Billy the Exterminator

At some point Melinda went home.  Tami still wanted to help Melinda, so she called in a few favors.  From her days at the Zoo, Tami knew the guys from “Billy the Exterminator,” she called and asked if they would be willing to spray Melinda’s house.  They agreed if they could film it.  Melinda went back and forth, yes, no, yes, no, okay with conditions.  Finally in the end, it was decided that it would be okay to shoot the house, but she would not be there.  If I wanted to be on TV so bad, then I would have to fill in for Melinda, and so I did.  Tami came along to do my makeup and as moral support.  So in September of 2012 we taped an episode for “Billy the Exterminator.”

Now I had been on and off the phone with Melinda all day, trying to make this happen.  At one point, she said she was going to lock the house, and not let anyone in.  I finally convinced her not to do that.  When we got on the set that day, one of the producers came up to me, and said Melinda had called them and left messages.  And I should listen to them, because they were about me.  I know my mind most of the time, and I knew to hear them would not be good.  I said, “ Once I hear them, I can’t unheard them,” so I asked Tami to listen to them for me.  She did and came back shaken up.  “They’re bad Ilsa.  They are really bad.”

 Melinda had left two messages, and in them basically threw me under the bus.  She had apparently told the producers, all about my mental health issues.  They didn’t need to know any of that. I felt betrayed.  After Tami told me, I looked at her and the producer and said, “I’m done with her after today.  I wash my hands of Melinda.” 

We had a wonderful day of shooting.  I really enjoyed Billy, but mostly I really fell in love with the crew.  My reward at the end of the day was a picture of me and Billy together, hot and tired, but having done a good job.  I made sure that everyone involved were respectful of Melinda’s home, and knew that she had placed curses on one of the gates, and not to go thru it.  Most of what you saw in the tape was correct, as far as the bugs were concerned.  What you do not know, is that kitchen had been cleaned at least three times, since the first night we had gone in with shovels.  No, it was not my rent house.    That was a lie we came up with, so it would seem plausible why I was there.

There were things that happened, after the taping of the show, that I was not aware of until later, when Tami told me.  Apparently a meeting was held of all those there, on whether to call CPS or not, because of the condition of the home, and once they understood a child lived there.  They decided against it.  They would later tell Tami, that they had never been in a filthier house. That in order to really attack her bug problem, the house should be tented.  There was also talk that the house should also be condemned. 

Jay picked me up from Melinda’s house and we went home.  I have never spoken to Melinda since then.  What few items she had left here I returned to her.  Including her belt for Holda’s Hands which I returned in pieces, just like my heart was.

It was close to Mabon at that point.  I picked up the phone and called the HP.  I wanted to find out what day Mabon was going to be celebrated, what time, and what they wanted me to bring for the feast afterward.  I told the HP all about what had happened with Melinda and I, that I was done with her, and that I wanted to come home.  Now I had watched others move in and out of the HP coven, even returning after spending long periods of time away.  Nothing was ever said about it.  I remember the HP being very angry with me.  I think she felt I had chosen my coven over hers.  She told me Melinda had disrespected her and her wife’s marriage.  Melinda had made inappropriate comments to her and apparently groped the HP’s wife.  I never understood all of why the HP was angry with me, and it has been a long time since that phone call, so please forgive my sketchy details.  Within a few days I received a Facebook message telling me that , they sent me forward in love and light, to cut and burn my cord and to never set foot back on their property again. 

I was devastated.  My coven had fractured because of Melinda and all her lies, and now I was being thrown out of my other spiritual home.  It was like those days after Momma Muriel had died.  I felt I would break apart.  I know now, years later that Holda was moving me ahead of the game, like a chess piece.  She was moving me ahead of things she did not want me involved in.  I am ever grateful for her wisdom and her protection.

Somehow we soldiered on.  Juno took it really hard.  She was still trying to play mediator and fix Melinda and I’s relationship.  She was trying to be friends with both, and it was hard on her.  Juno has always identified as a Druid.  I had known Boogie and Rovena for many years.  They were some of my oldest friends in the community, elders really.  So I rang up Rovena and asked what they were doing these days.  She told me she was running an ADF (Ar nDraiocht Fein) proto-grove.  I told her of Juno, and that I would like to bring her round.  I didn’t want her to feel like she was the only Druid in town.  And so one day we went. 

Ilsa

Melinda goes to Jail

 In August of 2012 Melinda went to Jail.   She had always been funny about the police.  She had told us she had been sexual assaulted by an officer many years before.  One night in early August, she and her boyfriend were coming back from Alexandria, in her truck, and for whatever reason the cops in her town pulled her over, about 5 miles from her house.  The truck was registered in one of her son’s name, and the insurance was also in his name.  Melinda produced an expired out of state license.  Her boyfriend also produced an out of state license, as he had recently moved to Louisiana.  Melinda had been in Louisiana for 11 years.  She always gave me some bull shit about, somebody else had stolen her identity, and that’s why she had never got a new license.  I do believe she had a state issued ID however.  They usually don’t run you when you get those.

