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Into The Dark Woods

This is a perfect topic for this dark moon.

The dark woods was the affectionate name one of the 2023 winter women dubbed my winter depth work and how the summer year was like arriving in a hut surrounded by a beautiful garden.

When we caught up last weekend we all agreed our summer year had been busier than anticipated and not quite as idyllic as the concept of that glorious garden may have been.

One thing missing from all our summer years was each other. I don’t think we realised how important journeying together was.

It is time return to the dark woods. I am hoping you will join me  in Unseen for this year’s winter depth work.

The Dark Woods

I’ve been studying fairy tales with Carina Bisset since the middle of February. Her Season of the Wolf course is a rich and complex exploration of fairy tales and science.

Last week we dove into The Robber Bridegroom and Bluebeard.

Christina, my anam cara, commented that the girls in these fairy tales (and their adaptations) and so many others we have studied, are lead/coaxed/coerced/curioused into the dark woods or far-flung houses.

Often they arrive alone to find monstrous things awaiting them. Or they travel with the person who will become the perpetrator of ills at their destination.

All these locations have on thing in common — they’re isolated.

Isolation

A few weeks ago, I spoke to my friend who is a social worker, about isolation. We were talking about my novel. My friend highlighted isolation as one of the risk factors in domestic violence, and how the setting of my novel, in Western Queensland, is definitely isolated

I remember the way extreme rural living (so different from my life in the city) facilitated the kind of brainwashing my ex got away with in my mid 20’s. And how I let so many things happen, until it was a full-blown domestic violence situation, because I was repeatedly told: this is the way we do it in the country.

(Just to be clear, no, we don’t behave like that, anywhere, ever!)

For my main character, Lucy, the isolation of the far-flung township of Matilda, is meant to be a protective factor in her leaving her sanctuary in Hobart. And it is, until someone undermines the confidentiality clause of the dig she’s working on and invites the media to town.

Fairy-tale isolation means the girls are unseen and unheard. Alone they are vulnerable — not the Brené Brown good vulnerable. Here, being alone puts them at risk.

In that regard these stories are not just cautionary tales but also modern allegories of the risks of isolation and loneliness.

Isolation, Suffering and Human Scale

Beyond Human Scale is Brené Brown’s latest podcast topic for Unlocking Us.

In her conversation with Esther Perel at SXSW they spoke about the long-hand of isolation and the immensity of loneliness and disconnection in our hyper-connected world (On The New AI: Artificial Intimacy).

Brown says: Attention is such an undervalued form of love.

Perel replies: Attention is an amazing quality because much of the time when people suffer or struggle, they don’t need fixing because some things can’t be fixed and not in the moment. So all they need is a witness. Attention is witnessing.

People have suffered from the day human beings have existed. There’s nothing new. But they always knew that the suffering needs to take placein the company of others. And these days we do too much suffering alone.

The comment about suffering in company has stayed with me.

Transformation isn’t suffering, but it is often rough. Doing it alone makes it harder than it could be.

Doing it with others makes it bearable — and times, even funny.

In The Company of Others

I was lucky enough to join a support group when I was pregnant. Preparing for a homebirth should not be fundamentally different to preparing to birth in a hospital or birth centre, but it is.

It was there, in support group, through my pregnancy and early months of mothering, and what ended up being the first three years of my son’s life, I sat with other women — drawing strength and wisdom from them.

It was there I learned the power of storytelling.

I’ve been in many circles since — both as participant and facilitator.

Both Prosperity Consciousness and Replenish had group sharing as a core component of them.

Earlier this year I also ran the Between Years sessions. We all came away from those mornings in awe of the soul and heart nourishment that being in a shared wisdom space with other women was.


Unseen

Collective storytelling and wisdom sharing, and communal learning and unfurling is one of the most transformative spaces I know. It’s what my winter depth work is built around.

We go into the dark woods together. And me navigate them together. And that togetherness forms a vital and protective illumination. It lights up the path and makes the unknown less scary.

We become the Hermit’s lantern for each other, as we seek our underworld stars.

Together we are no longer isolated. We are not alone.

We are seen. We are heard.

Unseen is a container where your struggles, your joy, your sorrow and your triumphs are all witnessed.

