My mother never told me about our bloodline having a gift. My mother sent me to my grandmothers for this summer because my older brother and I keep fighting and my sister being the oldest was probably mad that my brother and I were born taking her spotlight. She was into basketball, my brother was into football, and I was into martial arts and hockey. I had ADHD and was taking meds for it from my school counselor that my mom was friends with. She always would come and check on me during class and ask me how I was feeling. Apparently the meds give you a fever even though you feel fine, and it can make you randomly sick. I used it a lot to get out of school when I was bored because we moved so much and my last school was ahead of this one. I can afford to miss some days and still keep my grades up. Anyway, so I went to my grandmothers for that summer and it started out kinda boring, other than just hanging out at the pool every day it was sunny, and my grandmothers pool was huge. I got super tan that summer people kept asking me if I was mixed. So one day my grandmother was reading a book while my pop-pop was watching his shows, and I noticed her book had some cool art on the cover. I asked her about it and she told me all about her book. It was a cover with a witch who was floating in the air and she was controlling the shadows. My grandmother told me about the necklace she was wearing and what it meant and the power that the pentacle holds for witchcraft. It sounded really cool, and we talked about it for like two hours and then she told me a secret that my mom wanted to keep from me. My grandmother told me that she was Wiccan. I didn’t know what that meant, so I asked and she told me all about it. She believes that every living thing holds life, a spirit, power, purpose, capable of feeling just like humans feel things, have purpose etc. She likes to think she watches over stuff like that by practicing the arts. That’s what she calls using witchcraft. She said that she didn’t do it much anymore because my mother would always tell her it was crazy and not real. My mother never told me anything about it. I couldn’t believe such a big part of my family has been kept secret. My grandmother said that my mother refused to meddle with it and thought that it was best to keep it from her children as well. So my grandmother kept it hidden and a secret. She showed me her reading room I’ve been in so many times going over there, but she told me to look closer at the books on her bookcase she had across an entire wall. I saw the symbol she told me about on a lot of them. The pentacle. I pulled a few with no cover or writing on them and opened the books, the pages were really old and she told me to be careful with them because some of them had been handed down from her great grandmothers and so on since the 1300’s that looked like they were trash and had been covered in laminated pages with writing I couldn’t understand. My grandmother told me about her favorite book and how it was called a book of shadows. Every bloodline from the old ways, pass theirs down to teach their history, their knowledge, and keep their spirits alive through their teachings. She told me she kept it hidden in one of the closets in case anything we’re to happen she could have it close. I didn’t understand, but I guess a fire or something was possible with all the candles she liked to leave burning. She got it out and showed me our ancestors and how each generation has added a few pages to the book of shadows and when our bloodline began. How our ancestors were native Americans that had infinite knowledge of the forests and the very nature of earth had touched their spirits.. And how a man from the tribe, fell in love with a woman from a distant land with a different skin and face than they had seen before. And when he saw her he fell in love and they got married. When they had their children she would teach them their families history and the magic that they had a gift for from the blessings of a powerful being in the unseen world. Together their bloodlines made a power like no other. A connection strong with nature and the earth herself, and a gift from one of the most powerful spirits in the other realm. Every 5 years the different bloodlines come together for a gathering to share knowledge, trade anything from potions, spells, books, to utensils and even clothes and jewelry. It’s really cool. There are some voodoo bloodlines that come and set up some tents with half their shops in them. The best part about the gathering is, no currency is used. It’s a law for the gathering. You can trade, barter, or use whatever else as payment other than money. It’s the custom of the old ways when the ancients of our ancestors began the gathering.