Since they were out of state, the police officer ran a nationwide search on their licenses.  My guess is to make sure the truck was not stolen.  Melinda’s boyfriend came up clean, but Melinda’s past had come back to haunt her.  She popped on a warrant out of Tennessee.  She was wanted for stealing an excess of $10,000.  The warrant seemed to have been issued about the time she moved to Louisiana.  She called me crying, told me she was being arrested, and to come and get JB. I got in the car and immediately drove the 15 or so miles to her. 

Melinda was booked into jail, and spent the next 17 days there while things were sorted out.  I was not involved in the process to bond her out, and after a few days one of JB’s brothers came to get him.  I think he had about 5 brothers or so.  I wrote Melinda in jail, went to see her, did what I could for her, and talked to her the phone.  Our Lughnasa ritual that year, consisted of us talking to her in jail.  We were on the phone in ritual circle, telling her how much we believed in her innocence, and how much we loved her.

About that time I had a conversation with one of her sons, because some of this stuff was just not adding up.   I begin to ask him a host of questions such as:

Is your mother a witch?  Did she raise your pagan?  Was your grandmother really a witch?  Is there a family tradition of witches in your family?  He told me no to all the above, and that as far as he knew, his mother had been raised a Jehovah Witness, and still was.

I asked him if she had worked as contractor and built houses, as she told us she had.  He said No.  That she had worked with them in the office, but never in the field.  Which made since to me.  Melinda had been having electrical problems for a long time in her house.  She said she knew all about electricity, but would not fix her problems.  A few weeks before she was arrested, Melinda had seen sparks coming from a socket in her bedroom.  She replaced it herself.   On our workday, Jay looked at the socket.  He found it was improperly installed.  He told me that if he had not fixed it could have burned the house down.  Now don’t you think someone with electrical experience should know how to redo a simple socket? 

I finally asked Melinda’s son if he thought the charges against his mother could be true?  Could she have really stolen the money?  He said, while he thought she would never steal from an individual, he believed she could defiantly steal from a company. 

This made a lot of since to me, occasionally she would tell me she had to borrow against her check. She told me she had something to do with payroll.  I knew she bought heavily on Ebay.  In cleaning out her house I found what had been an old bathroom, full of Ebay boxes.  Most of them contained yarn.  She called it her yarn room.  It was stacked floor to ceiling. It was on of those rooms that if you opened the door you would kill yourself.   It just did not add up.  Melinda was very poor, where in the hell was she getting money for that much yarn? 

Melinda was fired while she was in jail.  When she asked to come and get her things, she was told that the lawyers had advised against it.  She was told that everything she had had her hands on was now being scrutinized by accountants.  I still have no idea, if she had been stealing from her current job.  I have heard rumors, but I will not print them here.  It was my guess that if she was not allowed back on the property, she probable had been, and it had probable been a lot.

Melinda would spend her 50^th birthday in jail.  While she was there, she called to tell us that she thought she was pregnant.  This ruse she would keep up for months, even after she and were no long friends.  Melinda had told Juno, the baby was not viable, or she had miscarried. I forget which one.  We ran into Melinda’s old boyfriend some years later, he told us they had finally gone to the dr., who told them  she not pregnant.  When she insisted, she was.  The Dr. told them they had run the test twice and not only was she not pregnant, she had not been pregnant at any time as of late.  We were not the only ones she was conning.  

When Melinda got out of jail she refused to go home.  Even with JB she did not want to be alone in that house, so JB stayed with his brother, and she came to live with me.   That lasted all of two weeks.  You never really know someone, until you live with them.  Melinda showed us her true colors during that time. 

My feelings towards Melinda, as oh-highly-exalted-one, had begun to change that summer, as I watched the way she treated JB and me, while we worked so hard to clean her house.  There were few thank you’s, lots of discussion on how we had done it things wrong, and her unwillingness to help in most of that project.  I still have no idea if she cleaned between the times I was there.  I was beginning to see that everything was about Melinda.

On the one year anniversary of my hospitalization, I could feel my stress level rising.  I had a feeling that I was going to have another attack, and I was right.    Melinda had taken to cleaning my house, doing the wash and the cooking, all the while telling me how I was doing it wrong.  I never asked her to do any of that, she just took it upon herself.  I remember getting frustrated at Melinda, and going to be in my bedroom. I was sitting in Princess’ bed when Jay walked in.  I told him, “I’m going to pop.   You’ve got to get her out of my house!”  He said, “She’s your friend.  You get her out.” 

Within a few minutes I was in a full blown panic attack.  My pills did not help and I regressed to about 6 years old.  I spent most of that day coloring.  I was not taken to the hospital, to my great relief.  We knew it would pass.  Melinda could not have been more wonderful to me, while all this was going on.  She sat and colored with me, and fixed me grill cheese sandwiches.  It took most of the day, to “grow up,” but by the time I went to bed that night I felt like my normal self.  No one outside the family, and doctors had ever seen me have an attack.