Your unfurling is supported in a cooperative way.

Your strength and tenacity are celebrated, alongside your tenderness and vulnerability.

Go Together

I’ve done plenty of healing and soul work alone. It has its time and place. But since Christina came into my life, I haven’t had to do it alone.

I am better for that shared experience, both professionally and personally.

On the cusp of the solar eclipse tomorrow, astrologer and social activist Chani Nicholas writes:

(the) solar eclipse in Aries is no joke. It requires us to confront the discomfort of (metaphorically) burning away what isn’t meant to stay. Occurring at 11:20 am PT (Monday) conjunct the Chiron cazimi, this eclipse invites us to go deep into our shadowlands and transmute our wounds.

If you want to take the next step, a deep dive into yourself in the company of others Unseen is the six month gift from yourself to yourself.

If you haven’t worked with me before and would like a feel for me and my way of doing things organise a TOE DIP free session.

For everyone riding the eclipse energy, be gentle. Consider the first kindness to yourself and do it.

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An (Imperfect) Retrospective: Post-It Note Poetry 2013-2022

Christina, bless her heart, invited people to share their Post-It Note Poetry journeys in a post this morning on IG. As the creator of the event, it is a long look back on the history of PINP  and my emergence as a poet. (Thank goodness for finally working out IG’s search function!)

The Start

If you remember, Adam and I began this in 2013 as a dare.

In 2012 I had spent February composing very bad haiku as a form of creative rehabilitation (because I had no emotional investment in it, compared with writing fiction) and in 2013 I was willing in inflict bad poetry on my writing partner. He upped the ante daring it to all happen in the space of a post-it note.

We posted our intial efforts to Facebook (back in the days when people’s posts actually appeared in your timeline!) and friends joined in. We set up a Facebook to curate what had gone from a dare to an event.

Fast forward 11 years, here we are ready to go around the block again.

With A Little Help From My Friends

No retrospective would complete without a tip of the hat to my past curators — first Adam Byatt who shared “parenting duties” with me for the first two or three years.

Sean (S.B) Wright also helped out in the early years (especially in 2014 when I decided to take a few weeks digital sabbatical in the early weeks of the February). When I look back, the future of Post-It Note Poetry probably sat on the shoulders of Sean until it really baked itself into my soul.

I became aware as the calendar clicked into a new decade that I might not do this forever; at someone point I might need to hand it over to continue. So either consciously (or unconsciously, probably a bit of both) I let go a little and started asking for help.

In 2020, I invited eight new(ish) and foundation PINP poets to be Ambassadors to help me promote the event. My thanks go to: Sean, Christina, Rob Cook, Kim Bannerman, Maria (M.X.) Kelly, Denise Sparrow, Jude Smith and Marion Taffe. Each of these posts has a collection of wisdom on how to navigate the month from people who’ve been there.

And in 2021 I asked my Poetic Bestie if she’d come play with me in an official capacity. Thank fuck Christina said yes!

Three years in, Post-It Note Poetry is in the best shape it’s ever been. Doing anything is always much more fun if you are doing it with someone you love and who loves what you create together as much as you do.

(It is worth nothing — Post-It Note Poetry pre-dates “instagram challenges”. It flowed through to that platform in 2016 or so, really getting traction in 2017. Prior to that it was very much a Facebook thing which I very imperfectly resurrected and nurtured each year.)

My Retrospective

I am still absolutely floored this continues and I continue on with it.

If I ever try to tell myself I am not patient, that I lack follow through, that I am incapable of committing, I just need to return to this post!

Here is my poetic journey with PINP, from February 1st, 2013 to February 28th 2022

2013

These are the first words committed to Post-It Note Poetry — before anyone but Adam and I were doing it.

And the last words. As you can see by the end of the month I was already bending the parameters of what constituted “a post-it note”.

2014

This was the first year playing around with more intentional forms of multi-media. Probably inspired by Maria Kelly? Here are the first and last for the month (technically the 24th — no idea what happened to the final four poems that year?)

 

2015

I believe I still have all these poems, pasted away in a journal. That journal is currently AWOL though.

They got weird that year!

