Forging A New Path...

It's too hot to think here... but I'm doing it any way.

So, I'm a fiction writer. I'm a fairly prolific fanfiction writer and up until a few years ago, I was an even more prolific poetry writer.

We'll get back to the poetry at another time.

Before the explosion of fan fiction from my muses -- all of which is hosted in public places -- I wrote a lot of original fiction. I mean I had beginnings and middles and endings of novels all over the damn place. Most of these also included very in depth research for the ones that weren't located in modern times. I created worlds and planets and then fleshed out the religions and the political structure of the worlds I was creating.

In conjunction with this, my adopted sister ended up giving me the title of Soul Healer. I was very much a part of my spirituality and the love of my goddess and I seemed to be really good at healing the minds and emotions of those around me. I did a lot of physical healing, as well, but it seems that my calling was the healing of minds instead of only the body. I followed Isis, Ma'at, Sehkmet and Seshat. I helped to write rituals for the eclectic coven/circle that I did all of my workings with. My writing and my spiritual actions went hand in hand. They were always part of each other. I never even thought that they should be separate; they had just always been together within me since I was able enough to hold a pen.

Then about seven or eight years ago, something happened to change all of that.

Apparently, I was born with a condition called Arnold Chiari Malformation. In base terms, it means that my brain was sinking in my skull and pressing down on my spinal cord. It caused all kinds of problems in the months it was restricting my spinal fluid and I still deal with a lot of those problems today. Most people who are born with Chiari never even realize they have it because it never causes them any problems. Then there are the people that develop Type 2 or the ones that develop Type 3 -- like I did. The solution to this was to undergo brain surgery so that the doctors could put in a shelf that lifted my brain up off of my spinal cord and pushed it back up into my skull.

Until then, I hadn't written any fan fiction before. But after I came out of the surgery and re-learned how to do things, fan fiction became something that I just was able to write and write and write. I dabbled in original fiction, but I just never could get the words to come alive like they once did.

Fast forward to now.

In the last two years, I have created several OCs (Original Characters) in the fandoms that I write in. That was a wonderful thing to me. I had original characters, but they were still involved with the art of fan fiction which had managed to get me through so much.

But then, something really amazing has happened in the last few months.

I've been depressed and feeling out of place with my spiritual path because I'm no longer able to do laying hands on physical healing of people without the help of other healers. I've always been all about helping others to heal. I've still been able to help with mind and soul and emotions, but it's been getting harder and harder for me to do physical healings because of my own health. It had me really depressed and feeling lost. What good is a Priestess who can't heal to her goddesses?

Then, I started having friends talk to me and tell me that they often thought of me as their muse because thanks to me, they had written things they never would have before talking to me about them. What had originally started out with jokes of me being a writing enabler had now turned into calling me a muse.

I wasn't really sure about that because muses are angels and divine beings. Every time I argued against it, I felt the goddesses shaking their heads at me or finally giving me a smack where I needed it. As I paid more attention to the words and the signs around me, I realized that Isis had been trying to steer me down a path that she wanted me to walk. It's a path that I wasn't aware of before and I don't think I had ever heard of before she started pushing me to do it.

After I accepted what she and the others wanted me to do, something that made me really happy happened.

I've started creating my own stuff again. I'm working on stuff for an original novel that starts out in Ancient Egypt and travels through different time periods to the modern day. I'm also working on notes for a story about Arsinoe, Cleopatra's sister. We know what history says about her, but what if history is wrong?

Now, we just see how the goddesses direct me in the coming days as I start on this path they seem to want me to forge.

New Pathways

So, I've done something that I haven't tried doing since about ten years ago when I was told that I shouldn't try to join the Kemetic.org because I wasn't Kemetic-pure enough.

Only a few of you know how bad that hurt because I was very much looking for others that I could talk to that had at least a close resemblance to my spiritual path.

Since then, I've kept to myself and did my own thing and took part in circles and rituals with my favorite eclectic group and my family.

I know that my own spiritual path doesn't quite match any one else's -- even with the people that I know who follow my same Pantheon. It's just hard sometimes feeling like I'm so solitary in my path. I've realized that I need to at least try to interact or read things from other people that believe in my same deities and think some of the same things I do.

That doesn't mean I'll start sharing everything that I'm discovering in this new path Isis has started steering me down. I'm not exactly sure how anyone would react to me trying to explain that my Goddesses have urged me to blaze a new path that I've never even seen mentioned before. (After all, to most people, what right do I have to claim that Isis and Ma'at have started telling me to carve out a new way of worshipping them by being a modern muse since I can't do much healing without assistance of others? I sometimes have a hard time believing and understanding it and then something happens to hit me over the head and I can hear one of my deities demanding to know why I keep questioning them.)

Any way, the point of this entry is that I've signed up for the forums at Kemetic Interfaith Network.

I haven't spoken or posted anything, but I have been reading postings of others, and it really seems like a friendly and welcoming community to be in. The people seem friendly and knowledgeable and it feels right that I'm supposed to be reaching out and trying to find others in my faith. After all, it's been ten years and a lot of things have changed for me and my thought process.

I'm hopeful and I'm optimistic about this.