#heathery

[notthesomefather]

Three of the recent custom pocket-altars I've made for folks (Hel, Loki, and Thor).

Pocket altars are available for $10/each. Grab one today or check out more info!

(I promise the Frigge prototype is coming! Thanks for being patient!)

[devouredbyflame]

One of the worst things I came to realize about people is that some things never change about them.

Say you do something that someone else doesn’t like and then that happens to be what that other person didn’t like about that friend they shut out of their lives or “canceled” - it doesn’t matter what it is. It could be something seemingly cruel that someone has done to them but it could also just be a lie that they tell themselves about what that other person did or didn’t do, but all the same, it’s going to come back to you and you’re going to realize that it’s not them, that other person, who was the trouble all along because that would mean that you were the issue when you were just trying to be honest or fair. Or, even, upholding the standards that they set for a group that you thought you were proving them wrong by speaking out against.

You would think that the friend who shut out that other person wouldn’t turn around and do the same to you because, well, you’re different! Maybe they told you you’re special or know more or feel differently about things and it’s way better than what that someone else did! Except for the fact that that isn’t true and it’s only a matter of time before they show you what they really meant.

It’s not a matter of who is right or who is wrong, it’s that if that friend has the capacity to hurt other people who seemingly wronged them, they have the same power to do it again and turn on people, over and over, until you, too, are on the chopping block.

I hate to say it but you will never be enough for them. They will find something else to cancel you for and stab you in the back just as well as they’ve stabbed others. In their mind, you’re all the same and non-compliant with their issue. You’ve become an insect for them to smoosh, not a human who has been respectful and deserving of care and of love that you never received by the community who has wronged you.

I am someone who has been “canceled” by several communities and friend groups I n my life, having insults about my intelligence and my knowledge and experience being thrown this way and that and being stabbed in the back a few times. All of that seemed to come with the territory of being Loki’s priestess in training. Because of those experiences, I like to think I know a thing or two about people’s true colors and the bullshit they tell themselves so they can sleep better at night. Especially when it comes to friends defending a cult-like mentality they have with leaders and friends who they think know more about themselves and about the subject you surround be it religious or otherwise.

The point of this post is that even if you think someone else knows more about something (like, for example, Loki or heathenry or paganism) than you do such that you have to lie about your own experiences to make it fit their paradigm or to feel comfortable in community, you are already lying to yourself about who you are and who you are meant to become. You’re already in boiling water the minute you lie to yourself about your own thinking and experiences and the first red flag was when they cut someone else before they ever think to look at you. The truth is, they were already waiting for you to speak out of line and tell your truth. They were waiting for all of it to come out and that’s not your fault for trusting them, it’s their fault for being a toxic person and you being too kind to believe it all.

However, most of the time, you’ve already broken your relationship with those people who have been harmed. Unless you have something to give to those people, that’s it. You made your bed and you get to sleep with the consequences of believing in someone else’s beliefs over yours and putting your own selfhood at risk to please other people. It’s not giving up to walk away, it’s giving up the minute you believe other people who aren’t yourself and choosing them over choosing you and what you feel passionate about.

Just a bit of wisdom from a jaded Loki’s person.

[the-tricksters-neophyte]

*Me, a baby witch, nervously sticking to one Norse God out of fear of being punished* Yeah, I worship the Norse gods, specifically Loki...

*Me, years later, as a record scratch plays in my head* Wait I'm a fucking polytheist I literally don't have to choose just one, even the original Norsemen didn't choose...

[fjorn-wanders]

About being norse-heathen... I've used the Wheel of the Year holidays in the past, but i was wondering if there is a similar 'calendar' of holidays that better pertains to norse myths and history?

I am no expert on the old calendars, but there is one that I have been trying to incorporate into my routine as of late, and that would be the Old Icelandic calendar. It is not all about holidays, but I find it to be a good structure for my path. It pertains very well to the history preserved in the sagas, especially those of the Icelandic families of the Viking Age.

I have a bit of a ‘chart’ from the reference section of my Complete Sagas of Icelanders books (as well as some additional info I have stumbled across), so I will go ahead and share that with you. It was what exposed me to such a calendar to begin with, but there are many things left out, I believe. One example would be Sigrblót. Regardless, it will help. I have digitized the chart to make it easier for viewing online (and also to add in Sigrblót).

This site can help you figure out the day and month: https://www.time-meddler.co.uk/icelandic.html

My rendition above isn’t perfect by any means (likely plenty of mistakes to behold), but it should be a helpful start, if you decide to follow it. Like I said before, I am no expert on it, but I find it to be more suitable for the path that I personally would like to follow. I am also still learning about a lot of these things myself, of course. Also of interest may be the hours of the day, so I am including those below as well. These may be helpful for when you are figuring out your own festivities and such.

Anyway, that is the gist of the Old Icelandic calendar system. You can learn a lot more about it by reading sagas, such as Ynglinga saga, Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta, or the many Icelandic family sagas. Many of those sagas have bits to tell about ritual and the several special days of the year.

Other than that, it’s all about reading and exploring. That’s where I’m at with it all, at least. Regardless, I do hope this gives you something to ponder. If you do decide to take up this calendar, feel free to make it your own in some way. Be inspired by the material of the past, but do not feel bound by it.