I was still in counseling with Barb at the time.  I had a session with her not long after my attack.  I told her what was going on with Melinda.  Barb told me I needed to set boundaries with her.  I needed to start telling her, “No.” I did and that’s when things started getting really ugly. 

JB had gone back to school and had broken his arm.  Now whether his bullies did it, or he did it on accident, I was never really clear on.  So Melinda was terrified to drive, so we went to pick up JB and take him to the hospital.  He is in quite a bit of pain at this point.  Melinda is insistent that we must stop at the library to make copies, and then to the post office. “I must get Tennessee off my back,” she kept insisting.  She was more concerned about her own shit, then her child’s own pain.

The warrant Melinda had been arrested on was expired, but had never been taken out of the system.  When she called the clerk’s office, to find out who had filed charges against her, the folder was blank.  At least that is what she told me.  Who knows if it was true?  All they could tell her is the date that the incident was said to have occurred and where.  Melinda was released when Tennessee decided, they did not want her.  She was trying to prove her innocence, by mailing affidavits that she was not even in the county, where this had occurred, on the date in question. 

So she made me make all these stops, before we even could really get going, to take JB to the hospital.  We were about 15 miles from her house when she says, “Stop!  We’ve got to go back to the house.  I forgot to get the ham.”

“No Melinda.  I am tried, JB is hurting.  There are other things to eat at my house.”  I said.  I also knew that ham was more than two weeks old, and probable no good.  Melinda becomes angry and suddenly hits her phone hard against the car door.  Now it was a nice day and were ridding with the windows down.  So when she hit the phone against the door, it suddenly goes flying out the window, going 60 mph.  Melinda yells at me to pull over.  She has to have her phone.  I did, and I let her and JB search for it.  I was getting really tired of her attitude, the way she was treating me, and I was feeling like I was being used.

Ilsa

Holda's Hands

So when Melinda came into my life she, at first, she offered me that unconditional love I so craved.  She encouraged and empowered me, or so I felt. 

It was never my intention to leave the HP coven.  I felt in many ways we had hived off.  The HP coven had grown so large, that I felt we were just taking the overflow.  I did not spend Yule with the HP coven.  Melinda and I spent it together.  I went to the HP at Imbolc with the express idea of leaving for good.  In a private moment between us, I told her this.  She begged me to stay, and blessed me.  I agreed.  I told her of Holda’s Hands and she said that was a good thing, and encouraged me to keep doing it.  Ostara of 2012 was the last time I would stand in the HP circle.  I left my besom, Hagatha, there as a sign I would return.  That eventually I would come home. I never would.

At Beltane 2012 we officially dedicated Holda’s Hands.  Tired of never getting anywhere with the corded belt system, so common in Wicca, I made belts for all our members who held a position.  It was a way to add distinction our group.  We even sewed charms on them, to show where we had been in our spiritual path.  Melinda and I decided to co-lead, we chose to use the triple goddess aspect in our leadership.  Melinda was initiated as the crone, her daughter Vicky as the maiden, and I as the mother.  Juno was initiated as Bard, a musician and storyteller.  It was a happy day for all of us. 

No story exists in a vacuum. Events in our lives are all inter-layered like a good cake. There was a lot going on with me then. Juno and her wife Kay came into our lives during that spring.  Melinda had met them, at a knitting group off shot, she used to hold at Books-a-Million.  We loved them immediately.  We tucked them into our lives and we all became fast friends. 

Tami had also joined my life about that time.  In the Fall of 2011 I was just swimming in goats milk.  I was getting sick of making cheese.  One night laying in bed, we were watching a “Billy the Exterminator,” marathon.    The show was filmed locally.  Billy would find injured wildlife and take them to the Cypress Black Bayou Zoo.  I asked Jay, “You think they could use some goat’s milk, for all those babies?”  He said yes, and we contacted them soon after. 

Tami was basically running the place.  We came by one day to drop off milk.  They were terrible grateful, but busy as usual.  Saving babies takes a lot of effort.  We were given the tour of the place.  They had 4 beautiful goats.  I commented on how lovely they were and that we had goats.  Tami shocked us by asking if we would like them.  We talked it over and decided to take 2 of them, Muffin and Patches.  We brought them home and would rename them Bridget and Morgan.  Bridget is a fat, little, gray and white pigmy goat.  She is spoiled rotten and still with us.  Morgan would eventually go to live with Melinda, along with her babies Anu and Danu. 

Tami, her hubby, her son, and all there animals were living in at 35’ travel trailer, when I met them.  She and I had hit it off almost immediately.  She was an animal lover and a spiritual seeker.  We began to talk about her moving into Momma Muriel’s house, as it had been vacant since Mike D. had left, but needed repairs.  They moved to the farm in May of 2012, and into the house in August of that year.  Tami’s menagerie included dogs, cats, birds, and a little gray, Vietnamese Pot Belly Pig named Henry.  

