I am many things. But I am not a fucking tag-line nor an elevator pitch.
I am a multi-faceted, multi-passionate word witch who brings the power of depth and disruption to narratives — both personal and fictional.
I divide my time between words (my mornings) and clients (my afternoons). Between a winter half year (slow, inward facing) and a summer half year (faster, outward facing. My three faces are word witch, wayshower and depth worker.
My four pillars are fiction, poetry, tarot and life coaching. On any given day, on any given project, with any given client, I am a unique blend of all four.
Add intuitive downloads/drops to the mix and you’re in for an unexpected unfurling, whether you are neck-deep in my writing or a client session.
For me, words are the smallest unit of magick.
I offer clients support and resources to disrupt legacy narratives and write self-authored stories to shape bigger selves, bigger lives and a reality of their own choosing. I leverage the quantum field of potential while holding the vulnerability of the human experience. Here magick and possibility co-exist with actionable visions and inspired practicalities.
I invite readers on dark, weird journeys that defy simple or repeated genre tags. Chasing characters across landscapes of love, loss, betrayal, power and technological advancement, my fiction is fuelled by the question: what if? My oracular connection is channelled as cut-up poetry with the stray free-form poem thrown in.
Hello 2024, what’s new with me?
This is my third year of intentional personal depth work with Christina Hira. We are exploring A Year of Asking, to follow up our Year of Uncertainty in 2023. We are also signed up for Season of the Wolf. My legacy short story collection This Once Precious Life comes out in February, along with the rest of my back catalogue via Inflorescence Publishing and I am pursuing an agent to represent my novel, What I Left to Forget, with the hope of securing a traditional publishing contract before the end of the year.
I’m into my second Summer/Winter Year and still tracking it’s nuances and vagaries. I plan to write my first post-trauma romance novel (and possibly the next book in my birthpunk series). Post-It Note Poetry returns in February for its 12th year, The Poetry of You winter depth work returns for its second from Mar-Sept and I hope for another spring program of Prosperity Consciousness with Kate Wildrick.
My aim is to complete 50 Inner Narrator Sessions and develop a short course to teach the process to other coaches. I wish for more clients who want to choose from my suite of skills and experiences to design exactly how they want to work with me. New Zealand will again be my temporary home February and August, with the view to spend a month in Western Queensland in winter. These are the next steps of my bigger life, the exquisite life, I’ve been pursuing since graduation in 2022. Maybe this is the year I find my summer house? (January, 2024)
That’s the short of it (for now).
The long of it follows …
Grab a cuppa and let me tell you a little more
I am a woman entangled in phoenix energy, infused with the power of devastation and regeneration. Someone who has learned over the years how to rise from the ashes, time and time again.
I am not living the dream, because I am not even sure what my dream is. I am okay in saying I honestly don’t get dreams but for many years I assumed there was something inherently wrong with me because I didn’t and everyone else did. I spent decades not even being sure about who I wanted to be. So, I am experimenting with what my best life is. Leaning into its mercurial nature. I’m learning the power of small incremental change. I’m embracing contentment, simplicity and ease because I do understand them.
I also understand passion. My passions are my best friends and most troublesome co-conspirators. It is a lifetime’s work to know when to say ‘yes’ and when to say ‘no’ especially because I am a finisher as much as a I am a starter. I will see something through to the end (even if it’s the bitter end, because life is not all happy endings).
I moved too hard and too fast for too many years. I believed my body would keep pace, because it always had. Until of course, it couldn’t. I am still working out what it means to move slower. To befriend pain. To embrace patience. I no longer see my body betraying me. Instead, I see the ways I failed it. I strive to live daily with compassion and kindness, surrendering into my body in the moment. I live in conscious alignment with my physical and energetic bodies. I have quit writing cheques my body was never able to cash.
I have lived a life of bonfires born from trauma. But I have pledged to stopped stacking them, choosing to practice laying foundations. I am done with my legacy blowing away in ashes.
Most of all, I am not afraid of the shadows. Especially not my own. And most definitely, not yours.
Woven between the poetics of these words are the everyday realities of who I am.
I am based in Brisbane, Australia. I live in suburban obscurity with my partner of 21 years, my 19-year-old son and our kooky spoodle Duke (aka Smuppy). The lockdowns of the Covid pandemic gave me a new appreciation of those who live in my neighbourhood. It taught me to be open to who my tribe might be.
My passion for writing began when I was 10, during the LA Olympics when we were charged with writing Willy’s adventures (Australia’s mascot). In this moment I realised I could write my own stories. I wrote my first ‘novel’ at 12. Twenty-six year later, I had my first extended work, Elyora, published. In all those years (and the ones since) I never stopped identifying as a writer. In 2021 I stepped into the identity of ‘career writer’ leaving behind my years as a ‘binge writer’ to write What I Left to Forget, my first solo novel. This is a brand new adventure and one I’m still getting the hang of. In February 2024 my short fiction collection, This Once Precious Life, comes out and I embark on a new adventure writing post-trauma romance after a decade and a half as an author of speculative fiction.