2016

This was my first year, experimenting with cut-up poetry in a committed way. These were all pasted onto wee origami squares. I don’t remember now what I cut-up. Possibly Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino. These were sent across the world to anyone who wanted them. I believe my friend Kris still has hers somewhere.

2017

“Get In Trouble” was my first themed month. I combined an exploration of Zentangle with cut-up poetry; words taken from Kelly Link’s collection of short stories of the same name. The intention was to use these for a postcard project to encourage people to write and send postcards. The combination of black paper, sparkly pencils, plus black and white print made these impossible to reproduce.

2017 was the year #pinp17 hit critical mass on Instagram (back before the algorithm fucked it for community). Someone of these poems have more than 50 likes — something that would be impossible for me now.

2018

It was an odd year. I failed PINP dismally, creating fewer than a week’s worth of poems before disappearing. This is the first of the handful of poems I did.

It’s the year that PINP could possibly have died but I was determined to come back bigger and stronger the following year.

However, these few shitty poems created a foundation. They were my first digital effort, which allowed so much else to happened as the year progressed. It  was my biggest year for poetry — doing two big projects (including one that was 121 consecutive days of poetry) that eventually opened the way for The Daily Breath the following year (which remains my most prolific and profitable year of poetry ever).

2019

I decided to create a paper quilt in 2019. I used fragments from a plethora of baggies of off-cut text and returned to origami squares as the canvas.

And, the finished quilt…

2020

I started here cutting up John Berger’s G …

…but I felt these were too raw and personal to share publicly, so pivoted on day 5 back to handwritten poems. It felt like a necessary shove out of my comfort zone, back to free-form. Across the month I combined it with a tarot pull.

It ended up here, in the true to 2020’s chaotic style, with a digital poem.

2021

It was the call back to cut-up, this time to a favourite, Tim Winton short story collection The Turning (and my beloved British Paint Squares).

I’ve used this collection of poems, on and off, with clients as a kind of keepsake oracle. (And yes, last year, when I wasn’t sure exactly what I was experiencing, a random pull from these poems firmly cleared up what was and wasn’t happening!) At least one friend has a poem from this collection sitting next to their computer.

2022

It was our first year of a Post-It Note with a theme.

We went with forbidden | pleasure and I went with a morning set of poems and an evening set.

The mornings were entitled Small Notes to a Non-Corporeal Lover. I used Taubman’s paint swatches  left over from painting our house in 2013/4 (They’re different dimensions to the British Paint ones.) I cut text from Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherry.

The collection ends with not one, but two poems. I could never decide which one was the “true end”.

These poems now live with Cristina Rombi in her Italian mountain home.

And then there were the evening editions, remixed from Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748) by John Cleland.

In 2022, I built/composed 92 poems in a kind of Herculean effort that I will never need to return to, for out-performing, in future years.

Thanks for being here, and following all the way to the end.

You can find more about Post-It Note Poetry in 2023 here.

Jodi xxx

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POETRY CHALLENGE CELEBRATES THE RANDOM ELOQUENCE OF A TENTH ANNIVERSARY

Post-It Note Poetry (PINP) celebrates its 10th anniversary in February 2023. The original 2013 challenge between writing partners Adam Byatt and Jodi Cleghorn was to write bad poetry on post-it notes for 28 days. It quickly caught the quirk and imagination of poets and non-poets alike.

“If someone had told me in 2013 a silly dare could inspire people to come together and write poetry on sticky notes for 11 consecutive years, I wouldn’t have believed them,” said Jodi, a multi-passionate word witch who uses poetry as one of her four professional pillars. “But here we are in 2023!”

As a much-anticipated community event, PINP unites seasoned and fledgling poets in the joy of words that breathe outside the lines. In the past three years the challenge has evolved to include Christina Hira as a co-curator, introduced themes and offered participants the opportunity for publication in a digital collection each March.

In 2023 the Hira-Cleghorn duo offer the theme random | eloquence for participants to explore.

“I love the invitation to playfulness that comes each year with PINP. To show up as many days as possible with whatever weird and chaotic words is its own beautiful eloquence” said Christina, a messy human who finds home in making spaces for art and poetry on Patreon. “I can’t wait to stir up the beautiful community of poets on IG once again.”

