Sylvanna Devlin

All these woes create a force within us. Sorrow. It will drag us under if left unchecked and can eventually kill us. Though depression is a different beast I’m not addressing here. It requires medication and therapy and a little delving into why but a lot more delving into what you can do about your reaction to your history. It’s a long road and there are others who have gone deeper.

Standard psychology has a line from thought to pain. While mine says pain dictates the thoughts and then that begets more pain. But what are we really dealing with? Why does life hurt so much?

We come from a warring animal past and have evolved into complicated creatures that hurt each other sometimes on purpose but usually just by being highly inconsiderate. But the kind of emotional pain we cause in each other is real intended or not. And that’s part of the problem. The triggers don’t have to be recognized for the sorrow to be real. It just makes it worse when we’re dismissed because what happened was unlikely.

Please let me say this a different way. It doesn’t matter if no one believes you, it matters that you are hurting. Of course if you are the wild woman with leaves in her hair and a warning you can go mad with frustration that no one listens.

But it doesn’t make your pain less real.

We want understanding, we want to be believed, we want our suffering to be recognized as reasonable. But some of what we go through is better kept to ourselves and therapists.

Here I will simply say sorrow forms as a cradle beneath all our other troubles and haunts the eyes. It creates an aura and adds suffocating gray to your magic.

Nothing will work right while you are cupped by sorrow.

You can be unhappy. Most of us who perform magic or participate in rituals want some form of resolution for something we are dissatisfied by. But that’s different than sorrow. Being unhappy with an element or your life isn’t a great well or ocean beneath you but you know it when you experience it.

Rituals are tainted by pain but they can sometimes help. And I’m not talking your favorite pot of tea here – though it will help. But daily prayer or casting to improve circumstances will give you a lifeline up out of the water. But you do need somewhere for that force to go. So you need to transform it.

Does exercise help? Of course it does but no one floating on an ocean of pain wants to put on walking shoes. Getting to the point of getting going takes too much sometimes. I mean we can start with stretching in our bed but coming from sleeping all day anything seems like more than we can handle.

We need a perspective change. A new way of hearing the world around us. A way of viewing what put us in deep waters. And that’s not easy to find. This is where we look for the whole personal meaning crap no one wants to hear. But if you won’t pray, perform rituals, or exercise reframing your experience is what you have left. Find a way to work and channel your pain. Go be social. Distract yourself.

Personally after my own attempt on my life, it was going to be a long road after just sleeping it off. Sure I could begin moving my body in small ways. But after that then what? Make holiday plans? Write books? Perform ceremonies? Pray to my gods? Write books?  Sure yeah that was actually the answer and I could see it looking from the bottom up. But just thinking of all that made me want to take a nap again.

What the fuck was the point. Communicating my perspective didn’t seem like something I even wanted anymore. Make a living. Get out of the poor house. Well yes, there was that. Paying my way into nicer digs did seem like something I’d want to do.

What was the point of this book? Because my first life was, “what does it mean to be human?” And my second was, ‘what the fuck to do about that?’ Well actually yes. If there was a way to help others. If my philosophies and knowledge of ritual and magic could be useful I could add that I suppose.

Then I’d need to stick around to promote it. Answer questions. Be available to support others. But long after I’d figured out how to go from sleeping all day to stepping on that ladder out.

Get dressed every day, clean your body. Start there. Was Iris’ answer. So a goddess has spoken. But my perspective was significantly boosted by a boost in anti-depressant and my ability to feel emotions again. Don’t be afraid to medicate your mood. I went back to loving everyone and everything and some people more than others. Chatting with my guiding stars helped too.