After a while we tucked Henry in with the goats.  He is wonderful and gentle with them. He would lay on his side, and the goat babies would just use him as a spring board.  Tami would move from the farm to her own home, a few miles away, in August 2014.  We never could figure out how to move Henry, who was now over 200lb., without traumatizing him, so he stayed with us.  Mr. Henry still lives with Star and Kali in the pen. I am looking at his happy piggy butt right now, out my window, as he is eating some grass, and wagging his happy piggy tail.  I’m not into pigs, but I sure do love this one.  He will even sit for a cookie, Tami taught him that one. 

I had known Melinda about two years at that point.  She often mentioned how messy her house was.  Tami and I told her that we would love to help her clean.  It took some convincing, but Melinda finally let us in her house in the Summer of 2012.  I know why she had trepidations about this.  Melinda had a secret.  She was a hoarder. 

The first night Tami and I went in with shovels.  We shoveled dog shit and trash from her kitchen floor for many hours.  The German Roaches, you know the little ones, were insane.  We came home and Tami did right, she stripped off all her clothes, before she got in her house.  She would later burn them.  I should have done the same thing.  Melinda’s lasting gift to me, for helping her clean, was I got roaches that would not go away. I would fight them on and off for more than a year, before they finally went away.  I should have stripped and burned my clothes too, but I did not.  I had the sensation of bugs crawling all over me for days afterwards. 

I would go back into that house many more times.  To clean out refrigerators that were not working, and one day to wash all her dishes.  JB and I worked hard one morning and got 5 bags of trash cleaned out of the living room and the kitchen.  We were outside taking a break, when she came home from work for lunch.  She flew into a rage when she saw all the bags, screaming at us and tearing them open to see what we had thrown away.  Then yelling at us about what we had thrown away.  Poor little JB, who was only about 13 or 14 at the time, had been so proud of what he had done, just wept.  I had the impression that whatever he did for her, was never enough, was never done the right way.  I would come to see that side of her myself first hand.

JB and I spent one day washing every dish in Melinda’s house.  I would wash, he would dry and we both clean out the cabinets trying to vacuum up dead bugs and fecal matter.  We spent hours doing this.  Melinda was at work.  We knew she would be so pleased, when she came home.  All day long I had been using a sponge with a scrubby side on it.  It was the only thing available.  She came in, and told both of us that we had done it all wrong, that all of the dishes would have to be washed again, because we had used the scrubby side.  And as everyone knows, the scrubby side would cause microscopic scratches, that would let germs grow.  I was deeply, deeply hurt.  It was thank you, but you did it wrong.  I was beginning to see why JB had cried.

Vicky had left some time before, and moved in with her new husband.  She could not take the pressure of Melinda anymore.  JB and I had done a tremendous amount of work.  We had gotten the kitchen, living room, pantry, and some of the hallway cleared.  Every day I came in, we started at square one, picking up trash and dog shit. 

I started on Vicky’s room.  It took me 2 or 3 days to dig it out.  It was buried in about a foot of dirty clothes, trash, and sprinkled with cat shit.  I had to wear a mask.  When I started on that room, which was a good, 15 x 20, I could not get the door open, but about 6 inches.  Slowly it came.  I have no idea how many bags of garbage I pulled out of that room.  But I do know I pulled out 9 laundry bags full of dirty clothes, shoes, belts and purses, but mostly clothes. 

I am very glad I at least did that. Melinda had her room, but I never could figure out where JB slept.  It took me a while, to dig a path, to even get to where his old room was.  Of course you could not get in it.  It was covered in junk and trash.  After we cleaned out Vicky’s room, JB turned it into his room.  He made a pallet on the floor and that is where he slept.  I believe that JB had been sleeping on the couch in the living room for years.  He had no dresser to hold clean clothes, hell most of the time he only had just a little bit of that, he had no place for his books, he had almost nothing to call his own in that house. 

Washing clothes was always hard in that house.  Of to the right of the living room was a hallway that was treacherous and covered in stuff.  That led to a set of stairs.  At the base of the stairs was a very large room maybe 30 x 30, covered in stuff about a foot deep.  I could tell you there were pieces of furniture, but I have no idea what else was in there. I never dared go in that room.  I stopped at the stairs.

To the left of that room, was a washroom.  Only JB was nimble enough to get in there.  We did not know until later, that the water heater was busted, and had been leaking into what was the washroom and other large room, until we saw water pouring out between the house and the foundation one day. It had started to grow black mold.  We had no idea how long this had been going on.  The room adjacent to the washroom was covered in about 6 inches of water and furniture had begun to float.  I have no idea how long it had been like that.  Melinda seemed to suddenly be shocked at the condition of this room and blamed it all on Vicky and how she could not keep house. 

After JB and I had worked all day, she did not come home and help.  Nope she simply went in her room, often times closing the door.  As if we were the peasants, the hired help and she was too good to help.  Even some days complaining how bad her back hurt her.  One day we called a work day at her house, with the rest of the coven.  She sat in her chair the whole day and did not lift a finger.  Melinda was beginning to show her true colors in the way she was treating everyone and I was starting to get really pissed about all this.  I felt I was in a way being conned. That’s when it all started to unravel, like we were frogging a knitting project.

