[Editor’s Note: This anthology was published by Girl God Books (2022).]
“Broken Glass, Spiderwebs and Rainbows” by Deborah A. Meyerriecks
Never fitting in.
Never feeling good enough.
Trying to do everything on my own.
No one sees the hours or days or months or years it takes to start something or finish something. Never being able to ask for help because I haven’t figured out what I need next and when I do figure it out in a sudden flash of either understanding or inspiration, if I don’t handle it right away… it’s lost.
No one understanding why I can’t just say what I need help with so they can help. They take it upon themselves to decide I didn’t actually need help; I just like to procrastinate. After all, whatever it was is done and in their opinion, perfect.
Parents praise the easy A’s though high school while getting everything they asked for to be done, done. Never actually seeing any homework getting done. Proud praises became confirmation of meeting expectations. Honor Roll Society, again, naturally, of course Deborah got Honor Roll. The tedium of successful repetition became an expectation that bred boredom.
Not understanding why I was floundering in college. Realizing I never learned how to study and in high school, you are told exactly what they will test you on. In college, it’s conceptual with an attention to detail you provide yourself.
Learning how and where to get the necessary information – and how to process and regurgitate it – breeds Impostor Syndrome. Whether it was in small study groups or metaphysical subjects or the NYC*EMS Academy. As people would show up to my study table the hour or three before exams and I would share what notes I created for myself and my tips and tricks to remember what to do and in what order… Order of operations; same for mathematics, chemistry, and patient assessment. Trust me on this.
I never felt good enough to be the teacher, but I could share what I was studying and learned thus far. This became impromptu pop-up classes on everything from Calculus to Trauma Assessment to Basic Astrology and How to Be a Witch.
People would call me a teacher. I wouldn’t. I was sharing what I read, what I learned. My view of looking at the information, analyzing the data, and sharing the resulting information. If I can do this, anyone can do this. Right? Imposter Syndrome grows.
Learning to be cautious never to take credit. Always citing sources and references. Completely missing the point of what a teacher is and does. Year after year, month after month, day after day, I was astounded that anyone would come to me to learn anything. If I knew it, everyone would already know it. If I can look it up and learn about it, I’m probably the last to know about it.
They think I’m humble.
I’m really scared.
What if, just like the transition from high school to college, I fall on my face, get overwhelmed, and fail. I know I can just withdraw from classes I’m due to teach just like I withdrew from my 2nd semester of college. Walk away and disappear. No one would miss me. Who even thinks about me when I’m not there? Who loves me when I’m not useful? What if I screw up while acting as a guardian and guide while the person who entrusted me dives deep and starts to do the work of learning what they need for their own productive shadow care? What if their trust in me is misplaced?
How much was from the trauma I was subjected to and how much was actually my brain processing things differently but being told I was never going to succeed and, “if you worked for me, I’d fire you.” (Yep, that was my mother). And so often never being allowed to begin – unless you not only could see the end, but all the steps and stages in between.
My daughter is an absolute Rainbow Warrior Goddess. I’d like to believe that doing my own shadow work and shadow care enabled my amazing Dynamic Duo to become the creative, intelligent, insightful, and considerate adults they are today. That I’ve given them their space to develop their own communication style as well as helped them to learn common communication skills to help communicate with “normal people.”
My daughter has ADHD. Her willingness to talk with her friends about what she was feeling and experiencing, especially when feeling overwhelmed, led to shared experiences and language to use to best explain and represent what is helping and what is making things harder for her. Day to day, class to class. Her doctor listened. Suggestions were made. Medication offered as part-time help but not touted as a cure or a solution. Reassurance that what she lives with is a gift as well as a curse.
Gift and curse.
The openness and willingness to let my Dynamic Duo tell me anything without interjecting or correcting or “helping” unless asked. It led to her sharing her diagnosis with me. But not until after she shared what she does and how she does it with interjections from both of us that I do the same thing. She let me know that although a doctor would have to diagnose, I most likely have high-functioning ADHD with burnout.
