44 Days of Witchery Day 25: Loved Ones

The question today is: How do your close ones feel about your witchy path? Do they know? Why or why not?

The short answer is yes, they all know, and are fine with it. The long answer is more complicated.

My mother and sister know that I'm Pagan and that I belong to a coven. They know most, if not all, of the coven members because they're also my friends. They know that our coven is part of a broader Pagan community. Occasionally, my mother asks me about the significance of a sabbat or esbat when she notices I'm preparing for one or cooking something special and she's often glad to pitch in and help. Beyond that, I don't think they understand what Paganism is or what I do as a Pagan. I don't know what my dad thinks, but he's always been glad to help me with tasks such as drilling holes into a log for candles at Yule.

The general environment at home is accepting. I think that's because my family is not religiously conservative. They're Roman-Catholics and, for my mother, that's personal. She has images of Jesus in her bedroom and a rosary under her pillow, but she doesn't like going to church and rarely does. She's not a monotheist; I've heard her say things such as "those are their gods" in reference to Hindus so I guess it sits just fine with her that different people have different gods. I'm not sure what the rest of my family knows or thinks, but I don't think there's anyone in my family that would have a major problem with it. Despite official positions, in my experience, Catholics in practice are pretty easy going. I find that fundamentalist and evangelical streams tend to run more through Protestant and Baptist forms of Christianity.

One of the challenges, I think, is that most of the older generations of my family don't speak English. The Pagan lexicon is not even mainstream in America. It's less so in Hispanic communities and witchcraft carries its traditional negative meanings. Ironically, my family is more cautious around Santeria, which is native to our country, but also carries a lot of bad baggage. My father travels between thinking it's the primitive nonsense of uneducated people or a con and taking it seriously enough to warn me against getting involved with it.

When I try to come up with an answer to the question of why my family knows, I can't come up with a good answer. I never had to come out of the broom closet. I never hid my interests. They know I'm Pagan in the same way that they know I like Madonna's music. It's just there and it's been there a while.