Ilsa

Meet Melinda

I know I am back tracking her just a bit, but in May of 2010 Melinda entered my life.  I had found a knitting and crochet group online that she was part of.  It was called Chicks with Sticks.  At our first meeting Melinda, her daughter Vicky, and I talked about a great many things.  After everyone left the room I closed the door and mouthed the words to her, “are you a witch?”  If her friends did not know, I did not want to out her.  She looked at her daughter and then said, “Yes.”  I will never know if Melinda actually was a witch, or simply saw that as an in to exploit me.  Three years after the end of our relationship I still don’t know, nor do I know if anything she ever told me was true.

Melinda could be brash and arrogant, and both were infectious to me.  She was very bright, carried herself with a certain air, and had loads of love to give.  Melinda filled that gaping void in my life left by my mother and I’s relationship.  With my mother she freely gives loves, but you find out later there are always strings attached.  After my mother robbed me on March 31^st, 2012, (hang on we will get to that part eventually) Melinda became very much my mother.  It was an honor she would ultimately betray. 

By September of 2011 Melinda and I had been hanging out a lot.  We were great buddies and our lives were very much intertwined.  I had brought her out one night to meet the HP, both she and her son JB.  Kind of a meet and greet.  I did not know that Melinda, had at that time, said something inappropriate, and disrespectful to the HP and her wife.   I would not know that for almost a year.  We spent Samhain (Halloween) 2011 at the HP coven.  As the Mother had prophesied, the HP coven continued to grow.  That night there were over 20 pagans in that circle. 

I am all water sign, Pisces, Cancer, Cancer.  I am emotional, I am malleable and in many ways gullible.  I will often bend to the will of those around me, in order to please them.  A high ranking member from long ago had reentered the HP’s coven.  She became again the HP’s right hand woman.  They had been friends for many years. I became jealous, arrogant, cocky and snotty to this woman, who had never done me any harm.  I had been working and studying to be the HP’s right hand woman, or so I felt.  I felt slighted in thinking that this woman could just come in and steal all my glory.  I was the star pupil.  I wanted the HP to love me best and chose me.  I was petty and I was wrong, and I wonder if I was also not a little power hungry. 

We sat one night and confronted each other.  She was nothing, but gracious to me.  The goddess was telling me to take a back seat and I was not listening.  I was fighting with all my will.  I had, since I could remember, wanted to be a “shaman,” my word for a spiritual healer and spiritual leader.  I had been thru several paths, but now believed I was on the right one, and this woman was stopping that progress.  I felt I was being pushed out and ignored. I was so in the wrong.  It should have been about worshiping the Gods and it was not.  I never got to the chance to apologize to the HP about how sorry I was.  I hope she can hear me now.  I apologize to both of them in anything I may have said in thought, word or deed towards them. 

In November 2011, it was finally cool enough that we could have a retreat at the HP house.  A lot of things when wrong that weekend.  I felt slighted, that I, an initiated member, had not been asked to consult on anything related to the retreat.  Don’t feel that way now.  I had not seen Jay, but about 10 hours that week.  He was working 60-80 hours a week, and was out of town two days a week with Unifirst.  I was late getting to the retreat that Friday night.  Jay had been off working. My tent was huge and needed two people to set it up, and I didn’t remember how to do it.  It was hell trying to set up the tent, in the dark, at 10 o’clock at night.  I was also against a deadline.  Melinda, me and the ladies from Chicks with Sticks, were trying to make sure there would be enough blankets, for us to give away at the nursing home that Christmas.  I spent almost every waking moment working on those blankets.  That weekend included. 

I like many others, I consider handwork (crochet, knitting, spinning, weaving, embroidery, etc) to be a form of magic making, a form of spell work.  My HP did not see it that way.  She considered it disrespectful for me to be doing this while she was teaching.  Melinda and a friend, were due to come in later in the day and visit.  Melinda was snotty towards all those there.  She was apparently again disrespectful to the HP’s wife, something that would be kept hidden from me for almost a year. 

There were elements of the retreat I did not like and wondered why we did them.  When the HP asked if I had problems with the retreat I lied, and told her, “NO.”  I did not want to upset or disappoint her, which I kept doing, or so it seemed.  I know she did not like my relationship with some of those I considered elders.  She at one point considered me like a mole.  I would go to the elders and say, “oh how was your ritual.  We had 21 at our Samhain.”  Although I never told them anything else about the rituals or who was there, she felt I betrayed her. 

I was working at the time on trying to create a larger pagan community, that might one day work together.  Trying to get the groups around here to work together, must less acknowledge each other was a mighty task, and one I would eventually give up.  Nobody around here wants to play together, and when there are already so few of us, that is just kind of sad. 

She and I had it out, or so I thought early that December.  I was tormented.  She would dance around the idea of who this “Mole” was, but it was not until I said something on our private Facebook group that she acknowledged it was me.  A few days later I was removed from that group, a group I started.  They never told me they had.  I had to figure that one out for myself. 

Somewhere in here I had asked Maddie to give me a card reading.  To see if she could figure out what had happened to me in August and why it had happened.  Her reading strongly advised me to get into counseling.  And so almost 10 years since I left, I went back into counseling.  My first meeting with Barb was December 22^nd, 2011.  She and I would meet every two weeks until her retirement in July of 2015. 

