Samhain Blessings.
Or Happy Halloween, as so many know the colonized name for it.
This day has always been so special for me. It’s filled with a nostalgic joy, whilst also simultaneously grief that reaches across the span of lifetimes. The veil is reported as thinnest. And you can feel that in the air. This holiday, especially here in the States, is celebrated with ghouls and horror, when it was never meant to be that at all. It was a time of celebration of the harvests; a preparation and storing for Winter. Yes, as always, there was a way of protecting oneself with the carving of turnips, which to me have always looked so freakishly sinister, even more so than pumpkins. Life and death; good and evil; happiness and sadness, all coexist.
Protection with blessing is the soulmate of living. Protection on Samhain was some dressed up with masks to ward off the evil spirits, or to hide themselves from having their true identity known. The carved turnips were lit and carried to also frighten any remaining evil that lurked in the dark, but also to light the way to connection with more good.
Growing up, my mother forbade us to celebrate this holiday. She was deeply entrenched in religion, seeking community in any place she could find it. She would pull us from school to protect us from the evil parties and celebrations of Halloween, and on the night of the holiday, she would tape the doorbell, close all the curtains and blinds, and we were not allowed to have any lights on. If the doorbell was rung, she would make us be silent to make it seem as if we weren’t home. I felt ashamed for crying on those holidays, alone in my room, because I wanted to join the festivities outside but somehow felt I was inherently evil for having a desire for the “celebrating evil holiday,” as I was told it was.
I didn’t have my first Halloween until I was twenty years old. I was already married to the person I was told was a good fit, because I should be Mrs. before graduating college. I was told men don’t like women that are too smart. I had the “perfect” little domestic life. It was enough that I was allowed to finish college and be married. Our second year of marriage, in our perfect little house, I decided I would hand out candy to the neighborhood and dress up as a man. My then husband, indeed he is now my ex of almost fourteen years, thought I was ridiculous and watched t.v. Whilst I handed out candy, and in between trick-or-treaters, I silently cried. I was so happy to be participating, finally, but so sad because I was so lonely and felt small.
Then I had children.
The joy of this holiday was magnified, and it was the highlight of my year. My children are my favorite part of life. The best thing I ever did. And when they were little, I was left to do it almost exclusively on my own, as my ex-husband was in medical school and didn’t have time. But I lived in a fabulous community, and my next-door neighbor pulled me into their family gatherings, and suddenly my childhood wish had come true. Celebrating with people I liked and who liked me back, and I wasn’t thought of as evil. In fact, the one year when my eldest was one, and I was swollen round with pregnancy, with my second child, I dressed as a witch and felt so blissful. A few years later, I couldn’t bear to be married one more minute, but I didn’t want to stop the lovely life I’d built with my children. It was the most important thing to me to create a childhood of magic and trust.
But…divorce.
I thought it would be peaceful. It wasn’t. Everything I’d worked so hard to build was destroyed. I went from a homeschooling mama, baking from scratch, weaving magic throughout our days, to my children being put into public school against my will, fighting in court, and working jobs that never quite covered the bills because finding a job after eight years not working was beyond difficult. I had done it because I loved being a mom, but also because my ex said strangers would never raise our children and one of us needed to stay home, as he assured me I would never make enough to make us happy. My neighbor, who had been there for so many years, quietly making and delivering gluten-free brownies to my front stoop for my birthday when my ex had forgotten my birthday four years in a row, meeting me in the alley between our houses to have a nip of whiskey and an herbal cigarette when the days of motherhood were hard and we needed a wee break, gardening beside me so I could learn more than I had before…she offered me her home.
She was moving, and they had an apartment in the bottom portion of their house. I could move in at a heavy discount, and I could escape. The house was next door, so close that if you stood in the alley between the houses with arms outstretched, you could touch. I moved in the summer of 2012. That Autumn, having moved states away, I got the phone call from her husband; her in the background crying, she had been diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer.
I fell to the kitchen floor, her kitchen floor, in fact, devastated.