Best of luck, my friend.

[breakingfenrirschains]

TW weight gain, body dysmorphia, no talk of WL or IWL, no numbers

Good morning. My wife is asleep currently so I slipped away to write as I am wont to do. She’s on vacation from work this week and for once has slept in later than me. She usually wakes up at her normal work time on vacation and is bored until I wake up. It’s a point of contention between her and her brain, but she’s asleep for now, so I’ll at least start it.

I want to talk about a couple Mom Talks I’ve had with Angrboda the last couple days. These are the kind of Talks I’ve tried to have with my daughter over the years but have no blueprint for. I’m being corrected. I have had many successful Mom Talks with my daughter over the years, but these two are things I’ve never been able to express to her: why her body is ok the way it is, and how to love a whole person.

For context on that first talk, I’ve struggled with body image issues for a while since being on a medication that made me gain a significant amount of weight. I had top surgery in November which helped with the dysphoria but compounded the dysmorphia bc now my weight is disproportionate on my body.

So, that being said, I was taking a shower, mmmm, Friday, I think. The day after I had cried with Angrboda. So there’s a big mirror over the sink directly across from the shower and I often get undressed or dressed and look at my body in the mirror and try to convince myself to love my body. I look at all the things I like, but usually mostly see the things I don’t. I don’t generally turn away from the mirror feeling better about myself, but I kept trying bc I didn’t know how to fall in love with myself. Angrboda taught me.

This time I was naked, standing in front of the mirror, trying to see the beauty and not being able to find it. This particular moment I was looking at my face which had become round and trying not to wish it was more angular. Angrboda seem to speak from over my shoulder as if she were looking into the mirror with me. She said, what’s the reality of your face? I said I didn’t understand and she repeated herself, tell me the reality your face. I thought for a second and said, “It’s round.” She said good, now tell me the reality of your chest. I thought for a moment and said that my scars were a purplish color which was bothering me and that one nipple didn’t heal very well. She said, no tell me the reality of it, not your opinion. I thought again and said, It’s flat and I have scars.

She said good, now your stomach, and that’s where I got hung up, y’all, because that is the point of most of my dysmorphia. I gave several answers and she just said no, and repeated herself. Tell me the *reality* of your stomach. After another long thought I finally said, “I have a protruding stomach.” And I felt her smile and she said, “Yes, what else has a protruding stomach?” I said the first thing to come to my mind, which was, “Pigs!” I smiled bc I thought I was being silly, but she said, “And you love pigs, don’t you?” And boy do I ever. I’ve been trying to get my wife to let me have a pig since we moved into our house more that 5 years ago now. (That answer is an unwavering no)

She said, “Good, what else?” I was like ok, well I’ll play along and said, cows, then horses, then very fat donkeys and was laughing at that point and I just felt such WARMTH from her, y’all. And then she hit hit me with it: “So why are humans different?” I stared at my stomach in the mirror for a good while and then said, “Because people tell us that our stomachs are supposed to be flat.” She said, “Because people in power manipulate the expectations of society. Now look at your body again and see the places were abuse of power has told you something is wrong with it.” And I did.

Y’all it was like I was seeing myself for the first time. My face is round and you can can see the weight around my face. It’s round. It’s not bad. I’m told faces and necks are supposed to be lean and makeuped and contoured. Actually, I kinda like it. I’m cute.

My chest, it’s flat. Finally since puberty my chest is flat. There’s even abusive standards for trans bodies. We’re all supposed to look like Elliot Page. Lean bodies, perfectly flat chests, no dog ears, perfectly shaped nipples. (Not throwing shade at Elliot Page here. I absolutely adore them. Hard Candy anyone?) My nipples are shaped differently. I have dog ears. My scars are bright purple. There’s nothing wrong with that. Abusive power standards tell me that it should be so. That I should get tattooing and do scar care and get revisions but… I actually kinda like my chest. I like that it tells *my* story.

And then I got to my stomach. And I smiled. And then I laughed. I laughed and laughed and had to sit down on the side of the bathtub. There was nothing. Nothing wrong with my body. There was only power that told me there should be.

She said, “Every fear comes back to an abuse of power. I want you to think of that every time you look in the mirror and you see something you don’t like. It all comes back to power.”

When I tell you all that I was blown away, I was blown away. There are a few other parts that I don’t feel comfortable sharing publicly, at least not yet, but I do want to say that I reconnected with the amazing feelings of being pregnant. I know there’s thing whole thing about You earned those tiger stripes! You’re beautiful because your body created life! Celebrate your body! And it’s totally legit if that empowers you, but it’s always fallen short for me. So I’m saying this was not a matter of radical self acceptance. It was about reconnecting.

I loved being pregnant. The beautiful, nasty lot of it. I’ve often said that I’d like to be pregnant again, but I didn’t actually want another baby. One and done. Thank you very much. Well sitting on the side of the tub, running my hands over my body, I was hit with this OVERwhelming urge to have another baby. In fact I even texted two of my friends to tell them and ask if I was totally crazy. But that wasn’t even really what was happening.