I felt slighted by all that was going on in my HP coven.  I felt I was being pushed out.  That I was no longer wanted.  I was really kind of upset about the handwork thing.  It was so much a part of my life, part of my dedication to Holda.  Melinda and I had been back and forth about starting our own group.   At that time my nose was so far up Melinda’s ass I don’t know what I was thinking half the time.  We decided we wanted to start a group that had handwork as part of it’s center.  Where we could crochet and knit and worship the Gods and share stories at the same time.  So at Yule (December 21^st, Winter Solstice) 2011 Holda’s Hands was born. 

Ilsa

Wheel of the Year

Okay so by now you may have noticed that I mark time a little different then you do.  Most Pagans follow what is called the Wheel of the Year.  In it we celebrate 8 holy days, spaced about 6 weeks apart.  Some of the days were celebrated by the ancients, and some not.  You can think of it like an 8 spoked wheel, or like the Dharmic wheel.  So I will start with Mabon since that is what has just passed.

Mabon – September 21^st, Fall Equinox

Samhain – October 31^st, Halloween, many feel the beginning of the New Year. 

Winter Solstice- December 21^st, the beginning of Yule, and the start of the Heathen New Year.

Yule – A 13 day celebration and time of rest.  It runs from December 21^st until about January 2^nd or 3^rd, depends on who you talk to.  January 3^rd is also called Epiphany or 12^th night.  In Louisiana it is the traditional start of Marti Gras season.  I often use the word Yule to denote the first day of Yule (Winter Solstice).

Imbolc – February 2^nd, Groundhog’s Day, Candlemas

Ostara – March 21^st, Spring Equinox 

Beltane – May 1^st, May Day, some feel the start to the New Year, nothing to do with communism or Russians

Litha – June 21^st, Summer Solstice

Lughnasa - August 2^nd, harvest festival aka Loafmass

Thank you,

Ilsa

Code Strawberry

Well I had intended to post to y’all yesterday September 17^th, 2015, but my brain had other ideas.  Yesterday was a bad day.  It was Code Strawberry day.  That is my word for when all hell breaks loose.  Living with Anxiety, panic attacks and whatever else it is that I have, is often difficult.  I often have no warning as to when or where I will lose my mind.  It has made me kind of a recluse.  I am terrified I will have one of these while I am driving, and suddenly forget how to drive a car, or get to a place and not know how to get home.  The people who are around me know I have a code word, if for no reason what so ever, I saw STRAWBERRY, my friends know that I am about to go into an attack.  They know where my medication is, how to administer it to me, how to handle me, who to call and not to take me to the hospital.  My attacks leave me disoriented and confused, and sometimes unable to speak. I even carry paperwork with me telling first responders what to do with me, where my meds are, and not to stick me in the psych ward again.  It may take several hours, but it will pass.  The medicine usually helps, but then I have days like yesterday.

Yesterday I woke up fine.  I’d had a bit of a strong dream in that I was dreaming of Melinda.  You will meet her in my later posts.  I had been thinking about her before I went to bed, trying to figure out how best to tell that part of my story.  Melinda was not a violent character in my life, but just another one of those people, who kind of used me and then threw me to the wolves, after years of a deep friendship. 

When I woke up I was disoriented and confused.  I felt like I was swimming in molasses.  I felt like my brain was processing, but at a very, very slow speed.  I was on dial up basically.  My since of time and reality was off.   I had hoped to shake, whatever it was, off.  I got up and had breakfast, but it got no better.  An hour after I woke up I decided perhaps it was best I take a pill, just in case.  I did not want it to get worse.  The pill did not help.  Before I knew it I was breaking out the coloring books, not because I felt anxious and was trying to settle myself, no it was because I felt like I was about 6 years old. 

I knew what kind of animals I had, but I was unsure of their names.  I knew what year it was, where I was, who I was married to, and that I was living in a larger, older body.  I knew I was Ilsa, not someone else.  This is not the first time this has happened.  It happened the day I was hospitalized.  It happened a year to the date, when I had another major attack.  Most of that was brought on by stress I was under with Melinda.  But I have also had these attacks where they were not in context of a panic attack.  A few months after I was hospitalized, I woke up at 4 o’clock in the morning and suddenly felt like I was 6 years old and wanted to color.  And so that is what I did.  I went in my altar room, got out my colors and did that for about 2 hours.  When I was finished I ran to wake Jay up, stifled the urge to jump up and down on the bed, and woke him up to show the picture I had just colored for him.  He told me how wonderful it was, convinced me I needed sleep and to cuddle under the covers with him.  I did.  When I woke in the morning I was fine. 

Yesterday I was totally by myself.  After I took my pill I called to my therapist, who was very busy.  I told her I was safe and not a danger to myself or others, and was not going to drive my car.  I said, “I just wanted you to be able to talk to me in this state.”  I called Jay too.  Juno and Kay were not home, or I would have had them come over and sit with me.  After coloring for a while I looked out on the beautiful day and wanted to be part of it. 