“The last 11 years have taken me from someone writing terrible haiku to finding a powerful voice through cut-up poetry,” Jodi said. “And through cut-up poetry I first connected with Christina. I feel as though our partnership is the epitome of random eloquence.”

The 10th anniversary also marks the shift of the event solely to Instagram, leaving behind roots at Facebook.

Hashtag for this year’s event is #pinp23

The new addition we have this year, in order to foster more community, is to bookend PINP with zoom events.

We will host a PINP opening party on 1st Feb at 11am NZST and a closing party on the 28th Feb at 11am NZST.

Opening Party: Bring along your questions, your excitement and your process to share

Closing Party: Bring along your favourite poem of the month to share together

The link for both zooms will be the same

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 849 3948 2573

Passcode: 143490

Find your local number

For more information contact:

Jodi Cleghorn @jodicleghorn

Christina Hira  @wild.dark.magic

 

ABOUT POST-IT NOTE POETRY

Post-It Note Poetry’s mission is simple:

    1. To encourage people of all skill sets and persuasions to explore and have fun with poetry – whether they are seasoned poets or curious souls attempting poetry for the first time.
    1. To create within a confined physical space (the size of a post-it note) as a positive exploration of limitation. It is also a way of making poetry composition possible for 28 consecutive days.
    1. To come together once a year as a community to write, read, share and amplify the joy of poetry.

Check out 2021 and 2022′s poetry collections.

 

THE “RULES”

The rules are simple for those who’d like to play along at home (at work, on the bus or in any of those in between places perfect for scribbling poetic words on small squares of sticky paper).

      • Write/build/create a poem every day of February*.
      • Poems must fit on a post-it note (or be an equivalent sized poem – ie. no more than 8 lines on a larger backing).
      • Poems must adhere to the original light-hearted spirit of permission to write badly – in which poems can tackle serious content, but internal editors/critics all get a break over February.
      • Post poems to social media with the hashtag #PINP23
      • Follow the hashtag , comment and enjoy what others are creating.

 

*or as many days as feels comfortable and capable for you.

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The Ten of Pentacles and Mercury Postcards

I wanted to cultivate a closer relationship with Mercury (and myself) this year and I set out to create a set of postcards that I could write and mail to myself, as kind of markers for how the year unfolded.

Covid in June disrupted a lot of things I had ticking away with clockwork precision and among the things which fell after June were my monthly tarot journal and with it, the Mercury postcards I’d committed to making and sending.

This week, in the Tarot Primer, we’re working with the 10 of Pentacles and the “In Action” part of the download for this week is to write out the aspects of the year that made it possible, with the option to write and send yourself a postcard of celebration.

Maybe it’s something you’d like to try also?

Or maybe on the other side of the festive season, you’d like to reach out and connect with people as one year flows into the other. Postcards are a time efficient way to say hello; I was thinking of you.

Below is a repository of downloadable postcard templates. All you need once you’ve printed off the template is some cardboard, scissors and glue. They take less than five minutes to complete.

Download The Mercury Postcard Repository

 

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Changing My Relationship With the Passing Year

I’ll be honest, my 40’s have been far from ecstatic.

They have been hard. Fucking hard. All manner of rough comings out — from polyamory to being psychic. Reinventing myself as a writer. Revisioning then rebuilding the kind of experience I wanted in publishing (and I’m still so so so far away from it, but that’s okay.) Fumbling through what it means to be multi-passionate and how to do business when you’re not flying just one kite.

There was the navigation of high school with a chronically ill son, then making my own way through years of chronic illness born from more than a decade of chronic stress and isolation.

For so many years I felt as though I was slow-falling through any sense of solidity or certainty. I tumbled down an endless Alice abyss.

And I hated it.

I railed.
I fought.
And I fucking resented everything.
Endlessly.

I couldn’t wait to get beyond each fucked up year and get a fresh start. The thing was, I never did. It was like stepping in dog shit and treading it from one year to another.

I wanted to stop feeling trapped and tortured by my years.

That liberation began with changing the relationship I had with the passing year.

