Four years and a day ago, on the Summer Solstice of 2010, I stood on a hill in the midsummer’s heat. The clouds drifted in the bluest sky imaginable. I felt as if I’d come home as I connected with Mother Earth and felt the Sun’s warmth. It was there I dedicated myself to a pagan path.

Today I celebrate 4 years of walking a pagan path, and how things have changed. 

I can’t express how much I have learned and discovered. My reverence for nature flourished. My mind opened up, allowing myself to see the world around me in fresher eyes. My interest in history, mythology, music, science, spirituality, life, completely just exploded and grew. 

Since walking a pagan path, I’ve grown so much more optimistic. I’ve experienced amazing things because of my pagan path. I’ve attended a few pagan festivals, pagan movie nights, I’ve seen incredible scenes in nature, I’ve been to Native American pow-wows, drum circles, I’ve been on marches, been to Pagan Pride Events, I’ve hugged trees, I’ve appreciated art. I learned guitar, Native American flute, mandolin, I’ve written pagan songs.

I’ve explored the world of Wicca, I’ve joined the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids and am currently exploring the Ovate grade, I’ve read and learned about so many other religions than I knew even existed before. I’ve met amazing, incredible people who have changed my life, I’ve met Goddesses and Gods, I’ve found answers in meditation, I’ve seen other worlds in my dreams, I’ve found joy in a cup of herbal tea, in sunrises and rainfalls and the moon on snow, and I’ve found divinity within those. 

But I think most importantly, I’ve found home. 

And I intend to keep finding home as I keep walking my pagan path.

I think the biggest thing is the rightness I feel walking a pagan path. When I look back before paganism became such a pinnacle of my life, I can’t imagine going back. I can’t imagine switching paths, as so many would try to persuade me. As in Damh the Bard’s song Land of the Ever Young, “I can never return to the ways I once have been, for I have been to the Land of the Young…” There’s just no way once you walk that path that’s right for you that you could turn back. 

Your path will lead you down many, many roads, but whatever road you are on is a part of that path, and once you come to a crossroads, you’ll know which road you must take. You might not realize you’re making a decision, but eventually you’ll look back and say, “Whoa, I made a choice. And you know what? It was the right choice.” 

So today I will be looking out at the world, reveling in the greens and blues and greys and browns, the colors of the world and the colors of my soul, breathing in the promises and the humid, summer air, feeling the Awen envelop me, feeling Nwyfre fill my very being, feel the peace radiate from me, spreading ever outward in hopes of one day unlocking everyone’s souls to the prospect of peace shared with all, so that everyone may be able to find home.