To begin

July 1 is a good day to get started.  I like to start new habits on the firsts of months because it feels like a clean slate. 

I've been a seeker for a very long time.  I grew up nominally Catholic, although we were never regular church goers.  I loved the ritual and mysticism of the Catholic religion, but the older I got the more I realized that it wasn't the right space for me... for many reasons but mostly because as a queer woman I knew I could never truly be accepted by the faith.  So I read and searched.  Paganism seemed like the right fit, but I never quite knew where to go with it.  I didn't know any other pagans... but I knew I could talk to trees, I knew I believed in multiple gods, I knew I respected and worshiped the natural world.   In college I tried again to go to mass, but it never felt like home.  After college I began attending Unitarian Universalist congregations, which aligned with my social and political beliefs but didn't have the magic that I knew must be out there in a spiritual community. So I've puttered along the last ten years hoping someday I would bump into the right fit.

Then my family and I decided, almost at the last minute, to attend a summer solstice ritual at a nearby ADF grove.  There was a children's ritual followed by the main ritual.  That was the initial draw for me, knowing that a group will welcome my two year old son makes me much more likely to give it a try. After the rituals was a potluck and some social time. 

It felt so right.  In many ways it felt like coming home.  I don't know yet if this is my forever spiritual home.  I don't think I could say that after one ritual... but when we got home (well actually in the car on the way home on my phone) I began looking into the larger ADF community and within a few days had signed up to become a member and began reading Our Own Druidry, the dedicant's path manual. I plan to dedicate this next year to the study of ADF druidry, and blog my way through to remember the struggles and breakthroughs.  I am looking forward to the journey.