Live Like the Goddess You Are
We are in the very darkest part of the year in the northern hemisphere. The whole time from Samhain to Imbolc is known as the dark quarter. Moreover, we’re only a few weeks past the winter solstice, the very darkest time of all. So it’s natural that a lot of us might be starting to feel the winter blahs.
I define the winter blahs this way; there’s a vague restlessness, an odd dissatisfaction with the routine. We’re edgy, and we might feel we want to run away.
This is the time of year when those with the time and the means fly away to tropical locales nearer the equator to feed themselves with sunshine, and endorphins, and vitamin D at health and wellness spas that will treat them like the goddesses they are.
They’ll be fed the absolute healthiest, most delicious meals, made by master chefs. They’ll soak in scented tubs, and take massages, and yoga classes. They’ll meditate by a waterfall, and dine beside a fire. They’ll leave their cell phones behind from these spa retreats, and they’ll refuse to allow stress to come with them.
This what some think of when they think of self-care.
So how can those of us who don’t have excess time or money give ourselves a little bit of that wellness spa experience?
Let’s get creative!
Below I have a several ideas to get you started. You don’t have to spend money. You can use what you have. Read on, and then let me know what you’ve done to honor your own inner goddess!
The Sunshine Nook
Choose the sunniest window in your space. Pay attention for a couple of days. In my house, the south windows are the sunniest.
First, clean that space. Wash the walls, the floor, the window glass, and the trim and woodwork around it. Launder the curtains.
Second, find a big sheer curtain and drape it, swag style, over the curtain rod in your sunny window. Hang a plant there, too! And maybe add a small tabletop fountain, or a crystal prism that can hang in the window dispensing rainbows.
Third, find a comfortable chair, or cushion, or beanbag, or hammock to place it near this window. You might want to freshen up whatever piece you choose, painting it if it’s wooden. Use soothing light colors, pastels and off-whites. Or maybe replace its cushion or re-cover it, or add a throw pillow. Drape your favorite, softest blanket across it, too.
Fourth, find a stand just the right height to sit beside your seat. And put on that stand anything you will want with you in this space. Add incense and a candle, and it be your meditation space. Add a book and a cup of tea, and it becomes a reading nook. Put the makings for a mud mask, cucumber water, and a hot towel there and you can give yourself a facial.
Make it Magic
Cleanse the space with burning sage, then make an equal-armed cross on the window glass in the sacred oil of your choosing to seal the magic.
Use your small stand to create a miniature altar with representations of earth, air, fire, water, spirit, and the divine.
Line the windowsill with sacred objects from nature, crystals, shells, feathers.
Make Special Drinks
Make cucumber water, or citrus water, or raspberry iced tea, or your own favorite natural drink. Keep it in a special glass pitcher in your fridge. When you pour it for yourself, use a special glass. Stab a couple of cherries or an orange wedge or a strawberry with a toothpick, and dangle inside glass’s rim.
Make an herbal tea. Have a special cup for this tea, maybe with a matching saucer if you want to be fancy. Make yourself a little snack to go with this tea, as you might if you were having company or playing tea party with a child.
When you drink your water or sip your tea, make it a special occasion, even if it’s only a fifteen-minute one. Choose a special spot, indoors or out. Choose a spot with a view. Open a window to let the breeze come through, weather permitting.
Make it Magic
When making the tea or water, bless each ingredient. Move your hand over it, clockwise, and imaging white light beaming from your palm to bless the item. This is the light of your divine inner being, your soul, which is part of the Whole/Goddess/God/Universe/Source. Choose each ingredient for its magical associations as well as its flavor. As you bless the drink and its ingredients, focus on the energies you want to heighten within it.
Wear Special Clothes
When you feel like you need some pampering, slide into your silkiest, softest, most comforting clothes, whatever those are for you. I like loose sweaters and soft flowy lounge pants, and layers shawls. I love soft, thick slipper-socks on my feet.
Make it Magic
Choose the color of your clothing according to the energy you need for the rest of the day, or the week ahead, or whenever. As you don the garments, don the energy represented by the color. Call it up from within yourself. Say it aloud, and if you can, make it rhyme.