But I knew I had to get dressed and take my meds.  Two things I was not terribly sure I knew how to do.  But I made it threw and was able to figure it all out.  I grabbed a quilt, some books from my childhood, water, my cell phone, my sunglasses, and of course lip gloss.  When was a kid I never went anywhere without my lip gloss.  I spread out my quilt on the grass, in as much of the shade as I could, put my bag down and then let out the goats and Mr. Henry the piggy.  We all happily visited for a while.  I texted Jay.  I was amazed that in that state I knew how to use modern technology, but I did. 

As I was laying outside it kind of let go of me and I came back to myself.  I was a bit confused and disoriented again, as to how I got outside on a blanket.  I knew I had done it, but had had little control over what I did.  I had been in that state for about 4 hours. 

I think I was angrier over losing most of my day, as I had things to do, and the things I had planned obviously, did not get done.  At that point I was just exhausted.  When Jay came home he ordered me to have a nap, whether I wanted one or not.  When I woke from my nap I was still confused.  It wasn’t until we had gone to bed last night, and I woke somewhere in the night, that I felt I was really back to myself. 

In the two with panic attacks attached to them I kind of spent the day growing up.  Yesterday I did not.  One moment I felt I was 6 years old, and ten minutes later I was in touch with my 40 year old self.

I wonder what the hell is wrong with me and if I will ever get any better?  I think part of the reason I am writing this blog is so that someone can help me and give me a good definition of what is going on with me both emotional, mentally and perhaps spiritually.  I have no doubt all three are connected.  Now y’all come back and tell me to get right with Jesus and it will stop, or that I’m possessed, and I will kick your fucking asses!

If you are suffering from mental illness I encourage you to have a code word as well, instructions you carry with you at all time, and educate those around you about what to do with you if this happens.  It might save you a trip to the psych ward, or save your very life. 

I hate to say it, but never underestimate the stupidity of people.  My roommate in college had terrible seizures.  She was allergic to all the medications available at the time, so she would have upwards of 7 Petit Mals a day.  It would never fail.  She would go missing for a few days, and then show back up.  I’d ask what happened and she would tell me she had a seizure walking to class, and woke up in the Psych Ward, again.   She also carried no identification on her that said she had seizures.  The first responders didn’t know what was happening to her and just thought she was crazy or on drugs, I guess.  I don’t want the same for you. 

Ilsa

Healing

On Thursday August 25^th, 2011 I had my first major panic attack.  I have covered the day and most if it’s events in a little crazy, just like me.  I had a massive panic attack, that made me regress me to a younger age, in fact I went so far back I ended up thinking I was in one of my past lives.  I have spoke of this day with some breath, but I have not discussed, so far, what happened to me after wards, nor have I discussed the spiritual aspects of this event.

For two weeks after I came home I had the worst headache of my life.  No medication could touch it.  I found it difficult to pray or to journey.  Now I have been journeying for a long time.  To journey, for me, means I put myself in a semi-trance state and go to visit the other side, where my dead and my animals are.  I have been doing this for at least as long as I have defined myself as Pagan, although my techniques have changed over the years.  It is often something I do in times of stress.  It gives me great comfort.

This is totally my UPG.  I tuck myself in bed, because I usually go to sleep at some point during the journey.  It is rare that I come back all the way back across to the land of the living.  The way I journey is, in my mind I stand on my front porch and look down at my outside altar, which is next to a great, big, old, tall Pine tree.  I call for Bifrost, the rainbow bridge, and Heimdall who controls it.  He comes to me on what like a wooden bridge painted a rainbow of colors, on both the walk way and the rails.  He ties up to the porch and I step on.  He is behind a great big, tall, desk with a wooden wheel attached to it, which is always on my left as I step on.  He greats me with a hug and sometimes a kiss and asks where I am going.  I tell him Holda’s Gardens, this is what I have come to call her lands over the years as I have never known the proper name for it.  Heimdall then asks for an offering.  I usually give him what I have had to eat that evening with a glass of sweet tea.  He seems to really like my tea.  It always makes him smile.  He thanks me and he directs the bridge, which acts a bit more like a boat, over the swirling and misty air. 

We soon come to the gate to Holda’s Gardens.  I see it as black wrought iron, filigreed, arch with a half doggie door.  Heimdal ties up the bridge to two statues or columns on either side of the bridge.  I don’t know it’s always kind of misty.  I open the door and go in.  Once I am safely on the other side, he takes off and tells me to call for him when I am ready to leave.  I enter what is essentially Holda’s yard.  Weather it is the front yard or the back I don’t know.  On the other side I find a sandy dirt road, that always feels good under my bare feet.  To the right is Holda’s House, to the left a line of trees that separates the house from the pond.  There is now a bench, in front of the trees, for me.  I often sit under these trees, on the ground with Punka in my lap looking out over the pond.  I do this especially when I’ve had  a bad day.  The sandy road stretches on past Holda’s mill, into the trees, and beyond to the pastures where my goats are.  I usually don’t go down that far.  My guess is this is where the livestock lives.  That area is very green and hilly, like at the base of a mountain or in a valley.

