What are you the goddess of?

Goddess Leonie over at Goddess Guidebook and Goddess School asked the question a little while ago as part of a giveaway she was hosting, and while I answered it off the top of my head at the time it has not left me alone over the most recent days of clearing and organizing.

My first answer was to say that I am a goddess of healing and domesticity. In their own ways, that is a true answer, but it doesn't go far enough. It is too glib and surface-skimming.

I am a goddess of healing, but most specifically of natural healing. Helping the body and soul to work together for the greater good of all. I was born with a gift for energetic healing - I have often been told that I have "magic hands" - and working with herbs. I blended tisanes by instinct for many years, then took some herbal basics courses and learned that what I had been doing all along was correct. Since then I have been given my first level attunement in Reiki and I have reached level two training in Healing Touch, as well as taken several hours of massage training. Listening is a part of this gift, knowing how and where to direct the energy. Deep intuition and some level of listening to the guidance of higher powers than I are key to this.

I am a goddess of domesticity in a specific way, also. I can create an atmosphere of welcome and sacred space given some time and a few tools to work with. I cook well (perhaps it was all those afternoons spent making "soup" in my barbie pool with leftover herbs and other plants as a child!), and love to set a beautiful table. Hospitality is a gift I have been given. Serving others in a way that makes them feel valued and important. I also create art in a domestic setting - I crochet, knit, and sew. I use the term "fiber artist" rather loosely, but it still applies to what I do. Keeping an immaculately spotless house is not a gift or skill that I have been gifted with, though! My domesticity appears to be rather limited in that sense.

The most recent months since I lost my job have forced me to wander the woods and fields around the cottage, seeking my own most authentic life. I know that in moving forward I must honor these divine gifts that I have been given. I still am not entirely sure what that looks like, but I am trusting that there is a path set before me and a plan in Someone's heart for me and my highest good.

Here in the cottage I have been clearing the clutter a little at a time, uncovering and remembering my authentic self and all of the fears and worries that I have developed over many years that have kept it hidden. I have always been afraid of being who I seem to have been created to be. It is very powerful to carry the knowledge I carry within myself, and I am afraid of using that power. Of how it will get me labeled. How I have been labeled when I exercise my gifts. So now I sit here, the oaks sheltering my little wilderness are stirred by the autumn wind, and I am hearing the call to return to myself. To feel the fear and do it anyway. To embrace the titles of healer, artist, soul-lover. To open myself even more to explore the depth and breadth of my gifts and powers. To heal myself, first and foremost.