Coming out of the shamanism closet

Another closet to come out of. You'd think I'd be used to this by now ;-), but it's still a little scary.

I recently finished a two-week shamanic intensive healing course which turned out to be utterly fantastic and quite life-changing. Life-affirming, too. On returning to my home patch here, I found that the woman who organizes our monthly drumming circle has enrolled in an intensive acupuncture school in Florida, so she'll be traveling there for a month here and there over the next three years. She's asked me to take over the job of organizing local workshops, and I've agreed. To effectively market them, I have to be more visible as a shamanic practitioner in our community which is slap in the middle of the Bible Belt.

Two days ago I sent out calendar entries to various newspapers, and our local paper responded that this really should go in the Religion and Faith section, which kind of thrilled me. I e-mailed the lady who's in charge of this section and boldly asked if she'd be interested in writing an article about shamanic practice as spiritual vehicle, and she said yes. She did say that she'd need a "doorway" into that community, and I responded that I would be it.

So. I might be very visible in our local paper as doing shamanic practice.

I'm excited by the prospect, and also totally not naive as to what this could mean for me professionally. I have the hunch that this information becoming public will both lose me clients and gain me clients. I'll most likely gain more of the type of client that I've been wanting to have since I started my massage therapy practice, and I'll likely be shunned by some of the more fearful folk as some sort of witch, too. Hell, I'm already shunned just because I'm a Democrat and have a sign for my chosen party's presidential candidate in my yard.

But still, anonymity can offer tranquility and perhaps a false sense of safety. It'll be interesting to see what I'll do when and if the spotlight begins to shine.

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