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Tag Archive

Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “storytelling”

Fall Storytelling Intensive at Literary Arts

Mindy Nettifee September 8, 2020

Fall Storytelling Intensive: Stories of Healing/Healing our Stories October 15, 22, 29 & November 5, 12, 19 Thursdays, 6:00 p.m. …

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healingintensivemindy nettifeeoregon literary artsportlandstorytellingworkshop

Fall Storytelling Intensive at Literary Arts

Mindy Nettifee September 9, 2019 Leave a Comment

Fall Storytelling Intensive: Stories of Healing/Healing our Stories November 6, 13, 20 (3 workshop sessions) & December 4 (final session …

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healingintensivemindy nettifeeoregon literary artsportlandstorytellingworkshop

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Wow. Are you ok? This last month has been 🤢🤮 Wow. Are you ok? This last month has been 🤢🤮 very rough cosmic weather, this last week, even rougher, all culminating in some kind of graduation death moon weekend. I’m just catching up on the collective news, and what the unholy fuck. White supremacist hatred and greed is like an acid, trying to etch us all into nothing more than a series of trauma responses, too overwhelmed and sick with anxiety and grief to build something else, something loving and warm and safe and connected. Fuck that. Fuck that. If you are feeling strong, check on your squad, make sure everyone made it through, see who needs some witnessing or other support. If you’re not feeling strong, if you’ve been emptied out, scraped out, depleted, right - time to rest and refuel, replenish and recharge. In spite of these eclipse power outages, it is still Taurus season - Taurus plays the long game. We must play the long game. If you need a moment, take a moment. Take several moments. Sending you all so much love. This stunning death/birth piece is by @smileatthemoon_
Sunday at 9:15pm PST, the moon is full at 25° of Sunday at 9:15pm PST, the moon is full at 25° of Scorpio, and we have a total lunar eclipse – a blood moon. Scorpio is famous for its intensity – it’s an archetype of healing through underworld journeying, of transformation through the deep waters of feeling. Scorpio initiates us with what stings, what hurts and infuriates and desecrates. Scorpio wants us to fiercely defend what is most vulnerable and sacred. It also wants us to bravely feel our own vulnerability, our own sacredness. When a Scorpion healing is called in, we may need to take to the streets in rage, and we need to collapse and grieve, probably both. It’s imperative for the latter that we find safe places and people to let our guard down with. To work with it, we have to soften and remove our armor. We have to be raw and tender; to feel our most difficult feelings, our experiences of powerlessness. If we have had experiences of being victimized or traumatized or disrespected, left out or unloved or under-defended, we might need to reconnect with those parts, witness them with empathy, honor what they learned and still carry. Poison in the right amount becomes medicine. Based on what’s activated in the collective right now, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were all working with toxic power dynamics and the wounding of the feminine. Here in the US, an ongoing coup by an extreme right-wing minority is threatening to remove the civil rights of the majority; to deny those with wombs agency over their own sacred bodies. My dreams have all been about betrayal and love and sisterhood. This is a south node eclipse, and again, a total eclipse, so it’s here to clear out something that is no longer working. “Clearing” is not exactly a clearing, however – it’s more like a revealing. Old patterns do not get removed. Rather, we become so conscious of them, they can no longer be enacted unconsciously. From this position of (painful) awareness, it becomes possible to pause when an old pattern activates; to interrupt it, to do something new. However this is hitting you, I hope this eclipse renews your relationship with your sanctity, your power, your wisdom, and your “holy no.” Love & protection on us all 🙌🏼
Later today, at 1:27pm PT, the first eclipse of 20 Later today, at 1:27pm PT, the first eclipse of 2022 arrives - a black moon solar eclipse at 10° of Taurus. Normally, a new moon in Taurus offers a long, decadent pause, right when we could really use one. Taurus is fixed earth. After Aries fires everything up, Taurus comes in to steady the scene. It teaches base notes, roots systems, & solid foundations - long-game strategies for lasting growth. It wants us to move at the speed of capacity; to work only with nutrient rich soils; to do less and savor more. It sows in us the secrets of joyful, sustainable growth. It’s also preaching a kind of endorphin rush gospel - the cure for all the this overstimulation and overwhelm is simple sensual pleasure. Just get down in those lower chakras and stay there for awhile. Wherever Taurus is styling your chart, you might have a gift for working with this physical intelligence, for enjoying beauty and material abundance while staying grounded AF. Because this is an eclipse, however, you may not be getting to pause at all right now. It’s possible you’ve