Everything She touches changes!
As some of you may know, for the past ten years (give or take a month) I've worked in the restaurant of various branches of a department store. It's a good job - engaging, challenging, fun and rewarding - and I've had a fair degree of success in creating a career out of this. I loved my job and this was clear to staff and customers. But since the autumn, things started to get stale. I'd become increasingly frustrated with how staff were treated, by the management as well as the customers - I was raised to always show nothing but respect to staff and I am well aware that my mother would have been mortified if I'd spoken to staff the way customers speak to us sometimes. My attempts at progression in the company were continually cut off - even though most of the older members of staff agreed that I had been doing the next-senior job in all but title and pay for a long while. I was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the job and thought it was best to get out before I learned to hate the customers I was serving, so I started to look elsewhere.
I found a job that offered full time hours just before Christmas - something which I had been denied in the restaurant, since only the manager herself could have a full time contract. But when I went to hand in my notice, my manager offered to increase my pay to something slightly (only slightly, but still) higher than the other company. She also said that she would see about bringing me up to senior sales (the position I had stepped down from when I moved to Bristol about two years ago) This was a little more encouraging, so I stayed. I gave her three months to keep her word or show evidence that she was working on it. Nada.
After a particularly nasty customer had laid into me one day and the manager (in accordance with company policy) had not backed me up, I handed in my notice - giving four weeks instead of the required nine.
I struggled to find work with enough hours to support myself and even had to take Job Seekers Allowance for almost a month before something came up. During this time, when I wasn't working on my CV, looking through job sites or walking through town looking for vacancies, I turned to meditation and prayer. I couldn't understand why, when I had finally paid off my overdraft and gotten into the stablest financial situation I'd been in in years, I was facing this path. It didn't help that I was starting on this path without any of my usual tools for guidance. My pendulum guides were silent, and my tarot decks and ogham fews were not giving me anything, either. Even the trees that I talk to on the way in to work and the birds that usually say good morning were subdued.
Then Ana called one day from work to say that her manager wanted to talk with me after the weekend.
Durga is one of the rare aspects of Goddess that is both lunar and solar deity. As a daughter of the moon, I’ve always found it easier to connect with Her through the golden face of the full moon. Usually, I struggle with the heat - anything over 18 degrees and I won't willingly go outside because I risk passing out - but as I walked into town for my interview on Monday morning, I felt more comfortable in the rising temperatures than I ever had before. She came to me in the warm caress of sunlight and I felt Her strength and support. I reached out to Her, to offer thanks for helping me get to my interview with the minimum of stress and for Her continued support, and she smiled and gently reminded me that the sun was also Her aspect and that She watched over me in the light as well. I think She meant that I should work on connecting with Her through the sun, so as to open other channels to Her. Thinking back on it, this whole experience has been about opening myself to Her through experiencing the whole. In her aspect of Creatrix/Destroyer, Goddess was working to bring about a better life for me. Destruction is necessary in order to bring new things into my life and whist I was aware of this from my studies, I guess it took this experience to really understand how important the cathartic process is. It's even helped me to understand more the nature of the crone aspect of the Goddess, which I knew little of except as wise woman. Needless to say, I shall be spending more time contemplating the dark face of the moon this month.
The trees that I passed on my way into town were talking to me, reaching out to offer shelter from the bright light and to show me the pretty colours the light made as it filtered through their freshest leaves. One tree even playfully showered me with blossom as I walked under it. And it didn't stop with the trees. shrubs and bushes that I had never heard before tugged at my awareness, trying to introduce themselves as I passed by. Even the larger wild-flowers nudged at me. Since I was little, I've been able to connect with the spirit of a plant but before, I had to make a concious effort and connect with one or two plants at a time. Now, plants were trying to connect with me from all directions and it felt so wonderful that if I hadn't had somewhere to be, I would have stopped under the shelter of a particularly beautiful sycamore and cried.