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THE THRESHOLD

Tonight marks the solstice, the longest night here in the southern hemisphere and the longest day in the north. Whichever you are living, it is the year’s great pause. The moment when the earth itself holds its breath before turning.

The stillness between beats.

We live in a culture that worships the beat of productivity, momentum, and more. We are so practised at outrunning time that we have almost forgotten how to inhabit it. The solstice asks something different of us. To let the stillness between this moment and the next be enough.

This week’s poem is about what it really means to keep time and the music we miss when we can’t bear to pause.

THE POEM

KEEPING TIME
from Reunion Songs

Most days I wonder where time goes,
if there will ever be enough of it
to live and to love in all the ways I must.
Sometimes I try to outrun the beat
of my own heart or brace for what's coming,
neither in nor out of it.

Other times I know there is nothing I can do
to stop its unfolding, that this, not death,
is the price of being here.

Now and again, though, I remember to rest,
that in between every beat is a stillness:
miss it and you miss the music.
Guard it with your life so that when you are done
you will know you are in the right place,
in and out of time.

THE PRACTICE

The poem names three ways we relate to time - outrunning it, surrendering to it, and resting inside it. Most of us live almost entirely in the first. The solstice is an invitation to find out where we actually are.

This week, take a quiet ten minutes and sit with these three questions. Write whatever comes, without editing or judging.

You might also like to respond to the prompt below that feels most true and write from it for five minutes without stopping. You don’t need to answer all three. The noticing is the practice:

“Where in my life am I outrunning the beat?”

“Where am I surrendering to time’s unfolding and allowing myself to be carried by something larger than my own will?”

“Where am I resting inside the stillness?

THE THREAD

This week, on the solstice and in the days that follow, notice the stillness between beats. One breath held. One moment before the next thing begins.

Guard that stillness. It’s where the music is.

Yours in radical hope … Amanda

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P.S. To mark the solstice, I’m offering 22% off all my on-demand courses for the next 72 hours. Poetry as Portal, Poetry as Sacred Activism, and Meeting and Mapping Your Creative Project are all waiting whenever the season feels right.

Use the code SOLSTICE22 at checkout. Valid until midnight AEST Wednesday 24 June. Find all on demand courses here:

Self-paced Journeys

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Welcome to your weekly Portal. I hope it finds you in the quiet.

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THE THRESHOLD

Most of us move through the world without truly being seen and without truly seeing. We pass each other at speed, carrying our private weights, rarely pausing long enough to let the world witness us or to witness it in return.

But there are moments in the midst of it all when something shifts. When the boundary between self and world softens and we find ourselves held in a web of mutual regard.

The river sees us. The stranger is seen. We are all, briefly, known.

We are approaching the winter solstice here in the southern hemisphere. The longest night and the centre most point of stillness. the turning toward. It is a season for witnessing. For sitting beside the river of our own lives and asking, honestly:

What do I see? What am I being called to speak before it’s too late?

THE POEM

EYEWITNESS
from Reunion Songs

I see you sit down,
run your hand
over your head,
sigh and look up.
Another man walks by,
the river runs in front,
all of us wed now,
as she is our witness.

I wonder if you know
she knows you too,
to speak your heart
before it's too late.
For certain one day
you and I will be dead,
but she will run and run.

I imagine what it's like
at the heart of your world,
the luck, hurts and joys
delivering you here, now,
with those eyes. You,
a man by a river
with his head
in his hands.

THE PRACTICE

The poem is an act of radical witness, of seeing a stranger by a river and imagining the whole weight of their life.

This week’s practice is to extend that same quality of regard to yourself.

Find a place near water if you can, or imagine a place in your minds eye - a river, the sea, a lake, even a fountain. Sit for ten minutes. Let the water be your witness. Let it run past you as it has run past countless others, carrying everything, judging nothing.

Then ask yourself honestly, as the poem asks: what do I need to speak before it’s too late? Not to anyone else necessarily, just to yourself.

You might also like to find the prompt that feels most true and write from it for five minutes without stopping:

“What I need to speak before it’s too late is …”

“What the river would say if she could speak to me is …”

“The luck, hurts and joys that have delivered me here are …”

THE THREAD

This week, let yourself be witnessed by the natural world or the quiet of the night and witness in return. Look at the people around you and imagine the whole weight of their lives delivering them here, now.

