So my DP has ground to a halt, and I find myself facing some things.

ADF leadership – I can sum this up in a few sentences. Where are the women in higher leadership? And also, why does there seem to be a growing disconnect between the org’s leadership and the org’s membership? Is my future with ADF or elsewhere?

Local ADF politics – There’s a huge subtext here that I don’t know – don’t want to know, but can feel. I don’t feel like reaching out to either group because I don’t want to deal with the tension, I don’t want to take sides and because certain personality styles give me hives.

Public vs private – I don’t want a church experience. That is to say, I don’t want to show up for holy days or moon days and not know and feel connection with the people I’m working with. I have no illusions – this is a relic of my work within a tradition that valued small, intimate groups, and is not likely how “people of old” celebrated. Nonetheless, I want to be able to choose who I spend my time with so I can go where I need to go in psychic, emotional, spiritual and physical safety.

Mythological focus – The Irish are currently out of vogue, it seems, and finding people who want to geek out about the Irish is hard. Finding local folks who want to geek out about the Irish and build a practice that has an Irish focus is harder still. I’m always so out-of-sync with what everyone else is excited about.

Internal issues – I’m working on these in other forums, but depression is definitely trying to push its way back into prominence. I’m starting to see a pattern – it starts in January and grows with the sun.

And here I am. Do I continue with the DP, or is it spending time in an organization about which I am starting to have concerns? I am looking at other druidic organizations – I am particularly interested in OBOD’s Druidcraft concept, but having trouble finding people to explore with me.

A wise friend suggested finishing the DP just to see where it takes me, that membership in a grove or indeed, even in ADF is not a required outcome of the DP. Maybe that’s where I need to take it.