From the spot where I stand I can call any of my deceased animals to me.  It may take them a minute to come to me, as they have to quit what they are doing first.  I often see Precious the first, zoom past me on her wings, chasing the bunny, sometimes it is the other way around.  She informs me the chase is the important thing, not the catching.  So they take turns. 

Holda is almost always the first to greet me, wearing her white dress and her blue apron.  I almost always see her in her grandmotherly form, about age 50 or 60 I would guess.  Then Momma Muriel and Oma come out. Sometimes Father Frey is there as well.  It just all seems to depend on what I need. I can never really see their faces.  I think it is just too much for my human brain to process.  Sometimes we all go into the kitchen and I am fed some type of apple dessert, hot cider or coffee.  I know there is a rule about not eating in the other worlds, but I do not wish to offend her.  When I have refused to eat in the past she gets annoyed with me and says, “EAT!”  I am often surprised she does not slap me in the back of the head when I do this.  It is there I will catch them up on what I am doing and why I have come to visit: occasionally it is to cross a dead animal’s spirit over, sometimes I have a question, sometimes it is to ask for healing for a friend,  or I’ve had a bad day or I just miss them so much. 

Now if all this sounds bizarre or made up to you, I’m sorry.  It is simply how I experience the divine, and it works for me.  All this spiritual healing is about to get a little stranger.

Not long after I had been hospitalized for my first panic attack, Holda came to me in a dream and said, “I don’t want you to journey, work magic, or even pray until after your initiation.”  I was a bit confused, but I agreed to do as I was told.  Every time I tried to do any of this, it just made the headaches worse.  I would do just about anything to make the pain stop.  Holda then took me to a women, in a temple with lots of herbs hanging around her.  I don’t know who she was.  My guess is either Eir or Brigid.   

I asked, “Where we were going.” 

She said, “I am taking you to be healed.”

“Why can’t you heal me?” I asked

She told me she did not do this type of healing, or that I need healing she could not do.  I don’t remember. 

I then asked, “Who is she?”

“She is my sister,” is all she would reply.  I am still a bit befuddled.  As far as we know Holda has no sisters. It is my guess that she used this title to apply to another Goddess.

Within a few days, whenever I closed my eyes, I began to see another Goddess as if she was standing before me.  She had coal black hair, pale skin and red painted on lips.  She would take me to a Greek or Roman style temple.  She asked me to lay down on a stone platform like bed and roll on my right side.  She would then take a large bowl of water and pour it threw my left temple, and into my brain.  I kid you not, from my right temple would pour out snakes.  As she did this technique my headache would lessen, and I would find some relief.  For a long time I thought the snakes were symbols of my illness.  I wonder now if they instruments of her healing.  This went on for several weeks.

Towards the end I asked what her name was.  She told me her name was Danube, and that she was the Goddess of rivers.  I thought, “Oh I will have to look that up.”  She looked at me and said, “you will not find me,” and she was right.  I have yet to identify her.  I have yet to meet anyone who knows who she is. 

I went to two of my elders, in the community, in between being hospitalized and being initiated.  My HP and I were trying to decide if I should still be initiated given my then mental health status.  I believed Holda was telling me yes.  I had hoped a tarot card or rune reading would give me confirmation of that.  I also went to them to ask if they had any idea what had happened to me, and to see if they knew who this mystery goddess was.  They told me they did not know who the Goddess was, but that if she was helping me I should continue to work with her.  I don’t remember what the cards and runes said.  They brought out a Tibetan singing bowl to get a reading on my chakras.  I had a blockage in my 1^st and 2^nd, that I was not terribly surprised at. I am infertile after all.   I was also having a blockage in my crown chakra, something I had never had a problem with.  I wonder now if part of the headaches, was having all that energy stopped.  One of the elders did tell me, that it was not unusual, for pagans to have some type of mental break or psychotic event prior to their first initiation. 

Apparently after I left, one of the elders sent a nasty email to my HP, saying she should never consider initiating someone in my mental state.  Yeh she was not pleased with me about that one.  I did not know, until years later, that she did not like them.  Although we were never sworn to secrecy about anything in the coven, she did not like me talking about such matters with outsiders.  We decided to do the initiation anyways. 

On September 9^th, 2011 I was initiated as a witch into my HP’s coven.  I will only speak to you of one part that occurred during that ritual.  I consider the rest too sacred. At one point I was laid on the ground and covered with a black sheet.  When I arose I felt better than I had in weeks.  My headaches were gone.  There were pictures taken of that night, long since lost to me.  But in the one of me lying on the ground, you can see tons of orbs.  Upon closer inspection you could see a sickle with 13 different points.  The sickle is one of Holda’s holy symbols.   There could be no doubt that the initiation was her wish. 

Even though in a few years time I would be asked to leave the HP’s coven, I have never been sorry I was initiated.  I have never been sorry that I spent my time with them.  I am honored to have learned under the HP. 

Ilsa