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Poems + Stories
Work With Mindy
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- Contact Mindy
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Anthologies

Edited by Mindy Nettifee

cover art for poetry collection Courage: Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls

Courage Anthology

“These poems are full of pain, humor, and guts. I wish this was required reading when I was in school.” …

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The Feed

Tonight at 10:21pm PT, the moon goes dark and rene

There are so many of us praying for the future of

There are so many of us praying for the future of life on Earth. Our roots are a big mess of roots. I am sad right now, about so many things, but if I’ve learned anything from this last two years it’s that I can be sad and keep going—in fact, I can only keep going by admitting my sadness. I invite you to join me in letting go of imagining a perfect response before responding, and resolving instead to keep responding imperfectly, from the best parts of us, as long as we can.

There are possibilities coming—opportunities to disrupt and repair and even prevent harm, opportunities for defiance and nurture, opportunities to build sanctuary and grow community. We won’t know them until we see them. Charge up if you need to charge up. Deepen your protection practices. These Leonard Cohen song lyrics keep coming up for me:

Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in

That’s us, we are the bells. We are the imperfect offering. We are the cracks and the light. As long as we are alive, and maybe, mysteriously, after.

…

Friday, at 1:28pm PT, the Moon will peak in her glory and madness at 24° of Taurus. Taurus is fixed earth, an archetype of stability, nourishment, and practical generativity. It’s territory is the rich, dark soil. It’s roots, and root systems, their growth and their communion and entanglement with each other. It’s this essential resourcefulness that all life has. It’s how we sense and find and draw in and then use and appreciate. Taurus is not “I have what I need,” it’s “I have what I need to get what I need.” It sings of solid foundations and loving conditions. It sings of presence and patience and resilience—slow growth is stable growth.

The Moon loves to be in Taurus, she’s in her exaltation here, and so full moons here can be very sweet and stabilizing. This one, however, is in a tight conjunction with Uranus, the highly activating planet of rebellion and revolution and sudden change…

✨

To read more, check my notes, or go to my Substack where I have as much space as I need to get into it. All pretty trees by American painter Maxfield Parrish.

Hi. The sun is ridiculously shining today. And fro

Hi. The sun is ridiculously shining today. And from the looks of the forecast, I better try and enjoy it. Portland Oregon friends, if you feel like being in physical community with me, and old books and new books and artists and poets, I’ll be at Mother Foucault’s tomorrow/Friday night to read poems with Emily Mundy, of Seattle’s Poetry Seance. Emily wrote a beautiful book called What Blooms in the Dark, out now on Moon Tide Press. We are going to hold vigil through poetry for all that is dying now, all that has already died and yet remains inexplicably with us, and all that is a secret seed for the new world to come. We are gathering at 7pm, and I would love to see you. As Toni Morrison orders us, “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. This is how civilizations heal. I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also crucial not to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.”

I’ve just been being with this news all morning.

I’ve just been being with this news all morning. I can feel the machinery of acceptance trying to work in me. It’s working, then sticking, working, then sticking. Then working again. What I am not experiencing, however, is profound shock. If anything, a calm has descended. The kind that comes after the high charge and fear of the unknown, and transitions me into — a different fear maybe, an orienting, curious fear. And there is a mix of other feelings stirring, of course, some grief, anger, disappointment, pain, and love. Steeliness and tenderness. The familiarity of this news of who I share a country with. Today is a day of acceptance, and mourning, and beginning to orient towards resources and draw them in.

Even if we can’t yet fully feel it, we are standing in the power of all we have learned. A new chapter of a longer story has begun, and everyone has a part in it. We will gain energy, soon, to take on greater challenges. But first, we might need to go within to process, and feel our feelings, and gather ourselves. We need to find our way from reaction to response. We might need to meet up and physically hold each other up a bit, so we can really feel that we are in this together. Then, we will rise into the courage of our convictions. As Rebecca Solnit and others are reminding us, there is no alternative to perseverance. We will regroup and keep going. We will just keep loving and living and fighting. Everyone reading this is a source of light and love, and we have the power to cast light and beam love in any darkness. For now, we guard that light and guard that love. Love and protection to us all.