Take special baths
Showers work, too. But instead of jumping in and out quickly while your brain is elsewhere, spend some quality time. Have an oil warmer in your bathroom, wafting some soothing, empowering scent, like sage and rosemary, or cinnamon and vanilla, or sacred sandalwood. Devise a way to dim the lights, even if you don’t have a dimmer switch. You might bathe by candlelight and leave the brighter lights off. Make the water as hot as you can stand it, and fill it with bath oils or soaks that feel luxurious to you. You can even scatter rose petals into the water.
Play soft, soothing music while you soak. Stay in the water until it begins to cool.
Bonus touch: put your heaviest robe and your towels into the dryer before you bathe or shower, then grab them as soon as you get out and wrap yourself in their warmth. Bliss!
Make it Magic
To make this bathing ritual a spell, stay in the tub while the water drains, and visualize it taking all negativity from your very pores, down the drain with it. You can also do this visualization while standing beneath the shower’s flow.
Nourish Your Body
Feed yourself spa food; focus on green leafy vegetables, cruciferous vegetables, berries, sweet potatoes, other fruits, other vegetables, beans and other legumes, whole grain breads, whole grain pastas, whole grains themselves (brown rice, oatmeal, quinoa.)
Avoid: Animal proteins (meat, fish, eggs, dairy) processed foods, refined oil, refined white sugar, refined white flour. They don’t serve that stuff at wellness spas.
Make it Magic
When cooking, always stir clockwise, chanting to empower the food with the energies you want it to convey to those who eat it. Choose your herbs and spices with an eye toward their magical correspondences, as well as for their flavor. You can work the two things around each other to supercharge a meal.
Grace before eating: Grant me the wisdom that I might hear in the breaking of the bread, the song of the Universe.
Think about the words and what they mean to you.
Blissful Bedtime
Make your bed. It’s so wonderful to get into a freshly made bed at night! Make it extra special, just the way you like it. Use your favorite sheets and best comforter. Pile the pillows as high as you want. Drape some gauzy panels of fabric from the corners of the headboard, or from the wall or ceiling at the four corners. Didn’t we all dream of a bed with gauzy bed curtains like that, when we were little girls?
Clean your bedroom. Fill it with the scents you find most soothing. Scents of ocean or rain or forest. Find a white noise app or sound maker to play at night, something like ocean waves, rainfall, crickets, loons, forest sounds, etc. Make your sleeping room as nice as you can make it. It doesn’t need to cost anything. Use things you already have. Rearrange, change the wall hangings, add lush plants, wash the curtains, put pretty things around, make it feel, sound, look, and smell blissful, restful, peaceful, wonderful.
Make it Magic
For relationship harmony, hang a round mirror in the bedroom.
Sprinkle a few rose petals underneath the bottom sheet the next time you change them. Invisible love & sex magic
Morning glory seeds sewn into a pillow will keep away nightmares.
Say a bedtime prayer. Here is mine:
Nighttime forces, Darkness Deep Mother Moonlight, guide my sleep Speak to me in sacred dreams Send your wisdom in your beams Tell me all I need to know Through me, let your magic flow
We all need pampering
Not only do we need it. We deserve it. Do you know what you are? What we are? We are divine energy in physical form. We are goddess incarnate.
Now if you are aware that a goddess is riding around in this chariot you call your body, don’t you think you’d better treat her like one?
In this analogy, my body is the temple. I am the keeper of the temple, and I am the priestess of the goddess who resides there, and I am the goddess herself. And so are you.
It’s time to start treating our inner goddess as she deserves. Only when we give ourselves our due, worshipping our inner divinity, will others treat us in the way we long to be treated. Only by recognizing our own inner goddess can we truly appreciate the inner divine in each of our loved ones, and in all human kind.
Live like the goddess you are, and that energy will radiate outward from you like a golden beam of divinity, of goodness, or wellness, of wholeness, of healing, of joy, of fulfillment, of connection, of understanding, of wisdom.
Of magic.
Make everything you do as special, as sacred, and as magical as the goddess who lives within you deserves. This will elevate you in your own perception, which will elevate the life around you to a whole new level.