What I Didn’t Get for My Birthday

What I didn’t get for my birthday…was a tattoo.  Not yet anyway.  But only because I haven’t found the exact design I’m looking for.

No, no little butterflies on my ankles or roses in my cleavage.  That’s definitely not me.  No gi-normous totem animals or big honking pentacles slithering down the small of my back either.  I used to like that spot for a tattoo but I hate the term “tramp stamp.”

No, for me, it’s not an ornament or a symbol of middle-age rebellion or even a post-divorce reclaiming of my body.  It’s much more than that and I’ve given it a lot of thought.  Hey, you know I have to be different, even among rebels, right?  And I have enough sense not to tattoo myself with runes, especially not bind runes.  I have enough respect for what that kind of merging with runes can do for you that I would never consider it without many more years of study devoted to their meaning.

I’ve been warned, too, of what imprinting my body with any tattoo–the delicately tasteful and well-hidden to the in-your-face-literally–will do for my prospects of ever having a respectable mate again (insert laugh here).  A man who doesn’t bother to ask the meaning of my future tattoo has no business around me anyway.

But here’s my plan and why.   I want a Celtic sun wheel tattoo, something similar to this picture I found at http://www.studioarts.co.uk/localartistdirectory/miketerret.htm.   Similar but not exact.   That’s the problem–I haven’t found the right design yet.  But it’s definitely a sun wheel, about 2.5 inches across.  It’s colorful, ornate, and Celtic, with very specific meaning for me related to my belief system and my attunement to Nature, Deity, and Eternity.

I also knew when I was thinking through this process that the tattoo would have to be a certain size and round.  You see, in the summer of 1995–the worst year of my life up until that point–I suffered a back injury that I eventually recovered from fully though I had to be quite careful for several years while I rebuilt my back’s muscles and strength.  After the injury, I was in physical agony for 27 months–the equivalent of back labor–and during that time, I discovered Wicca and a new belief system that fit much of what I’d always believed.  I found it through flashes of insight I had during self-hypnosis for pain management.  My very first act of intentional magick was to ask for healing, and after 27 months of unyielding pain, I found a medical practitioner who gave me back my mobility…3 days after I requested help from the Gods.

I felt the injury throughout my middle back but the start of it was in a small circle about 2.5 inches in diameter that went numb very suddenly when I picked up a too-heavy box.  The pain came within the day, but initially, it was just an odd numb spot in my left middle back.  Even after I finally found treatment for my injury and the neurologist and various other doctors had given up on me, I would occasionally run into metaphysical-minded people–strangers–who would ask me about the hole in my aura at my mid-back.  Even skeptics could put a hand near the numb spot and feel waves of heat pouring off of it.  Eventually, as I made my recovery, the numbness subsided.  I can now tell where the somewhat desensitized area is because I can feel pressure there, but not temperature.  It’s the only physical evidence I can still feel of my injury, and only then if I go looking for it.

Life Coaching Tips

That’s where I want the tattoo drawn.  Over that round wound to my aura, which was a wound on so many levels to me and yet was what took me off the office fast-track and out of my affection for the rat race that was stressing me to death and helped me find a new mindset and better balance in my life.  I don’t have the sense of my energy leaking out through that gaping hole filled with pain too strong for me to be creative or  positive about my future.  Not in quite a few years.  But somehow, I think of that sun wheel tattoo as the perfect “cork” for the hole in my aura and a fitting symbol to me personally of what I overcame, though few other people could see the source of my agony during those two long years when I felt too useless to live.

So yes, it’s my way of reclaiming my body, I suppose, from a time when I felt helpless and victimized as much by the medical system as by the injury itself.  And as soon as I settle on the perfect sun wheel design, that’s exactly what I’ll be wearing on my back.

Besides, when I turn 106, my mid-back tattoo will probably be a tramp stamp by then so I can finally be like all the other girls.


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