A big week at Pagan Families

I totally missed that Pagan Families turned one year old last weekend.  I have a really good excuse, though.  I was celebrating my daughter turning one week old. While she sleeps on my lap I’m taking the opportunity to celebrate the first year of this website, and to fill you in on some other exciting news.

On May 26, 2011 I announced that Pagan Families: Resources for Pagan Pregnancy and Birth was born.  In the past year I’ve been blessed to be able to publish the writing of some really talented authors:

Amy Swagman
C. B. Cabeen
Jackie Singer
Kira Nuit
Lily Shahar Kunning
Niki Whiting
Sarah
Sierra Black
Silverwing
Suus

I also got to interview Selina Rifkin for a series on food in the childbearing year as well as Jane Hardwicke Collings and Ben Hoshour for the Birth Guardians series.  That series profiles people who work with pregnancy, birth, or the postpartum period (prenatal massage therapists, childbirth educators, OB/GYNs, doulas, midwives, lactation consultants, labor & delivery nurses, pediatricians, etc.) and are Pagan or work with a Pagan community.  If you would like to be a part of the series please send an email to paganfamilieseditor@gmail.com.

There’s still so much more Pagan pregnancy and birth territory for us to explore here.  I’d love to feature more diverse voices — fathers, people of color, people speaking from within various Pagan traditions, parents with disabilities… I’d love to publish essays on lots of topics we haven’t yet broached — dealing with the NICU, Pagan perspectives on circumcision, pregnancy dreams, ritualizing adoption, diving/discerning when to have a baby…  If you’d like to contribute please check out the guidelines and drop me an email.

I’ve mostly worked on this site as an editor, soliciting contributions from others and making posts like this one that tell you what we’re up to to here, as well as reviewing books relevant to Pagan pregnancy and birth.  I also launched an Amazon store where you can purchase the books that I and the other writers review here.  And I maintain our FaceBook page which has hit 1,896 likes!

But, but, but I’m super excited, and nervous, and excited some more to let you know that I’ve been working on a Pagan pregnancy project where I’m the author, not the editor.  I expect to announce the unveiling of that project here very soon.

Finally, in case that’s not enough news, last week our webmaster Adam Blodgett started a Kickstarter campaign for his Chibi Tarot deck.  Adam says, “The Chibi Tarot is a tarot deck that fuses the traditional spirit of the tarot with the contemporary visual aesthetic of anime, manga and video games. It’s a super-cute vision of the tarot that maintains the integrity and depth of the cards and their meanings.”  He also mentioned to me that The Chibi Tarot would make a great deck for reading tarot with children.  So if you like tarot or cute or the guy who keeps this website up and running as a labor of love, check out the kickstarter and consider kicking in.

And watch this space for the announcement of my new project…

Sarah Whedon teaches in the Department of Theology and Religious History at Cherry Hill Seminary and is the founding editor of Pagan Families: Resources for Pagan Pregnancy and Birth. Sarah’s teaching, research, and advocacy work center around topics of spirituality, feminism, and reproduction. She makes her home in San Francisco with her partner and their children.