Damh requested listeners write in with the story of their Druid Journey. And since it's very unlikely that it will be told on DruidCast, I thought to share it here. My story encompasses both Damh's request, and Jonathan Woolley's presentation: Where are the young adult Druids?
Well, I'm one! And I was perhaps, to the best of knowledge, likely one of the first OBODies in Western Canada. And definitely the youngest at the time!
My Journey began in 1997 when I was 17 years old. Being in that precipitous teenage depression that many experience, I came to the realization that I was terrified to die. (It never occurred to me at the time that I may have been suicidal).
But how silly. I will die. At some point, and may it be far from now. But what was I to do in the meantime, to ready myself for this eventuality? Friends all sought to get me to church, a suggestion from which I violently recoiled.
I wrote many many stories as a child, and when high school arrived there was no more time for such fantasies. Yet in Grade 12, my best friend told me to sit down and write a story.
As I was in the midst of my teenage-life-crisis, I decided to write about my beliefs. What are they? I was not raised Christian, that is, as a church-goer, and while I knew their stories, I did not share them. Yet there was a word that floated out of my subconsciousness and my childhood. Druid. I began writing. Then researching. I stopped writing the story, and wrote to the Order instead, and began the Bardic Grade in the summer of 1997. I embarked on the Ovate work in the spring of 2005.
Progression through each grade has been intimately intwined with my own real life, and I can honestly say that I would not be the adult I am today if it weren't for the Courses.
Here and now, in 2015, I am on the cusp of my initiation into the Druid Grade. A moment I've worked 17 years towards! I would not have been ready for it any earlier.
I have two young children, whom my husband and I are raising in the love of nature, compassion, and service. They have not been to ceremonies or rituals, have no name for what I am, other than Mom. They see that I care deeply for them, along with everyone and everything I come into contact. I passionately create beautiful things with fibre, yarn and sticks. I serve the communities I am involved in, whether it is sharing my skills and knowledge in their school, helping a friend with an emotional crisis, or buoying someone along in a half-marathon training program.
Eventually they will learn more details of the Druid community I am a part of, and the Seedgroup I helped to start in our city. But as I discovered this path on my own, they too need to discover their own paths. I'm not going to sugar-coat anything, and turn it into a carnival just to attract them to it. There must be a deeper need, an urge to learn More, to experience More than what the eye and ear can tell us. It may happen when they're 8 or 10, or 30. And I will be blessed to witness them on their own Journeys.
