth. They dusted off those stories and revitalized them. They wanted those connections. They wanted to put down the same roots that their ancestors had centuries before.
But I didn't grow up in Ireland or Wales or Scotland. How can I put down authentic roots in a land that didn't emerge from that myth?
After much thought, mediation, soul searching, I began to realize that we craft our own meaning. If I want roots, I need to help them grow. I need to bloom where I am planted.
With the Tarot and with oracle decks, we can create stories. We find meaning in our lives and in our relationships. I can find meaning. This is my time. This is my place. Meaning will not come knocking on my door. I need to go out and find it. I must forge my own connections just as our ancestors did before us, just as Gerald Gardner and Philip Carr-Gomm did seventy-five years ago.
I need to create my own stories. I need to make my own magic. I need to Bloom Where I am Planted.
