Let Me Tell You A Little Bit About Myself

I introduced the apprentices through an earlier blog post, but forgot to tell you about myself. So, let me introduce myself. I was born in California due to my father being in the Air Force and getting stationed there after World War II. My family was a pretty typical 50s, Leave it to Beaver type family. We were a middle-class family living in suburbia, two kids, one dog, a station wagon and Catholic. The only thing that seemed a little different was my mother worked and I had an African-American woman named Eadie (from Alabama) as my nanny. She raised me from the age of 0 till I was 7 years old. I loved her dearly.
As an adult looking back, I know that we actually did some stuff that most folks would not have considered typical. There were of course the usual Southern traditions like eating black eyed peas and collard greens for New Years luck, but there were other things.
I can remember my mother looking out onto the back porch and observing the rocking chair moving would announce, “Grandma’s visiting.” All the grown-ups had a firmly held belief in ghosts, they were just a part of the day to day. Sometimes my grandmother would talk to them like they were sitting beside her, or she might put a plate or a glass of water for them at the table, and NO she wasn’t “touched.”
The children were taught all the “superstitions.” Things like throwing salt over your left shoulder if you had spilt it. Not stepping on cracks least you break your mother’s back, not walking under a ladder, or opening an umbrella indoors. I found out later in life that some of the things I learned while growing up were not part of everybody’s childhood. Did you ever hear, “purse on the floor, money out the door” or were you taught how to make doll babies or mojo bags? How about a belief in prophetic dreams? Oh, and we (my sister and I) were taken to see palm readers, numerologists, and mediums on a regular basis.
By the time I was 16 and attending an all-girls Catholic high school, I was firmly entrenched in Witchcraft and what Grandma called “The Work.” I also felt called to serve the church and so tried to join the sisterhood. That last part didn’t take.
I continued to practice the Craft/Hoodoo until I was 25. At that time, I married the wrong man. I forgot who I was.
It wasn’t until years after my divorce that I began to remember, I began to grow and blossom. I made magic a part of my life once again. When I was in my 40s I had an overwhelming feeling that I needed to join a coven. It wasn’t my idea. In fact, I resisted. I didn’t need a coven, a bunch of witches to tell me what to do. Ever had the Gods whop you upside the head? Yap, I got whopped good. So I found a group and two years later got kicked out of that group. So I found another, and then another till I found a teacher that was right for me. Her name was Valerie and just like Eadie she hailed from Alabama.
Five years went by like the blink of an eye, and I found myself a Third Degree Gardnarian High Priestess with two large circles under me. Once again, I began to practice the old ways my family had instilled in me, now recognizing it as Hoodoo/Conjure.
That was more than 20 years ago. Seems like it was yesterday. The older I get the faster time seems to move.
My business, CajunConjure.com, began as a fun thing for me and a couple of friends to do for a local Pagan Festival. I had made “potions” and “curios” for myself and my friends for years so I just threw together what ever I could in two weeks, got a business license and a resale license and had a booth. Whew! What was I thinking? You know what? People liked my stuff, it worked and so I did it again, then again, and before I knew it, I had a website.
So today I am a crazy old crone who believes I can do just about anything I put my mind to. I live my craft and speak to dead people, and to the living, all over the country. As I write this, I am sitting in St. Martinville, Louisiana where my mother’s family settled when they came to this continent in the 1700s. Last week I taught classes in New Orleans. I love my life. There have been some pretty bad bumps and potholes along this road, but I learned so much from the journey.