Four Quick Hacks I Embraced

1. I quit shitting on the year that had shat on me. 

I stopped labelling years bad and just let them be neutral. I mean, you’ve heard it, or even said it yourself:

“Can’t wait for this year to be finished.”

“Shit year!”

“This year can fuck off.”

Three years of a pandemic has had us collectively saying some version of “Twenty-Fucking-Twenty…”

While this might provide short term rapport with all the other people also pissing on the year, the thing is, if you do this, you take the resentment, animosity, grief, disappointment and whatever else the year stirred up … you take into the new year.

You repeat patterns.
You miss a fresh start.

2. I honoured all of the year by getting curious.

This let me see if there was something, anything, beneath what was going on. Especially the hard-as-shit stuff. Attempting to see if, then how,  I was changing: growing and adapting in positive ways to the challenges.

It let me gentler in how I perceived the hardships I’d gone through. It let me make conscious, specific choices about what I wanted to leave behind.

In the beginning it was hard to see them. As the years have gone one they are more apparent.

3. I  got discerning

This meant celebrating the peak experiences alongside the obstacles, dead ends, frustrations, the heart breaks and unexpected failures. It allowed me to rehabilitate my focus away from  obsessing on everything hard or not going my way.

I started to acknowledge it was like that some of the time, but not all the time.

4. I let my years be multi-faceted.

I embraced gloriously imperfect years which lead me out of two-dimensional monochromatic shit storms of misery that could be summed up in one or two catchy words.

Few years are all good or all bad.

Even the worst years have a few shiny spots in them if we’re open to search for them.

A Clean Start

Few people can simply wake up with a clean slate by sheer force of will and 8 hours of sleep between Dec 31 and Jan 1.

Spending time with my year, holding it lightly and honouring all parts, let me cut the passing year away cleanly. Itt was a huge relief to enter a new year without the other one hissing and spitting at my heels.

Best of all, I stopped dragging the old year into the new as the forever compare-and-contrast. The new year got to be bold, beautiful and full of potential on its own terms.

The Thresholds Tarot Readings

In 2021, I created the Thresholds Tarot Readings out of this practice.

I wanted to provide a space for clients to intentionally review the passing year with an open-heart and mind. Through the cards, questions arise to give clients a unique journey through (and perspective on) their year.

These 90-minute readings are super-charged and provide insights into the themes, peak experiences and growth points of ‘22, with guidance and suggestions for celebrating and cutting lose the year that was.

Places are limited.

Bookings are recommended sooner rather than later to get the best date for the farewell you and your year deserve.

Schedule Appointment

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Thresholds Readings Open for the 22/23 Bridge

Thresholds #22 by Jodi Cleghorn — cut from Women Who Run with the Wolves — project developed with Christina Hira

The practice of honouring all of my year inspired the creation of The Thresholds Tarot Readings in 2021.

I wanted to hold space for clients to unpack their year open-heartedly, with potential to gain a new perspective on how the year had unfolded. To see with uncommon clarity the highs that might have been missed and the gifts in the difficulties. To pattern-check in a unique way and leave the reading with a concrete path out of one year and into the next.

I tested the new reading with a friend and we dived into unexpected places, even though we’d talked and drawn cards for a whole year together. We found richly glorious and horrific stories. I pulled up questions which illuminated themes and patterns she hadn’t considered, leaving her with clear stepping stones out of ’21 into ’22.

But 2021 found me in a strange between place — still birthing pregnant babies (ie. timing all wrong so what I created could not be effectively nurtured once it was released).

I still had a permanent residence in the liminal and hadn’t yet considered a bigger life for myself. Much less what it might mean or look like, personally and professionally. All that has changed over the course of ‘22

This means I’m ready to bring all of me (this powerful New Me who is recently qualified and full of enthusiasm ) to meet all of you at the table for the 2022 round of Thresholds Reading.

I’m making sure the offering goes out into the world with plenty of time for everyone to book a slot before ‘22 slides out the door.

Book and Thresholds Reading

These 90-minute readings are super-charged and provide insights into the themes, peak experiences and growth points of ‘22, with guidance and suggestions for celebrating and cutting lose the year that was.

Places are limited.

Book now to get the best date for the farewell you and your year deserve.

