On Sacrificing Ourselves on the Altar of Dignity
+ pre-order deets for The Rebis: The Star tarot anthology!
What’s up, swimmers?! HAPPY FALL 🍂🔥👻
It’s not too late to make magic around Sunday’s official changing of the seasons, so be sure to check out All About the Autumnal Equinox, which has been called “lovely,” “supportive,” and “a great primer” to send to witchy friends so you don’t have to explain everything yourself! It’s also not too late to book a reading with me for October, and you’re hearing it here first: I’m bringing back my beloved Seeker Sessions for the witching season. These sessions are completely tailored to meet your needs: tarot, numerology, ways of working with the season or the year ahead, support around witchcraft or creative work—the limit does not exist!
As we usher ourselves through this divine shift, I also wanted to share some additional thoughts regarding Making Art From the Heart of Service, which detailed differences between being an amateur and a professional, especially when capitalism is involved. I’ve been writing and posting on the internet regularly for over five years now, and to be totally honest, I rarely get a response. (Except from my mom, hey mom!) But this exploration seems to have struck a chord with many.
If you’re meeting yourself in the spiral of working and wanting and wondering what the fuck is the point of all of this??? — you’re not wrong and you’re not alone. But spoiler alert: you might be being a bit too hard on your soft, animal body.
It’s okay. Me too.
The Rebis: The Star is now available to pre-order! 🌟
I’m thrilled to announce that by late October, you could be reading my dystopian short story, The Pool, in your very own copy of The Star anthology from The Rebis!
The Rebis is a tarot-themed literary journal of creative writing and art. This beautiful print issue features more than 30 writers, artists, and change-makers exploring themes of The Star. We examine hope, regeneration, existential resilience, and futurity. You'll find practical actions for change alongside dreams for world (re)building. These stories are full of collective liberation, unexpected healing journeys, ancient mystery traditions, queer yoga, and so much more! Pre-order your copy at and it’ll ship out in the next few weeks.
Some additional info about The Star and The Rebis…
The publication is an 8x10 full-color book with 114 pages of personal essays, creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, prose, and original artwork. These print anthologies are made to last with a premium matte soft cover and thick pages.
International folks: If you find shipping cost prohibitive, we'll release a digital PDF download in mid-October. Stay tuned!
The Rebis is grounded in anticapitalist principles of art-making during times of crisis and redistributes all profits to social justice orgs. Pre-order your copy today and profits will go to The Sogorea Te Land Trust (@/sogoreatelandtrust), The National Network of Abortion Funds (@/abortionfunds), and Liberated Capital (@/liberatedcapital).
The Star is the third volume of The Rebis; previous issues explore the Wheel of Fortune and the Chariot. Pre-order The Star and you'll get $10 off the Chariot issue.
This year, I started working with a therapist who specializes in EMDR. In a I’m-not-a-doctor nutshell, the process of EMDR mirrors that of the REM portion of the sleep cycle, where the parts of the brain that are responsible for thinking and feeling are able to communicate with the parts of the brain that are necessary for survival. By creating a waking space for these bits of the brain to talk to one another, we can recover whatever is trapped in the survival brain, and allow it to be processed and released by the thinking and feeling brain.
In my most recent session, I unearthed and acknowledged the part of myself that simply isn’t ready to move on from the one-two punch of a severe medical injury and job loss within six months of each other, and all of the overlapping hardships of these crises. Nevertheless, I must move forward, for while the last year has offered me the opportunity to stop hustling and pushing, it has also created the perfect conditions for guilt, shame, and self-punishment around what it means to be a “professional writer.” And sheesh, have I been mean to myself and my perceived lack of something to show for my time!
I voiced to my therapist that inside of me, there are two wolves: a silly one, and one that wants to eat the silly one.
Swinging back around to service-oriented Virgo and art and creative or spiritual services as offerings—Whether intended to entertain or evolve, what we make and share is deeply important to the continuance of life-force energy! But the desire to help those around us can very easily be twisted back onto ourselves.
First, our inner critic gets very loud and has a lot to say about what is good and enough, and we start to feel guilty for under-serving, or making art that’s too pithy, too impractical, that can’t cure disease, or is barely a buoy for life’s inherent struggles. And suddenly we’re unable to weather the rougher seas of a creative life: the rejections, the very small paychecks, the hustle, the content you must make in addition to the art you make, the newsletters sent out into the cricket-less void, the projects that fizzle out before they get off the ground, the workshops no one signs up for, the big and small embarrassments we face every day for daring to care about something in public!!!!!
Then, we may stop doing it altogether. Even best-selling novelist Sally Rooney, who rarely travels due to climate-related concerns, recently told The Guardian that she’s considering on giving up writing altogether because even though she’s “given [her] life to writing novels... they’re not going to save the planet.”1 For more on Sally Rooney and love as a worthy subject, check out
’s latest essay, romance writers know wtf is up, actually, which I loved and needed.“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake.” — Ursula K Le Guin
While I respect how rooted Rooney is in her values, I can’t help but feel like this is a dangerous take on creativity and self-expression. And perhaps that’s the beauty of Venus-ruled Libra, which comes after critical Virgo to remind us that we can balance our love for beauty with our desires for justice. They don’t need to be in opposition, but rather seen as harmonious aspects of The Whole.
speaks to this, and the same, same, but different (and yet still guilty) pitfalls of activism, in their latest installment of , which is another great read if you need more permission slips for pleasure. Shore writes, “Just like we need to let go of the idea that doing ‘worthy’ creative work requires blood and sweat and tears, we need to let go of the (capitalistic, honestly!) idea that doing ‘worthy’ change work requires the same.”2
Instead, we must be like 10 Things I Hate About You’s Patrick Verona and sacrifice ourselves on the altar of dignity! We must embrace our cringe and our desires for our art to matter! We must make the thing we want to make! Write about what we want to write about! Offer that service that makes our soul sing! We must engage with life, service, art, and all of its messy intersections like the tarot’s Queen of Wands, who
says “has an artist’s spirit,” and encourages us to do what Jesus also suggests in the gnostic Gospel of Thomas—bring forth what is within us.3 After all, “self-expression through art can transmute pain and beauty, bring people together, and help heal the soul,” and I can’t think of a more worthy way to spend the short time of your life.4May your silly wolf get to play without the threat of being eaten. May your hungry wolf remember that creation can be productive and pleasurable. And may your expressions be free, fruitful and ever-flowing.
Until next time, just keep swimming!
xx, bee
Allardice, Lisa. Sally Rooney: ‘Falling in love when I was very young transformed my life’. The Guardian. 14 Sept 2024.
Shore, Shelley Jay. make what feels good. Creativity for Good. 20 Sept 2024.
Meyer, Marvin W. The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus. HarperOne. 2004.
The Gay Marseille: A Gay Guidebook for Diving Queer Futures by Charlie Claire Burgess
I have been saving this to read since it was posted and it was very much what I needed to read tonight. <33
Thank you so much for linking Haili Blassingame's essay. I agree with her (and you) and am of the firm belief that if something I create makes just one person's day better, I *have* changed the world. I think demanding to see enormous and immediate effect from one's effort is rooted in capitalism (and maybe a bit of arrogance and privilege).
Down with the idea that art must be ~good, famous, or have monetary value to matter. Here's to embracing our cringe, flying our freak flags, and spreading joy in whatever ways we can.