Weaving the Way Forward

I grew up in a non-religious household in the suburbs of a big city in Eastern Canada. My mother tongue is English, and the second language I learned was French in order to properly integrate in this multicultural city but mainly French-speaking province. My Cantonese and Toisanese-speaking father was born in Hong Kong and emigrated to Canada when he was 9 years-old, his parents, siblings, and paternal grandparents settling in Montreal, and my Chinese mother was born in Montreal and adopted by a Chinese family who were second generation (perhaps even third generation) Chinese-Canadians. She learned English first and never learned Cantonese. I didn’t learn either.

While my three siblings and I were raised in a way that exposed us to aspects of Chinese culture, my parents had also adopted many elements of Canadian and Western culture. I would say our way of life was firmly “Canadian”, which itself is really a mixture of various cultural influences, with some Chinese cultural elements woven through. This meant we celebrated Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Halloween, and Thanksgiving with all of the trappings and traditions of these holidays but without any religious aspects, while also observing Chinese New Year and our own version of Ching Ming, Tomb-Sweeping Day, on some summer day that was more fitting for our Canadian climate. Mostly, these holidays were recognized as family feast days. 

We grew up surrounded by many churches and religious iconography in this historically Roman Catholic province, and went home to a house that had statues of Buddha, Kuan Yin, and the Taoist Three Pure Ones (sagely statues we children affectionately referred to as Huey, Dewey, and Louis). We didn’t actively pray to or celebrate these figures, but they still had a presence in our family and extended family’s households. I remember asking my parents one day what religion we practiced. I understood we weren’t specifically Buddhist or Taoist or Confucian because I hadn’t observed any specific practices that would suggest we were, though aspects of the three religious and philosophical systems were certainly woven through our family values and ways of life. My father nonchalantly told me we were Protestant, though we hadn’t expressed any beliefs or practices to support this either, and another time he said we were agnostic. I didn’t understand what this was at the time but now looking back, I see this was probably more a reflection of his own beliefs. It was some time in my early teens that he told me I was free to believe whatever I wanted.

What did I believe? I had the freedom to figure this out for myself? That felt exciting. I wasn’t comfortable simply choosing something to believe in and going from there on blind faith. I took this exploration very seriously, somehow already understanding, even as a young person, that my spirituality was an expression of my own essence, my own spirit, and should therefore be present in anything–everything–that I did, whether it was school work, house work, volunteer work, or other. And so I wanted to feel something deep within my bones. I wanted my belief to be rooted in the knowing that comes from lived experience. If I was going to choose some sort of spiritual path for myself which felt true to my own values, I wanted to really feel it, embody it, and already be living it, to a certain degree. But what did I already know at 11 or 12?

My parents weren’t religious nor observably spiritual, but if there was anything that made us feel connected to something greater than ourselves, something peaceful and grounding, it was being out in nature. My favourite childhood memories are of the many family camping trips and road trips my parents took us on. So many of our summers were spent outdoors, roaming through Ontario and the northeastern US states in search of the best, most beautiful campgrounds. My siblings and I swam in calm, clear lakes and jumped through waves in the ocean. We hopped from boulder to boulder along the rivers, sat out under the stars, and cozied up by the campfire. Throughout my childhood I always remember being outdoors exploring, playing, and collecting rocks and natural objects. In nature, I found joy and a sense of belonging that was harder to find back in the city, back in the community where I often felt like an outsider. 

When I discovered the Goddess (women’s empowerment – yes!) and nature-based spirituality when I was 13 years-old in the mid-1990s, something clicked inside of me and I became an eager student, devouring anything and everything I could find in libraries and on the new thing that was the Internet. I dove head-first into researching Goddess and women-centered spirituality, Paganism, witchcraft, and Wicca, sought like-minded community, and found beliefs and practices that spoke to me, empowered me, and made me feel connected to my best self and everything around me in ways that I didn’t realize I was craving so fiercely. And my parents–Gods bless them–they bought me all of the books on my Christmas wish lists and drove me to the local occult shop to buy candles, incense, tarot cards and anything else I was looking for that I thought would support my spiritual practice. They didn’t say anything when I created an altar in my bedroom, and generally left me to explore and discover, probably believing I was going through some sort of teenage phase. I have been on this ever-evolving journey of discovery for over 25 years now and my parents’ support is something I will always be grateful for.

Now a lot of the resources that are available related to Paganism and Craft have a Western European context, and while some of that felt strange to me as a Chinese-Canadian, I was ultimately willing to take in whatever I could find, because there was still something about it all that spoke to me. I ended up comfortably and joyfully studying and practicing within several Celtic spiritual traditions and communities for over two decades, before finally being nudged back in the direction of my own cultural heritage. I was Spirit-led to believe that if I could move through my discomfort and resistance to connecting with my ancestry and take the time to explore, I would discover a lot of similarities of belief and practice within my own ancestral culture, and perhaps, find healing in remembering, reclaiming, and renewing. What it took to come to terms with my identity is a whole other story (and one that is also still evolving), but once I was finally able to cross that bridge, so much more opened up to me and I realized that in essence, I was practicing in ways similar to my ancestors all along. More importantly, I came to the realization that though I did not know them by name due to adoptions and records being lost over time, the ancestors had been with me every step of the way–supporting me, guiding me, and living through me with pride and joy.

My personal spiritual practice today draws from many elements of the Chinese wisdom traditions, including a connection to nature and the sacred land, the cycle of the year, and the elemental phases, ancestor work and shamanic journey work. I personally work with the shamanic Queen Mother of the West, and I weave martial arts practice, tai chi, and qi gong in with meditation and ritual techniques I learned from Western traditions. I am slowly learning Cantonese as part of my reconnection work and I try to add Cantonese words and terms into my prayers and rituals. I celebrate the changing seasons and now with a family of my own, I am creating new family traditions as we begin to observe some of the festivals associated with the Chinese lunar calendar. If I had to choose a label to identify with to help others better understand the “flavour” of my personal spiritual path it would probably be something like a modern Taoist witch, or perhaps closer still, a modern day “wu” priestess. But even then, it’s not quite right. 

Whatever this is, I have made it my own, and though it is constantly evolving, it feels right for me. Some of what I know and what I do, I openly share with my children, but just as my parents offered me the opportunity to choose my path and my life for myself, I am encouraging my children to pick up the threads of the past–of tradition–that feel right for them, and blend them with wherever they are in their present, in order to weave their own way forward.