Biggest Love,

✨ Jodi

PS: I’m also  offering Year Opening readings in January and February, to help future map 2023 with you.

Book both now for a $20 discount.

P.P.S: If you are in the Brisbane area I love to share readings at my kitchen table over tea and cake. If you are in the surrounds (Gold or Sunshine Coast, Ipswich etc)  and would like to host several readings, I’m more than willing to travel for 2 or more in-person readings. I’ll also consider opening Sundays for readings if the demand is there in December.

Contact me below if this might be you.

 

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The High Priestess Tarot Card – Meaning In Motion


The Tarot Primer is a text-based, espresso-strength infusion of tarot, channeled wisdom, journal prompts, poetry, life hacks and music delivered straight to your phone via Signal four times a week.

See below for download and join links.

Tarot Primer (1.1)
THE HIGH PRIESTESS

🔮 We have made habits of turning outward for advice and outsourcing our wisdom to others. The High Priestess reminds us we are the first and most powerful experts on our lives.

🙋🏻‍♀️She invites us into our inner knowing and gently encourages us to trust the answers we find when we turn inward. We are our Wise Self, even in the moments when we fear we know nothing.

🫀She is the holy aspect that everyday life can force to the sidelines from sheer busyness and the need to keep our heads above the water.

🍎 She is the pause and the sweetness that greets us in those moments when return to ourselves, even if that’s just sixty seconds stolen in the toilet or the stairwell at work.

🧚‍♀️ She is the conduit of feminine blessing and magick in all we touch if we dare to let that be.

🌕 She is a beautiful energy to be with, however feels congruent and joy-filled, to celebrate this week’s full moon in Capricorn.

Image: The High Priestess by Charlie Claire Burgess (The Fifth Spirit Tarot, first edition)

📓 JOURNAL PROMPTS

🔑 What are you ready to unlock?
🪄 What magic calls to you?
🛤 What is the middle place between spaces of black and white?
🪧 How do you lay equal claim to the light and the darkness? And how it feels in each?
☀️ What do you create from starlight? From sunlight?

Tarot Primer (1.2)
🎯 THE HIGH PRIESTESS IN THE ACTION

“At the centre of your being you have the answer, you know who you are and you know what you want.”
~ Lao Tzu

Honour your High Priestess by tuning into, and practising, your sacred yes and sacred no.

💫What is your sacred yes and no?

It’s the answer to a any question which rises up from within. It’s quiet at the start. Felt in the body. Often held in the heart.

It’s the knowing the logic brain will loudly shout over the top with rationality and social programming.

The sacred yes and no honour what’s most important to you (not necessarily others) when expressed aloud. This sacred practise is intrinsically linked to establishing and maintaining boundaries.

Listen to to what rises up inside you, intuitively, when you need to make a decision. Some people like to close their eyes. Get still. Silent. Or to place their hand on their heart.

If you’re unsure — program a necklace as a pendulum and let it help you hone your inner hearing/knowing of the sacred yes and no.

Tarot Primer (1.3)
🖊THE HIGH PRIESTESS IN POETRY

You were lost to yourself
within yourself
for lifetimes, for centuries
A half-formed echo
A skeleton missing bones
Compulsively course correcting but
having forgotten where you were
navigating to

In a moment of revelation
you saw light
you saw love
and you knew you had a home
though it had fallen from your consciousness
The course correcting that had once
tried to steer you back there
took you away
until you lost the memory
of where you were going
through a thousand wayward turns

Now fair winds whistle joyfully
across the axis of light
carrying you forward
and you navigate from the constellation
in your heart
Re-Turning
across the seas of the unknown-once-known
Following the siren call of home
Coming back to yourself

She has been patiently waiting on the shores
to see the dance of your sails on the horizon
She holds your light
She holds your love
She is you
and you are her
breaking open
together on the shores
of a new be-ing

Written March 20th, 2019

 

Tarot Primer (1.4)
🪞THE HIGH PRIESTESS IN REFLECTION

It has been an interesting week, observing the intersection/interplay/tension of magick, ritual and creation.

It feels very much The High Priestess sandwiched between The Magician and The Empress (energies I feel far more comfortable in!)