I don’t know who first coined the phrase “nase

I don’t know who first coined the phrase “naseously optimistic” to describe this feeling, but wow, yes. Others have rightly compared it to the entire nation waiting to hear the results of biopsy. Did we catch it in time? Will it be terminal? Poet Alison Luterman went all in on describing that quality of this moment in her poem “Holding Vigil” which you should google and read right now, if you want to feel seen and known in this plutonium-level heaviness. I have taken down the paywall on my Substack post “I Don’t Know What’s Going to Happen — Advanced uncertainty studies and what helps me move through fear,” if you want to read about present-me trying to take advice from past-me. On that list is a shout-out to the importance of co-regulation, trees, gravity, connecting with the ancestors, and more. Im going to try and tie it all together and enact it in a live Zoom call tonight with my friend Amber Tamblyn.

Amber and I have been getting high on politics and poetry together for almost half my life. We were together 8 years ago when the worst happened, and so we wanted to be together in some way this year, calling in a big strong finish to this collective Pluto healing transformation. We are gathering at 6pm PT/9pm ET, and to get the link you have to sign up and be a paid subscriber to either of our newsletters - Amber’s is the wonderful Listening in the Dark, and mine is In the River of What’s Happening now, and links can be found in bios and stories. We will be laughing and crying probably about how hard we’ve been white knuckling it, and then I’ll be guiding us through a somatic practice for grounding all this fight/flight survival charge that is rightly coursing through us. If you want to link up your nervous system with ours, please join us.

Friday morning, November 1st, at 5:46am PST, the M

Friday morning, November 1st, at 5:46am PST, the Moon goes dark and renews herself at 9° of Scorpio. Scorpio is fixed water, the deepest water. She represents the dark, hidden, sometimes frightening aspects of the Water Mother, the sacred water that we all come from and return to. She’s also an archetype of death/rebirth transformations, heralding regeneration and healing. But ruled by Mars, her healings are not soft and loving, but harsh and loving; intense and potent; effective. She knows that to create conditions for healthy regrowth, we must allow malignant or exhausted forms to die. Scorpio tends to initiate healings with what stings, hurts, infuriates, and desecrates. And she sometimes takes us to the depths of our own powerlessness to get us to locate the power we do have; to properly reignite our will to survive and live. She especially wants us to feel and channel the power of our strong emotions, our rage and grief, even our fear and panic, so that we can act decisively to protect all that is vulnerable and sacred.

It can take a long time to master this level of intensity, this loving ferocity, but wherever Scorpio leads in your chart, that’s where you are meant to be a protection spell, on yourself, and on everyone you meet. This year’s new moon in Scorpio is arriving exactly on Samhain, the traditional day the harvest ends, when we conduct our death rites and feast with the dead. New moons are times of contraction in the cycle, times when we are called upon to rest and recharge. But the Moon is in her fall in Scorpio, so Scorpio new moons are not typically restful. They can be very potent and magical though, and a new moon on Samhain guarantees this one will be. A fresh current of manifestation is beginning. There are stories that are at their end, and new stories longing to be lived and told. Whatever story you are personally nourishing, whatever protection spell you wish to be or cast, consider first taking time to connect in some way with the great web of being. Feel all who have come before you, all who will come after, and all who are with you now. Feel all that you belong to. Whatever comes next, we will only make it through together.

I wrote a piece about some of the things that have

I wrote a piece about some of the things that have helped me through times of high uncertainty and fear for my Substack. I did it just for me, so I could remember that I’ve lived through a lot of fear, and a lot of liminal times, and uncertainty and insecurity must be tolerated in this life to get anywhere good. This US election is feeling, once again, impossibly high stakes, with the MAGA Republicans doubling down on their project of hate and greed, endangering girls and women and queer and trans folk and immigrants, openly courting fascism and white supremacy and Christian nationalism. I loved the joy wave we got this summer, as Biden stepped down and Kamala Harris stepped up, but we are closing this out on some high octane, healthy fear. It’s a lot a lot. So take care of yourselves out there! And please please take care of others by voting. We can be anti-fascist and anti-genocide and pro-love and pro-sanity all at the same time. We can vote as a chess move, to protect the rule of law, to fight off the billionaires, to protect the vote and our right to protest. We can keep the road open. We can keep the road open.

