Category: self acceptance

The energy was heavy and a little bit cold as I walked into Life Force Arts Center on January 24, 2014 for a Dark Moon Circle honoring The Morrigan and I knew that She was there.  Giving rituals to honor the Old Ones is a hit or miss proposition as sometimes they show up and sometimes they don’t.  On this cold January day, the Morrigan had definitely shown up.  I also knew as I stood in that room with my sisters that she had claimed me and that I would never be the same again.

Although there are some people who believe that we choose deities, I have known since Nephthys claimed me over 20 years ago that the deities choose us.  They choose us by showing up in our lives in unmistakable ways.  We will feel their energy, we will hear songs about them, we will suddenly start finding references to a deity we never heard of before.  With the Morrigan it was her energy that claimed me as despite the heaviness, it felt familiar and comforting.   When I felt her, I knew that the Morrigan would be the third Goddess I would pledge myself to during my upcoming ordination.

After the ritual, I began to read everything I could get my hands on about The Morrigan.  I learned about her aspects as a battle Goddess, a death Goddess, and as a Goddess of Sovereignty.  I was also led to learn about women warriors.  Having grown up a child of misogyny where I was taught that women were weak, women didn’t matter, women only existed to be subordinate to men, and all the other lies of the patriarchy, I had never truly experienced strong women.  Although my mind knew that women warriors existed as I was familiar with the Night Witches and WASPs, my heart struggled with the idea of women going to toe to toe with men in battle.

It was then that Morrigan, a Celtic Goddess, introduced me to Boudica, a Celtic Warrior Queen.  Driven by the death of her husband, the dishonor of her daughters, and the deceit of the Roman Empire, Boudica successfully went up against the Roman Empire and destroyed what is modern day London in the process.  Although she ultimately lost to the Romans, she is an inspirational character in British history for her heroic feats.  The Morrigan led me to create a workshop based on Boudica’s life about claiming your inner warrior.  In the process, I truly learned to claim my inner warrior and in the process become sovereign.

When I first met the Morrigan, I could not grasp the concept of sovereignty and how it was different from independence.  As Nephthys had taught me the lessons of being independent and standing on my own two feet, I wasn’t sure what additional lessons I could learn from the Morrigan, but I should never have doubted Her because she had many lessons to teach me.  In true Goddess fashion, she put me into real world situations to teach me those lessons as I was about to meet the Boss from Hell (BFH), a man who challenged me, pushed me, intimidated me, and ultimately was a tool of the Goddess to teach me sovereignty.

In many ways my relationship with the BFH was like the abusive marriage I had just escaped from as the cycle was a familiar one.  First came the abuse phase, where I was harangued, told I had poor judgment, told I overstepped my boundaries, and was degraded for doing my job.  Then there was the love phase where I was his favorite, he told me he loved me, he hugged me.  I hated the love phase more than the abuse phase because at least the abuse phase felt more genuine.  Intellectually I knew I needed to escape this relationship, like many victims of abuse (myself included), I bought into the love phase and a part of me believed the compliments he paid me.

The parallels between my abusive marriage and my work situation sent me into therapy, which was the best thing that could have happened to me, because within the safe confines of therapy I started to see that the abuse was not about me at all.  It was about him, just as the abuse in my marriage had been about my ex-husband and not about me.  This revelation taught me that it was okay to have boundaries and that just because someone did not respect those boundaries did not mean I did not have the right to use them.

The first foe of healthy boundaries for me was my own low self-esteem as I thought I had to be on call constantly, I had to accept the bad behavior; I thought I had to sacrifice constantly for this job.  However, the Morrigan challenged those assumptions as she led me to look at what I was contributing.  She asked me if I was truly doing my job, getting my work done, and meeting my deadlines.  I took a step back and realized that I was doing my job and that the constant demands for attention really had nothing to do with my ability to meet deadlines or do my job, they were just my sociopathic boss’ way of controlling the situation.  By constantly creating chaos, he created an artificial sense of urgency.  When I took a step back out of the drama, I was able to see that I was meeting my deadlines and making the sacrifices he was demanding would only serve to cause me angst and would add no real value to the project.