When I was pregnant, it was in a very traumatic situation and the trauma didn’t stop after she was born. I was enjoying the THOUGHT of being pregnant, not the connection to the life inside of me. Not saying that I didn’t love my daughter, but I was also in a near constant state of dissociation through most of the pregnancy to some degree or another. I never got to really BE there with her. That’s what happened as I sat on the side of the tub. I got to BE there. It wasn’t really that I went back to that place, it was like that experience was brought to me in the present moment. I felt the enormity of creating life. I felt the utter beauty of carrying a burning light inside myself. I connected with that light. And in that moment, I connected to my daughter, even though she was at the time on the other side of the country, in a way and on a level that I never have before.

See, as parents, we have to be trauma breakers for our children. My mother taught me how to hate my body by setting that example in her own body as far back as I can remember. My mother handed down loads of generational trauma, not to mention piling on a ton of new trauma and I decided from the moment I found out that I was pregnant that I was going to give my daughter a better life than I had. And I have. And I connect with her over and over and deeper and deeper as time goes by. I’m honest. She knows the circumstances with her father. She knows what I went through and came out of. She knows that she saved my life and every day she wakes up, she saves my life again, not because she has a burden to bare. No way. Not at all. My healing is not on her. She saves my life because she taught me to love.

My daughter has taught me things about love I didn’t even know existed and she needs to know the absolute ferocity of that love. She needs to know that in my eyes, she hangs the stars. And she ABSOLUTELY needs to know that there is nothing ever possible that will change that. She needs to know that mistakes don’t make her a bad person. They just make her a person. She needs to know that my love for her is unshakable. And she needs to see it in action. All the I love you’s in the world don’t mean a thing if I don’t love her *through* life, all the ups and downs. She needs to see me stand by her when she breaks rules or throws tantrums or disappoints me. She needs to SEE my love as much as she needs to hear it. That’s what it means to be a cycle-breaker.

So I was going to go into the other Mom Talk, but damn this really took on a whole life of it’s own that I wasn’t expecting. But maybe that’s as it should be. I imagine Angrboda can teach us to be cycle breakers for our own children. After all, she has never abandoned them and will rise up with them at the end of the world. (That’s a bit my UPG, but it’s my blog so) So let us learn the lessons of ferocious love from the warrior who gave birth to those the world turned their backs on. And may we learn to love ourselves that way, too.

[breakingfenrirschains]

TW child abuse

My Mother’s Words

(a poem for Angrboda)

By Wild Grace

These were my mother’s words

when she yelled at me

for the first time today.

She had directed me to a video of an artist

who embodied everything I day dreamed of being

12 years ago on that stage.

She said, “This??

This is what I want you to do!

But you’re not listening to me!

You keep asking for orders

because you do not yet know

that love is a conversation.

Baby am I loud enough?

Can you wish away my voice?

Baby, you wanna make me proud?

Love yourself! Create!

I’m sorry I’m shouting at you

but its hard to for you to hear

over the voice of your fear

from the mother who taught you

to survive by the skin of your teeth.

Baby can you hear me?

Stop trying grab everything and just breathe!

Be, baby, be!

Mothers are supposed to

Be mad FOR you, not AT you.

Not mad at you like handprints and busted walls.

Not mad at you like there’s not one drop

of empathy in my body

and I convince you it’s love.

Not mad like making me shout over her mistakes.

I love you!

I love, I love you!

I love you!

Can you hear me now

in the safety of the warm fire around us.

Safe like, even when people loose their tempers

they won’t put their hands on you.

Safe like, the only reason I’m even mad

is that I’ve been through that pain and

the glint in your eye scares me.

Baby be safe!

I’ve watched you your whole life,

cried with you,

screamed with you.

I’ve died a hundred times

trying to break the unbreakable chains

that just got tighter the more you struggled.

Baby I never want to see

that darkness

cloud your face again.

I’m not really even mad, my heart breaks.

It breaks over and over

as I try to pull you from the rubble of evil.

Are you listening

now that you’ve got it all written down?

Make sure you save it.

Look back when the mother who came before me

is all you can hear in your head.

Come back when you forget.

Come back when you *want* to forget.

Baby please come back over and over

until you don’t need to read it

to know that it’s true.

Come back until being loved makes you laugh

instead of cry.”

[dianadwilder]

Crochet Striped Satchel Bag 💜💚

Featuring rich heathery colours. Worked in a loosely spun woollen yarn and felted for a beautiful texture, this bag is a delightful project to make as a handmade gift 🧶 Copy and paste the link into your browser, it isn't working 🙄

https://dwcrochetpatterns.etsy.com/uk/listing/1041308407/

[tobermoriansass]

heathery replied to your post: Neither Obama nor Joe Biden are perfect and they...

thank you for putting into words something that has been on the back of my mind everytime i see gifsets of obama with toddlers. also the fact that this post exists on your blog among a sea of diego luna photos is simply too amazing for words

i am glad this put words to it for you! also um yes. i uh. maybe queued. those posts. a few weeks ago. while going through a phase. i might still be going through. BUT well you have to take the politics with the other stuff, imho.