Well, after a good bit of agonizing (and several years gone by), I have finally put my Pagan pages back up on my website. Well, altered a little, but mostly the same. I used to have a serious-looking black intro page (which was sorta joke-y, making fun of all those other serious Pagan pages out there), that led into a bright sunny-yellow CountryMouse's Kitchen. But since this wasn't and isn't really about being a kitchen witch so much as it is about a "magickal household", that's what it's now called,
CountryMouse's Magickal Household.
This whole thing of having taken my Pagan Pages down a few years ago had to do with not wanting to be shunned or otherwise treated badly.
I did get a rejection from one web ring I applied to (for toys or virtual pets)--the owner of the ring felt my site was not suitable because of the pagan/witchy pages. No nudity or even semi-nudity...but not suitable for children. :-/
Then I started hanging out with the folks on the DotComGuy channel and wanted to "pass" as Xtian, because I was fairly sure I would not be accepted as an "out" Pagan (or any other kind of Pagan).
And most of all, I was terrified of how the country was going to go when Bush got into office. That's when I rejoined the U.U. church, so that if someone were to ask, "Do you belong to a church?", I could truthfully say, "Yes." It was to be my cover. The UU church even has a large contingent of Pagans, so it felt like a good solution.
But since Ian died, I have been rethinking a LOT of stuff: he was out about being Pagan, he was out about being gay, he was out about his bipolar disease. He was out and courageous. And I have been so timid and fragmented. So that's why I am taking some of these steps.
It still makes me nervous, revealing more of myself, since I have kept myself so hidden from just about everyone for so long. But maybe it will lead to my feeling more "whole". :-)