The first holiday, Memorial Day, that he demanded we sacrificed, I sacrificed, but then I looked around and realized that the entire team had not shown up and that there were apparently no penalties for not showing up.  It was then that I realized  that as long as my work was done, I was not going to be fired for not dancing to the beat of his insane drum.  I stopped coming in on mandatory Saturday work days and there were no repercussions.  I refused to work the mandatory 30 days straight he said we had to work and there were no repercussions.

The biggest test of my sovereignty came as we were nearing the end of the project and it truly was all hands on deck.  We were told that Thanksgiving was a mandatory work day and I knew that even though my work was done, there was work to do because of poor planning on other people’s part.  I was feeling pressured to work the holiday because everyone else was doing it and because of my fear that I would not be viewed as a team player if I refused.  The nasty voices in my head were asking why I thought I was so special and asking me why I wasn’t planning to stand up for everyone else.  After all, if I didn’t take a stand for everyone wasn’t I being selfish?  Again, the Morrigan pulled me back and said that everyone on this project was an adult and was responsible for their own choices.  My working or not working was only about my boundaries and not what was fair for everyone else. If other people did not want to work, it was up to them to stand up for themselves.

Seeing the situation through the Morrigan’s eyes told me that working was not the right decision; however, I also lived in the real world and needed my job until I had another one lined up.  My kids and I had already celebrated Thanksgiving, but my daughter and I had made plans to spend the day together.  I ultimately decided I would go in for a few hours in the morning while my daughter slept late.  Leaving at noon brought grief from my boss, but I stood my ground and my daughter and I had a wonderful afternoon at the Field Museum.

Reading through this narrative, the question I have and I’m sure you have as well is why didn’t I just leave if the job situation was so horrible?  The cold hard truth is that I could not afford to walk away without another job lined up and although I had started looking for a new job several months earlier, I didn’t have one in hand yet as the Morrigan is a stickler for making us pass all our exams before we move on and this was no exception.  However, within days of my refusal to work all of Thanksgiving, another job fell into my lap.  My truly final exam at the job from hell was going to be walking out and as always the Morrigan was there for me albeit in an unusual form as she started showing up as a Bear.  All of the research I had done told me that although the Morrigan and Bears were both about Sovereignty, The Morrigan WAS NOT A BEAR GODDESS; however, research be damned she was not one to be told what form to take and she kept showing up as a Bear.

I finally put a post on Facebook asking for guidance and in an amazing show of synchronicity, a fellow Pagan had had a dream about a Bear that provided guidance and there was a Bear ritual coming up at Life Force Arts Center.  The Morrigan herself also just told me to go with it and that Deities show up to us as we need them to show up and I needed her to show up as Bear to give me the strength and courage I needed for my final test with the BFH.

The BFH had a strange policy on people who gave their notice as once you gave notice, you were not allowed to tell anyone you were leaving or to do a transition to the person who would be assuming your duties.  I knew that that was not a policy I could abide by as it was not fair to my coworkers who would have to pick up my work.  I also knew that I had to thread carefully in my final days to avoid a confrontation that could send me out the door on his terms and not my own.  The Morrigan was with me as I navigated those final days as I maintained my boundaries.  At 6 pm on December 15^th, I sent my boss an email telling him I was leaving immediately and when he called me 15 minutes later, I chose not to answer.  My email had said it all and I did not feel the need to listen to him cajoling me to stay or berating me for being unprofessional.  I did not need to be his whipping girl for one final time.

There have been no lessons in sovereignty as dramatic as those I experienced at the job from hell, but the Morrigan is still giving me opportunities to express my new found sovereignty.  I’ve had opportunities to set boundaries with my children, with coworkers, and with others in my life.