Oh My Goddess! I believed she was right.
Now, I have more to read and research and digest and either incorporate into my living routine or discard as not relevant or helpful for me. It matters. It helps. I don’t have writer’s block; I need to catch the right understanding of how to get to what I need to write about and how I want to express it.
It’s not that I’m a slob or lazy. Executive Dysfunction. It’s why I can find an unconscious patient and figure out what they need and where to take them in split seconds but I can almost never answer the question “what do you want?”
It’s probably why I count everything. Quite literally everything. And even the things I don’t realize I am counting, I am keeping cadence. My son and daughter are my Dynamic Duo. They are my great detectives. They are the ones who told me I always stir my cup of tea 13 times. “Of course, you do, you’re a witch and it’s probably a spell you do, right?” Um, maybe? Unconsciously? In my head as I stir I always hear a 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4-5 and it just doesn’t taste the same if I can’t do it for myself.
My daughter is diagnosed and has had guidance to learn ways to help her thrive even better than before. She has set up her current home to create exactly the sanctuary she needs it to be. She can communicate with her partner what she needs while also hearing what they dialogued and try to make space for both of them. She opened dialog with potential roommates and facilitated them to be able to express what they want and what they need when it comes to sharing an apartment together while working and going to school.
My son enjoys his solitude while bonding with friends through the joy of the internet. It’s actually how he met his current partner. Truth be told, it’s how I met my current partner of 4½ years. They are planning their new home around what both need to be their best selves. For themselves and for each other. There is a learning curve. They have learned the communication skills they need which include stating when one of them is feeling overwhelmed and just needs to hit the pause button on whatever they were discussing. They survived house hunting during the pandemic. I think they have solid ground to continue to grow together.
They are both incredible peer counselors and often I ask where they heard or learned what they said to someone because it was so perfect. I’d like to write it down and cite it for future use with my own ‘clients’ and peers. Me. They remind me it was stuff they overheard from my helping others talk through stuff often enough that it comes easily to them. All they did was speak from their own experience and thoughts as they instinctively personalized whatever they said for the person they said it to.
I am learning. It’s a process. Through the sometimes planned yet often spontaneous shadow work, I’m learning who I am, who I’m becoming, and who I’ve always been. The more I understand what neurodivergency may or may not involve, the more I understand why I have acted and reacted in certain ways.
I’m also learning that all the reasons I previously expressed for not being comfortable calling myself a teacher are all exactly what makes me a teacher. I can refrain from calling myself an expert or being fluent in any particular topic. One doesn’t need a masters or doctorate to be a good teacher. I will always acknowledge my limited scope of education and cite my sources. I will always take ownership and responsibility when expressing my own opinion or anything I’ve never seen cited elsewhere.
I have discussed Goddess Whispers elsewhere. What I mean is that at times when I suddenly feel like I can talk with authority about something – then realize, I don’t have the education or accreditation – I have no reason to know what I suddenly know. I perceive the information as divine inspiration. Typically, I can feel whether I can trust the source, even if I’m not able to cite it to anyone’s satisfaction.
So often I feel like my thoughts are racing by so fast that if I don’t document them immediately, I’ve lost them permanently. Other times there is absolutely nothing cognitively happening, and I can hear the lights. I can hear the wind. I can hear what people tell me doesn’t make any sound. But when the thoughts are racing, I hear nothing else if I catch that wave and for as long as I’m willing and able to ride it, nothing else exists. It’s how I’m writing all of this for you right now.
There are days where I am so tired, I can’t even talk. Then a flash of inspiration, triggered by something unexpected, and I quite literally need to either drop everything else I was doing, or physically make myself get up and go to my laptop or it’s lost. If you surf, you know what it means to miss the wave. You can’t get it back. There will always be another wave. You don’t know when a surf-able one will come. Even if you are watching and waiting you never know if you will be ready for it, but you do know it won’t be the same no matter how good it may be. Also, floating, drifting, watching, and waiting are boring.