Creativity is my oxygen. The love of words and stories had led me down all kinds of rabbit holes. I was a magazine editor. I co-owned a small press that gave dozens of writers their first publication. I freelanced as a book designer. And yes, wrote my own books (including one of poetry). From 2018-2023 I was one third of the The JAR Writers’ Collective with Adam Byatt and Rus VanWestervelt, publishing 5 titles. I’ve assisted more than 30 titles to print. For 18 months, I built a daily metaphysical cut-up poem for the paid subscription The Daily Breath, producing more than 500 poems. Inflorescence Publishing is the new home of my publishing adventures, incepted in 2023.
I spent my 20’s working casual minimum-wage jobs. I became adept at surviving on a pittance and wanting nothing. In my 30’s I stayed home to raise a son and run a business. Creative excellence came before money until the household budget could no longer sustain being a patron of the arts. In my 40’s I made peace with hinky money stories and chose to unpack my inner success saboteur. I am a work in progress. In 2023, I am leaning into the astrological buzz in my Taurean 2nd house to blaze a new paths.
I felt too much and not enough as a young woman. Trauma disrupted my ability to establish healthy intimacy with men. In a culture that told me I was only worthy if I was in a romantic relationship, I stayed in an abusive one for three years to prove “I could do relationships”. Trauma begets more trauma until the cycle is broken. I still feel the wobble of not knowing how much of me is enough.
My son was born at home in 2004. It was a gigantic stride forward in owning what was important to me and giving zero fucks about what other people thought. The seeds of my rebellion were sowed here. I became part of the birth reform movement. The Home Midwifery Association also gave me my start in publishing and editing. When I stepped away from activism, I injected the fight for bodily autonomy into my science fiction. The first baby of those efforts is Her First Reality, Darkness (a reproductive dystopia). Books 2 and 3 in the series are schedule for publication in 2023.
The road through motherhood has been rocky. I never considered the possibility of being the Mum of a son with chronic anxiety. I never considered solo parenting even though I was partnered (my partner spent years away doing field work). I never considered the toll of unsupported parenting (no close family and our friends were all new parents like us). I was totally unprepared for the daily grind because no one spoke about it. I once joked motherhood was a gilded cage I was locked inside.
My son’s anxiety brought unanticipated challenges. I wish I had chosen home-schooling from the beginning, but I was desperate for the respite school offered. Instead, I got home-schooling only after my son had been damaged within the system. I also got a son who couldn’t play at a friend’s place, sleep over, or give us a break by being elsewhere. I often wonder how I made it out in one piece. At the same time, I know quite a lot of me didn’t make it out. My son turns 18 in 2022 and I can believe now, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Chronic illness came first as depression, then as ongoing, undiagnosable pain. It came as years of insomnia, followed by years of exhaustion. It came as panic and anxiety and a plethora of associated health issues. But one thing chronic illness taught me was how much energy goes into stuffing things down. Life eventually is better for the purge that chronic illness brings with it (but it fucking hurts at the time). I trust implicitly the friends I still have. I also know that iron is my best friend and its lack, my most gutting enemy.
I’m a recovering overachiever. I’m also a recovering addict of starting something new to bolster what’s existing and floundering. I call this “new project energy” – a lot like the heady “new relationship energy”. I have burnt out time and time again. I still struggle to choose ‘no’, when every part of me screams ‘yes’, and to trust a great idea does not have a shelf life. I believe I will find the sweet point of how much I can sustainably do in any given day/week/month/year.
I came out as polyamorous at 42. This was 13 years into a relationship that wasn’t in a strong shape. I faced myself and healed the things I assumed would be fixed simply by being with another. I learned to love myself (truly and deeply) and to engage in being the best version of myself. I am grateful for the role life coaching played in supporting me (because therapy utterly failed me). We are happier now than we have ever been. This is one of two defining areas of my personal evolution.
My spiritual awakening and continual unfolding is the second. As Lindsay Mack says: It is not one and done. Or as Shrek says: Ogres are like onions. They have layers. I have psychic channels and more recently, a heart channel. None of this comes with a user’s manual, and thus, it is a wild adventure. I am blessed to have a foot in both worlds.
I have been a professional tarot reader since 2016 with a focus on narrative shifting – helping people to see the impact of the old stories shaping their lives and supporting them to write new ones. My practice is very much shaped by my experience of life coaching (I am the tarot reader who sets homework!) and my work as an editor and author. Part of this work has been the production of a monthly tarot journal since 2017 to help people help themselves. 2024’s journal is The Poetry of You (a free download).
Ultimately working as a tarot reader led me to train as a life coach. Here, my multi-passionate nature came into sharper focus, as did my personal power. I learned how to embrace all part of myself. The kind of healing I’d been yearning for unfolded. In September 2022 I graduated from The Coaching Guild. My intention is to flow the fierce brilliance of Lisa Hayes into the world through my unique combination of tarot, coaching and story. For the first time, I truly believe anything is possible.