Practical Pagan Coming out of the broom closet - By Calandriel an Cuiileur
C
oming out of the broom closet is a tough moment for everyone. Especially when coming out to your parents. That’s why I’ll share my journey with you. When I was around fifteen, I came into contact with the different Pagan believes through Elani who shared a couple of things with me and loaned me a book or two. After that I visited local bookstores and went on the hunt for more information and other witches, finding wonderful people online to share my believes with. As my online friends started organizing offline events, I found myself having to ask permission to go to a witch’s meeting. I decided I needed to talk to my dad about different religions first so I could find out what he thought about them. As it turned out, he had heard about natureworshipping religions even though he wasn’t sure about the details. He even knew about Samhain and Imbolc.
At that moment, I was already celebrating the wheel of year celebrations on my own or with a friend. I told my father about my latest celebration and my dad asked if he could see me perform a ritual so he could get a feel for my believes. When I’d told and showed him a couple of things, we decided to tell my mom. We spoke about my religion, how it shaped my life and that I wanted to go to meetings to meet other witches. We agreed that I could go but that my mom would accompany me the first few times so she could see what it was all about. So said and done and since then, my parents have lovingly accepted the fact I’m a witch. Although I never had a deep conversation about the subject with my brother, he has accepted it as well. It’s hard though, sometimes. For example, a while back, my brother was in the habit of joking about witches and witchcraft at parties and to our mutual friends. He didn’t mean anything by it but It made me realize he didn’t really know what I was doing. In itself it
wasn’t so bad but the people he was joking to could get the wrong image of witchcraft and of me. I asked him if he could lighten up on the jokes and offered to explain what I was actually doing. Instead of Christmas I celebrated Yule with my family last year. The sole reason my family celebrates Christmas is so the whole family is together for the day. Because of that, my family was all for it. We burned a Yule log, told stories around the fire and took a walk outside to enjoy Mother Nature. As you can read, I am fairly out of the broom closet, even though I sometimes realize people around me still don’t really know what it’s like to be a witch. I have to admit it’s hard to explain sometimes what I practice to others as it’s such an individual way of life; being pagan means something completely different to everyone who practices it. In my experience it’s best to be open about your believes and, if you have the idea others misunderstand, offer to explain your believes to them in greater detail. It saves you a lot of trouble.
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