Vortex art by @psychedelistan

In the dark hours of Thursday morning, at 4:26am P

In the dark hours of Thursday morning, at 4:26am PT, the moon will be full and bright and loud at 24° of Aries. There’s no relaxing in the lead up to an Aries full moon. Aries is cardinal, initiating fire, ruled by the forceful, fiery warrior planet Mars. It’s electric and impulsive, self-starting and independent, frustrated and full of energy and no chill. Aries is represented by the ram, so just imagine the primal power and force behind a ram’s horns, charging an opponent or obstacle. That’s what Aries wants: to be a Force, fully realized, fully alive and embodied, free to push the world into new shapes.
Aries most important work is teaching us who we really are—what our true nature is—and so it wants us to think less, and act out more. It’s trying to get us to fearlessly explore who we really are, to become who we are here to become.

This full moon is just the latest in a series of intense events in Aries over the last 6 years—transits from Chiron, Jupiter, and then the north node—and I think we are really feeling it now, as the effects are cumulative. It’s been a time of extensive healing and growth Aries. It’s challenged us to take on the big work of healing our self-wounding: to stop giving others the power to define us, to own the ways we shy away from using our power and voice, to take responsibility for our part in perpetuating unhealthy power dynamics. It’s been asking us to know who we are and what we need and want, to equally prioritize all of that - to stop abandoning ourselves. We are sacred beings, deserving of being treated like sacred beings, and that begins inside, with how we see ourselves and treat ourselves.

On this full moon, celebrate any and all progress you’ve made embracing your true, whole self, all the good and the not so good parts, and ask for all the help and healing you need to go further. Recommit to getting free from all that is not you, and to living from self-connection, self-respect, self-trust, and real deal self-love. It will be a fight, creating a life that resonates with your deepest truth. But you are a force to be reckoned with.

Photograph of light by @davidgarlandmakes 🔥

Wednesday at 11:49am PST, the new moon solar eclip

Wednesday at 11:49am PST, the new moon solar eclipse arrives at at 10° of Libra. This eclipse is the third and last in a series of south node eclipses in Libra, the cosmic archetype of Beauty, Balance, Truth, and Justice—what we most need to create harmonious relationships. The south node’s job is to relieve us of patterns and attachments that are getting in the way of our soul’s growth. In Libra, it’s been targeting the submissive, avoidant, disempowering ways we show up in relationships, especially any maladaptive ways we go about receiving love—the people-pleasing, the over-giving, the soft or non-existent limits and boundaries. It’s been arranging situations that push us to more actively define ourselves, to develop and use our personal power, to advocate for own needs, and risk being more honest and maybe a little messy, even if it causes conflict.

We are in the deep end of this transit, so you likely know by now what this transit is up to for you personally. This last few days may have shone a bright light on it, as Mercury transited Libra and connected with both the south node and the Sun. You may have received a revelation or rude awakening. Or your attention was drawn to a situation or dynamic you’ve been aware of for a long time, but weren’t sure how to address. Now you are getting clear on the fact that, whether you name it or not, whether you face it or not, it’s standing in the way of progress. It’s like a crack in your foundation—it needs to be addressed and healed, or you need to be willing to move on. There is a better version of your life that can’t happen until you do. Change is so hard! But know that any honest efforts to address this work now and in the coming six months will be supported. If you feel uneasy, it’s because new energies—the energies of the growth to come—have already appeared. They are dialing in a change that your soul needs. While it is initially disruptive, you can trust this new awareness being ignited in your spirit. Write down any realizations. Summon your bravery and boldness and fuck it. Commit to doing the work. You don’t have to understand it all, or see the future clearly, to take the leap of faith in yourself.

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