Three things from my week with The High Priestess:

🕯 I built an altar and surrendered into the magickal guidance of Anna Bellissima in creating myself a HyperSigil. This is my latest depth year foray — deepening into creating a future of my desire and designs.

🦴 This was an extension of me trying to spend more time in the light side of things, because I feel very comfortable in the shadows, excavating bones and wounds, but do very little then with the space I’ve made for myself. I feel the right kind of tingly after my first entry in my hypersigil and excited about the next one.

🔮 This! The tarot primer. I’m certain a different card would not have inspired me to experiment with leaning into my wisdom and sharing it this way. Thank you for all the fabulous and encouraging feedback.

🎈 Message me and share your three reflections for the week, any time over the weekend. I’d love to hear from you.

🫶🏻 SIGNAL BOOST

These woman pour higher knowing into their work.

🐇 Libby Fordham — Letters from the Hedge

🖊 Anna Bellissima — True Lies

🛁 Kristie Murphy — Freya’s Nourishment

Tarot Primer (1.5)
🎵 The High Priestess Outro

And lastly, a song to dance us into the weekend.

Apologies to any fans of the Steve Winwood classic. I found this version by pure accident following the thread of a lyric.

🪩Higher Love

Or ramp up the beat…

🙏🏻 Thank you for being here. Have a fabulous weekend.

I’ll see you next week.

Biggest love,
Jodi xxx

Written and shared, for the week 11th – 17th July, 2022

 

I am multi-passionate word witch who liberates people from self-limiting stories so they can redefine themselves and their lives.

Leveraging a combination of fiction, poetry, tarot and coaching, I offer guidance and practical support for people ready to excavate their shadows, meet their brightest ideas and shape present/future realties on their own terms.

I embolden souls to live their best lives now, utilising the quantum field of potential while holding the vulnerability of the human experience.

You can find more about working with me here  or book here.

 

Come play where the sunlight meets the moonlight.

The Tarot Primer is a free text-based, espresso-strength infusion of tarot, channeled wisdom, journal prompts, poetry, life hacks and music delivered straight to your phone via Signal four times a week.

Download Signal for phone or desktop

Join The Tarot Primer

 

 

 

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Grow Your Idea – New Coaching Sessions

Years ago I sat in a Greek Restaurant in West End with a multi-passionate friend who was telling me all about a new idea she had for the salsa studio where she danced. I ate and drank heartily, as much in the sharing of her idea, as the food and wine.

When the night came to a close, I jokingly said my dream job would be to sit and listen to people share their ideas. I’d do it in exchange for dinner.

It lit me up, the notion I could be a first-time sounding board for something new. To support a fledgling idea, in a grassroots way, where just being there and listening, energisesd and shaped the idea.

Where I could see myself asking the right question, at the right time, and something shifted in a powerful way. Or I offered a unique perspective that threw a hidden door wide open and the idea appeared on the other side, transformed, and one step closer to tangible reality.

I especially wanted to witness ideas where I had no background knowledge. They were the ideas that excited me the most and where I felt I could be of greatest assistance, in the very early stages.

This all flashed through my head in the time it took to stand up, gather my stuff and say good-bye to my friend. As I walked off, I filed the idea away as a pipe dream, until last week.

Grow Your Ideas Sessions

On  the 5th Day of Simone Seoul’s Summer Camp and my insomnia-riddled, over-wrought central nervous system finally calmed enough (thank you Jaime Durso) to get excited about something in the playbook of activities.

As I read about the play dates activity, the bright shiny idea I’d never have had the gumption to consider as part of my business, shimmied across my path and sang: me me me!!

You know the endearing but relentless way small children do it.

See, the thing is, I rock the shadows. I’m so fucking good there; as a soul having a human experience that’s my default place of comfort. And I’m exceptional as a word witch shepherding clients through those same dark spaces. But I’ve been summonsed in the last fortnight to honour the light in the same way I do the dark. And to step up, right up, and into it.

What do you create in the starlight and what do you create in the sunlight?

~ Chris-Anne  on The High Priestess (The Muse Tarot)

It’s been something I’ve been sitting with and gently exploring in my own soul work. With the sun frolicking in Leo it’s time to step forward with something sun-drenched for the world.