been in a current of fated events. It might feel especially challenging to access your Taurus moves, or you might be asked to figure out how to do all that in extreme or unusual circumstances. Eclipses are like cosmic power outages. They switch off the default mode. They coincide with eruptions from the underworld, visits from the past and future, major plot twists. This is the second in a series of north node eclipses in Taurus, and so ultimately it is drawing more Taurus energy in, setting new patterns in motion. There’s nothing we need to do to help this along, magically speaking, and there’s nothing we can do to prevent it. If you know your birth chart, reflect on the themes of the house ruled by Taurus, and how that might explain the next level shit that’s been happening. My sense is that for each of us, some core definitions are in the process of being updated - what perspectives have stopped working for you? What new ones are making sense? What might you need to feel calm and rooted in the midst of chaos and change? To reclaim some inner safety and solid ground? All hail @kilianeng for the eclipse inspiration 🙌🏼
Reno & Fallon, Nevada friends - I’ll be reading Reno & Fallon, Nevada friends - I’ll be reading poems live in person at a free event hosted by the Churchill Arts Council this Saturday. The exact facts are Saturday, April 30 at 5pm at the Art Bar & Galleries at the Oats Park Arts Center, more details in the bio link. This reading is entirely free to the public, sponsored by the Churchill Library Association (thank you libraries 🙌🏼) This moment was dreamed up back in 2019 just after Open Your Mouth Like a Bell came out, and because of the portal that swallowed the last few years, it’s just now being realized. It also would not be happening without Kelli Kelly one of my original partners in crime. It should also be said - this reading will be happening just hours after a new moon solar eclipse in Taurus, so there’s really no telling what might happen ✨
At 11:56 am PST today, the moon is full and fat an At 11:56 am PST today, the moon is full and fat and coining flowers at 26° of Libra. The Libra archetype is all about tuning and attunement — the basic tools of interconnectivity, of making instruments and human beings play together beautifully. The other things Libra is known for — art, justice, sweet parties — come from this deep instinct for relationship, this urge to balance and harmonize disparate elements and weave pleasing patterns and wholes. Wherever Libra leads in your chart, you might have a gift for radical hosting, for smoothing a harsh vibe, for combining and communing and looking good and feeling good while doing it. Full moons are times of completion and fruition, of fullness and over-fullness and over-it-ness. This one is closing out a mad week - we’ve been living through an exact Jupiter Neptune conjunction in Pisces - the energies have been very dissolvey and expanding. It’s been opening and inspiring and redefining and also, at times, dangerously ungrounding. If you’ve felt overstimulated and out-of-body this week, you’re not alone. The full moon might help to peak and crash whatever wave you’ve been riding (barely riding? being dragged by?), and begin the process of down-regulation and release. Whatever is culminating for you now or in the coming weeks might have something to do with how you’ve grown in your understanding of relationships; how you’ve deepened your genius for respecting individuality - yours and others’ - while cultivating interdependence. What can be acknowledged and celebrated? What are you ready to be done with? What still hurts? What would it take to honor what you’ve been through, so that you can practice releasing it, so you can prepare to allow new experiences in? It’s a good weekend to name it all (out loud, on the breath). Call a friend, or call ten friends, and tell them exactly what you love about them. Or just tell the moon when you see her, let her witness you and reflect you and throw a shiny party for how far you’ve come. Full moon inspirado from @chirnside.studio 🙌🏼
Just before midnight on Thursday, at 11:25pm PST, Just before midnight on Thursday, at 11:25pm PST, the moon goes dark and renews herself at 11° of Aries. Aries is cardinal fire, the holy shit starter. Ruled by Mars, it’s in charge of charging in, of impulse and initiation. The Pisces new moon cycle that has just completed is called, by some, the Death Moon, and the cycle that begins tonight is the Awakening Moon. If you live far enough north to feel the seasons change, you are likely already in it - the warmer days and nights loosening us, all of nature rising up out of its winter funk, trees in ecstasies of flowering. That’s Aries - a sudden rush to live and fight and fall in love, right now, fuck the future. Whatever part of your life Aries is styling, you might have access to a useful wild streak, some serious courage, and enough physical energy and willfulness to get you in good trouble. All new moons invite us into a time of contraction and rest and reset, a time to practice starting over, or beginning again. Aries isn’t that into rest, but it does love love a beginning. This new moon is in a conjunction with Chiron the wounded healer, and Mercury the magician, so there’s also some special potential here - these are ideal cosmic conditions for initiating a healing, especially one that’s connected to themes of personal power or creative energies, one that aims to reconnect you with your Self or soul. If you have the time on Friday or Saturday, you’re going to want to get into this. What creative project would you commit to starting now, if you knew you would succeed in time? Where have you been giving your power away, and what could serve as the right ritual of reclamation? What if you could choose-your-own self-fulfilling prophecy, what would it be? The new path you’re ready to start down begins now. Creating and healing are always entertwined, so invite them both in, start a (contained) fire, and tell the fire what you’re thinking, what you’re wanting; ask it to teach you how to transform. #newmoon #aries
