Pagan Parenting: Trick or Treating and Longing for the Wild Times

Happy Samhain!  Once again I am coordinating kids to come to my house for Halloween Trick or Treat. We’re making tacos beforehand because all the kids like them. The kids just laid down the last coat of paint on the porch so that we can put out our pumpkins and little concrete ghost guy.  I’ve acquired the candy to give out. I couldn’t bring myself to buy chocolate. The kids were irritated with me, but it just doesn’t seem right to force people in other countries to work in terrible conditions just so my kids can have mini candy bars to give out.  We just got the fruit flavor mix pac.

I wrote this poem many years ago, and it still rings true for me. I send it out there to all of you pagan parents.  To you who used to do crazy things around a bonfire and now the craziest thing is how much candy you steal from your kids treat bag. Be strong, eventually, they’ll get old enough to dance around fires too, which is weird. Really weird. Parenting is hard.

Biding my Time

Sometimes unexpectedly,
Darkness wells up in me,
Like an old familiar friend.
Tugging me insistently away
From the easy and mundane

I am floating on the surface of a murky pond.

The darkness in me sank deeper in than it used to be.
Curling around my spine,
biding it’s time
to see if I still feel.

Samhaine is coming
The mists are thinning
The sun’s tide is going out again
And I just feel a little Bacchanalian,
A primal song welling in me

And I wonder
am I alone?
And I wonder if should I enjoy it
The darkness under my skin
In the end I am unresolved in my need
And I would dance in the darkness with my sisters
(and you know who you are girls)
The light of a bonfire dancing across sweating
dangerous skin
would feel sooo good right now.

My itch is not going to be scratched.
Again.
It’s matching fairy princesses this year
And I remember my childhood days and smile
I play along and wonder when
it’s going to be too long

Happy Samhain.