I am offering ten Grow Your Idea sessions for anyone who’d love to come and talk about a new idea with me for a special introductory price of $33.

I want to hear what is inspiring you.
Calling to you.
That thing that’s been nagging you and no matter what, won’t go away.
Your heart’s yearning.
The spark.
What you promised yourself you’d make time for this year.

 

It can be related to work. It can be related to pleasure. Maybe it’s a side hustle. Maybe it’s a dream. It doesn’t have to be serious. And actually, the less Big and Important it is, perhaps the better?

All ideas start as an energetic spark of something simple before our humanness complicates them.

In a Grow Your Idea session you’ll get 45 minutes with me to chat.

If you want, I can walk you through the compass points of collaboration, joy, heart break and direction to help you know your idea better.

Or we can just let the idea guide the conversation—after all, it is the main event and it’s what I want to hear all about.

For an extra $33 you can have unlimited support via text message to explore your idea further.

And if you’re in the Brisbane area, and you know a brilliant establishment that supports winter al fresco dining, we can honour my original idea of dinner in exchange for idea incubation. Drop me a message via the contact form.

In Sunlight and Starlight.

Jodi xxx

Book a Grow Your Idea Session

*This offer is valid only until the end of Leo Season (22 August)

Posted on

Short Fiction: To The Boy of My Heart

To the boy of my heart,

    • Because you said the world would be an easier place if it could be simplified to a list of dot points. Words, more often than not, confused you in their random collisions and duplicitous nature. You read silence like I read Calvino.
    • Because we danced for hours beneath the sway of hundreds of delicate paper lanterns before you spoke to me. My heart beat in your chest as we sat side-by-side on the ancient breakwater and watched the sunrise. The briny dawn was more than a new day beginning.
    • Because the salt of your skin was the same salt in the sea air, heavy on my tongue. And your absence tasted the same as your presence. It amplified an unquenchable thirst I carried half the time as longing, the other half as ecstasy. I ignored warnings that too much salt was bad for the heart.
    • Because what you lacked in books, you made up for in music; a citadel of vinyl we adventured through, with you as my guide, until I almost knew the byways and hidden alleyways as well as you. So the right song, at the right time, became our most devastating weapon against each other.
    • Because you forgot anniversaries and birthdays, never arrived on time and sometimes not at all. Then appeared with oriental lilies, for no reason other than you liked to watch them open beside my bed. Over the years, I came to imagine you around the corner every time I caught a hint of their perfume or the promise of coffee. My order was the first thing you learned and the perfect coffee became the great equaliser, olive branch, and space in silence, which never required days to bloom ‘I’m sorry’.
    • Because you pushed too hard and I pulled too hard and somehow, in the disastrous pas de deux of dissatisfaction and disaffection we thrived. The disequilibrium energised the current of our love. We always found our way back to the safe harbour of music and dancing, sheltering there from the worst tides we inflicted on each other.
    • Because it is impossible to tether the sun. We did not need others’ conformity and certainty. We bound ourselves to each other in our own way, because I already had a ring, and paper and ink burn. We believed love transcended all if we needed it to.
    • Because for all your faults, your ‘hello’ and ‘good night’ arrived without fail every day, at the right time, no matter where you were in the world. And every time we ended it, those texts kept arriving. Now I send myself ‘hello’ and ‘good night’ from your phone and pretend nothing has changed.
    • Because death is simple and you are not. You hollowed to a husk in days, not over months or years. Your light faded like the sunset before me and now you sit in the flesh of a doppelganger. The endless night is a pool of tears I bathe in alone.
    • Because I believe if I write a thousand letters, fold words like cranes into missives of hope, there will be a moment when you can read them and recognise me. All I have left are my time capsule words and the memories they protect.
    • Because I want to believe I will once again feel the rush of you through me. Because I refuse to accept I have felt it for the last time.
    • Because I am willing to bet against tomorrow, knowing I loved you then and I love you now.
    • Because you have not gone and I cannot leave.

Forever,

The girl of your heart

 
Published here for the first time.

(And for anyone with a sharp eye, yes, that’s Adam Byatt’s handwriting, and an old photo from the writing of Postmarked Piper’s Reach in 2012!)