We made it 😭 Happy first day of spring! We made it 😭 Happy first day of spring!
Just after midnight tonight, PST, the moon will be Just after midnight tonight, PST, the moon will be full and bright at 27° of Virgo. Virgo is a priestess / hermit archetype – serious, wise, precise. Virgo has an eye for details, a feel for subtleties in structures and vibes. It can sense how and why a system is failing, how a form has become distorted and lost its way, and then she doesn’t waste any time going about the repair. Virgo is a healer, a restorer of glories. After a month of getting opened up and undefined and washed out by Pisces and the cosmic ocean, its possible this full moon will bring some welcome dry land, some restabilizing and adjustment – an intuition about how to restore order. It might, at least, help us fall apart in more productive ways. It might help us cry, and pray, and sweep, and clean up what we can. In the early 80s, there was an order of nuns – the Markyknoll Sisters – that went to serve in Guatemala, in the middle of a war that had started in 1960 and wouldn’t end until 1996. Many church properties had been confiscated and used for detention and torture. This handful of nuns went to the small village of Lemoa, and reclaimed a church that had been abandoned by the military. The church had been desecrated. Horrors and atrocities had occurred there. The sacred energy was drained out, the building a ruin. So the Sisters went to work purifying this place with their peaceful intentions, with soap and water, with prayer, with food and love, with humming and gardening. In time, they transformed it into a sanctuary, and gave refuge to anyone who asked. While the war continued on, they were able to forge peace. I learned this story at the same time I learned one of the sacred names for Virgo is “the dweller amid ruins.” What’s happened, and what’s happening – the trauma and horror of the world – it cannot be undone. Healing is not fixing. But this Virgo moon wants us to know there is a way. It wants to give us some steel, some spiritual will. It wants to help us let go of our frozenness and fear, to trust a little more that the work ahead can be done. Whatever in us is in ruins, is also sacred ground. Happy full moon witches 🙏🏼 Art by @teyleen
Today the moon is brand new at 12° of Pisces, the Today the moon is brand new at 12° of Pisces, the nondual forever fish, swimming and merging in the great cosmic ocean. Pisces is a little psychedelic, a little trippy. If Pisces could direct our attention, it would want us to notice that we are all connected, that we are all part of the same holy, electric soup of being. Our sensations of isolation and disconnection and separateness are illusions, but they are very important illusions, ones we must live out. They give us unique feelings and perspectives, allow us to imagine and create new forms. But ultimately, for Pisces, we are exquisite facets of the great diamond of Being, the Cosmos itself trying out being us. This new moon arrives at a moment when so many are suffering and reeling, again, from the decisions and actions of a man deranged by power. Big waves of despair and terror and fury are moving through the collective. Interconnectedness isn’t abstract. Violence against any of us wounds us all. If you are feeling flooded or numb, experiencing direct or vicarious trauma, that makes sense. A new moon is an invitation to rest and reset, curl up with a good question, meditate in the quiet dark. That might not be possible, but that’s the invitation. There are always forces that are larger than us at work, and we get endless opportunities to learn how to locate our creative impulses anyway. Being a force of love and connection is also not abstract. Lovingly tending any one of us loves up on us all. We can feel that too if we tune into it - a field of hope and compassion and resolve to protect life. Pisces wants us to feel all of it – the despair and the hope – and respond intuitively. It wants us to see our therapists about it, tend our families and communities through it, cry in public, ask the trees for advice, growl like beasts, tremor on living room floors, conjure lunch, fall in love with everything again, write poems saturated with light. For its new moon, it wants us to imagine new worlds, empathize with them, sense what they might need to come into being. The coming days are an ideal time to plant seeds. What futures could you be the ancestor of? Photo by @Mathieurivrin_Photographies
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