Boring isn’t bad. It’s comfortable. It’s calm. It’s safe. It’s also usually nonproductive. The fastest way not to finish something that needs to be done, is to perceive it as boring. And when you start to feel like you need to do something. ANYTHING. Boring is a death sentence. The body at rest will stay at rest while complaining about having nothing to do. YET the pile of dishes in the sink and papers all over in need of organizing or shredding, and the pile of laundry builds. It builds by the day, the week, the month. If it isn’t urgent, it doesn’t get done.
Ritual provides a comforting routine. Morning cacao or tea with my Goddess. A particular candle holder getting a new tealight or votive candle on my family altar. The requisite 2 minutes of sunshine in my face (longer is OK but skipping it is not) to fulfill my promise to myself, my family, and deity to start some self-care daily.
Start daily. Continuing is hard. Starting is easier. Picking a small daily task and doing it brings a sense of accomplishment. What did I do yesterday? I washed a cup. You know, I have a dishwasher. It wasn’t full and the sink was empty. But with no energy and having a high pain day and my brain’s emotional impermanence which hits me with “if he isn’t initiating communication and he isn’t telling me he loves me, then he’s bored with me and that’s sad for me.” And that hits even harder than Imposter Syndrome and feelings of inadequacy. Maybe it’s because they go hand-in-hand.
Three normal breaths. Call to my Goddess. See where the breath feels stagnant. Which cauldron is blocked from refilling? Which is blocked from emptying and thus spilling over and making me feel a sloshy mess inside?
The Three Cauldrons are Warmth (the Coire Goiriath), Vocation (the Coire Ernmae), and Knowledge (the Coire Sois). There is a fifteenth century poetic tract (found within an ancient Irish legal manuscript) that describes the body as containing Three Cauldrons rather than Nine Duíle. This metaphysical treatise’s composition is credited to Amergin, the Milesian Ollamh and to Nede Mac Adne, Chief Ollamh for Conchobhar Mac Nessa. The relative positions of these cauldrons within each person was thought to determine the overall health of a person as well as the state of their mind and psyche.
It describes how joy and sorrow affect the first two cauldrons causing them to pour out, empty, overflow or become dry. Why is this even significant? Because in my journey to understand myself better I decided to discover the name of the goddess who spoke to me. I traced family heritage for clues. Eventually I found Her when I wasn’t looking but She was ready for me to know Her by name. My mother’s mother’s mother was born in Ireland. I’m American from NYC with family roots somewhere south of Shannon.
I’ve studied the Hindu Chakra system and have learned enough to understand there is so much more I have to learn. But I do have a working understanding. The Celtic Cauldrons are not an Irish Chakra system. I can clearly see how both systems operate independently yet function in symbiosis within all of us.
I have learned through fostering a deeper relationship with my Goddess is that She demands authenticity, honesty, and respect. And She expects you to give it to yourself. In order to be honest and authentic, I needed to accept and gain an understanding of who I actually am for me. As that understanding becomes clearer, as I peel off and throw away the performance expectations that were put on me like so many layers of tinted film on a window, I began to see myself for who I truly am. As with a clear window, it’s easy to see the scratches, chips, and cracks. Certain ones we can fill in and seal, others we may buff smooth and polish. Some we might decide to tap a little and create lovely patterns that enhance our own uniqueness. No one looks at an artfully etched glass and thinks it’s ruined. They think it’s a masterpiece that took time, patience, and loving talent to craft.
Slowly I am turning individual cracks into a spiderweb of intricate beauty which will eventually reveal the mandala of my life.
And when I hold it up to let the sun shine though, I’ll cast rainbows over all around me.
And yes, I just made myself cry. While I have never thought this before, it rings absolutely true. My curse, my gift. My magick, my spirituality, my Goddess, my family, my life. Crystal Rainbows gifted by Goddess but we can only see them when we are willing to open our eyes to the light we shine from within.