Days before she had moved, we had stood in her backyard, and she said, “Feel this clogged milk duct. It’s the biggest one I’ve ever felt.”
I felt it. A hard, immovable mass.
“That’s not normal. You need to get that checked out.” But she was busy. Busy being a mom, busy moving, busy existing. By the time she went in, it had metastasized to her spleen, liver, spine, brain…everywhere.
The almost three years that followed, she was the epitome of strength.
She died Halloween night 2015. The same day as her eldest daughter’s birthday.
I clearly remembered the night she gave birth. I had just seen her earlier that day, and she was a bit grumpy, so out of character for her, but she kindly reminded me what time everyone was gathering. When I came out the door to gather with her family and my children, she wasn’t there.
“Hope’s gone into labor.”
An hour later, after less than two hours of labor, the phone call came that she had given birth to her first daughter. We were all cheering. In shock, we laughed and cried, still handing out candy, the fire pit burning its warm glow, and feeling all the feels of life coming into the world on such a magical night. It had gone so fast she never got out of her clothes or her wellie boots. She gave birth in her wellie boots, filling them with amniotic fluid, which later made her call them her “birthing boots”.
She made my life today possible.
She was one of the most influential women in my life. If she were alive today, I would call her and beg her to come study with me. Travel with me. Japan, one of her favorite places and where I long to go to further my studies in Kampo medicine. I just recently found the little kimono she gave me for my daughters. One of her many unique collections from her travels. Then I’d plead with her to study with me at the herbal college in Ireland; most of their studies are online, but every year for four years we have to study in Ireland for a month with our herbal clinicals.
Please.
In 2020, I was able to sit on the porch where I had lived while married. Right next door to her house and the first apartment after leaving my marriage. I looked at the huge maple tree she had planted from seed. Everyone laughed at her for planting it, but she was insistent it be done, and that it stay. From a seed, it was now a huge tree, dropping its leaves and adding to the magic of the season. I looked at the branches and cried because they were so strong and full of life. She planted, and it grew.
I also admired her two pear trees in her garden. She had bought them when her belly was full of life with one of her babes. A little tiff between her and her husband had occurred, and in her anger she decided to buy two pear trees and put them in the ground even if it didn’t make sense because “Dammmit! I want pear trees.” I laughed watching her plant the trees, as I weeded my garden. She was determined to put them in, and the little bell necklace she wore around her neck was singing like crazy as she wiggled the root bulb into the ground. She had her wellie boots on and a skirt. Those were those same wellie boots I mentioned. The ones she filled with amniotic fluid during her fast labor, which later led her to call them her “birthing boots” rather than her wellies. She had laughed after planting, saying it was silly and they probably wouldn’t live, but she was happy she’d indulged her fantasy and “I can always just blame it on pregnancy hormones.”
She planted, and things grew.
She helped me plant an organic edible garden along with herbs to help feed me and my children, hung fairies in my trees for the children when we lived in and out of the hospital with varying medical maladies we didn’t have answers for, drank copious amounts of whiskey with me all the while breastfeeding our babies, watched my children in the dead of night so I could give birth to another baby, and then offering me her house so I could leave my marriage.
She was magic.
She helped me grow. She planted bits of this and that, and even years after she’s gone, I feel her, I remember her, I give thanks for her. One of my daughters is named Anouk and has the middle name of Amel. Amel means hope, which was her first name. Amel is the name I have for my business that I feed and nourish with my blood, my sweat, my tears, my hope for the future.
For me, as an adult, Samhain is potent, even with the tears that come from remembering the past and the memories we still look forward to creating but haven’t yet arrived at. The veil is thin, and for me, love is the most important thing. I miss celebrating with my older children this year, as, again, I’m living states away and still figuring out life. I do things to invest in our future. It feels like it’s moving at a glacier pace, but I’m moving nonetheless. The small seeds of today will grow, and they will be strong in the future.
Samhain blessings, wherever you are in the world, and wherever your soul is, loving in the fabric of this great big Universe.
LoLo