That imagining is not small. It is the beginning of everything.

Yours in radical hope … Amanda

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P.S. If this week’s poem stirred something in you and you’d like to go deeper, my courses offer a more sustained practice of exactly this kind of attention. Poetry as Portal, Poetry as Sacred Activism, and Meeting and Mapping Your Creative Project are all available on demand, whenever the season feels right. You can find everything here:

Self-paced Journeys

You are receiving this because you chose to. Thank you. If this moved something in you, would you be willing to share it? Together we can create a more just and loving world.

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Welcome to your weekly Portal. I hope it finds you in the quiet.

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THE THRESHOLD

Right now the world is full of things that have been held down for too long. Truths suppressed, voices silenced, grief unacknowledged, rights denied. We too feel the pressure of what cannot be contained indefinitely, our bodies bearing the brunt of our unexpressed true selves.

The temptation is to manage it. To preserve what passes for order at the cost of what is real. But truth, like water, always finds its way around every obstacle, through every crack, toward its true destination. We can delay it. We can’t stop it. We are no match for our true nature.

And in the end, once we loosen our grip, this is not a threat but a relief. The poem this week is not interested in management. It’s about what happens when life, in pursuit of itself, refuses to be stopped. It asks us gently, but without flinching to let it.

THE POEM

IN  THE  END
from Reunion Songs

Finally, when what was
held tight in the bud
for so long bursts open,
there will be no containment.
There is nothing more unstoppable
than a hidden truth breaking free.

Have you ever seen the Sun
take the sky so thoroughly,
cleaving the blackest clouds open,
waters rupturing, or Earth
ripped apart, reclaiming what
was theirs all along?

Against all odds and obstacles,
life in pursuit of itself persists,
and in the end
many things will break.

Let them.

THE PRACTICE

The poem names the breaking not as catastrophe but as liberation - the bud that can no longer be contained, the truth that will not stay hidden, the earth reclaiming what was always hers. This week’s practice is an invitation to name what is ready to break open in you.

The invitation is to simply acknowledge it, not force it - to say, honestly, what has been held too tight for too long and is ready now to be released.

You might also like to find the prompt that feels most true and write from it for five minutes without stopping:

“What I have been holding too tight is …”

“The hidden truth in me that is ready to break free is …”

“What I am ready to let break is …”

THE THREAD

This week, notice what is pressing against its container in you or in the world around you. Don’t rush to fix it or contain it further. Simply witness it. Life in pursuit of itself persists. Trust that.

Yours in radical hope … Amanda

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P.S. In the end, life in pursuit of itself persists and the Sacred Creativity Collective is where we practise that together through ritual, visualisation, poetry reading and intuitive writing. A monthly circle of people committed to creativity as a sacred and activist practice. Our next online gathering is Monday 15 June 6-7.30am AEST, under the new moon. New members welcome any time.

Sacred Creativity Collective

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THE THRESHOLD

Most of us spend years waiting for the right time, the right place, or the right sign that we are finally enough to begin. We’ve been taught to look outward for permission, validation, certainty, or for someone to confirm that what we carry inside us is worth offering to the world.

But what if the life you are waiting for is the one you are already living? What if you are not a rough draft waiting to be revised but a song already being sung, ancient, unique and, irreplaceable? This week’s poem is a reminder of that. Or more precisely, a remembering.

THE POEM

LIVING SONG
from Reunion Songs

I've lived in ordinary places
at unimportant times,
longing for tomorrow,
waiting for a sign.

I've never found the time or place
to meet that appetite.
Life is an insatiable mystery
known by magic not by might.

There are no rules to follow,
only sing out I am here!
then pay attention closely,
to what falls into your ear.

This life is a precious gift,
one long leaving and return.
Take your sweet time, my love.
There is so much to unlearn.

You are living song, a prayer
ancient and not written,
born to know and to dare,
to echo through the ether.

THE PRACTICE

The poem names something we are rarely given permission to claim: that we are already a living, breathing song. Not a song in rehearsal or waiting to be good enough but an ancient, glorious song, already sounding.

This week, the practice is to sing out “I am here”. Not literally, unless that calls to you, but in one specific, embodied way. The invitation is to show up somewhere or to something you have been holding yourself back from and to let yourself be present, heard, and known.

Afterwards, find the prompt that feels most true and write from it for five minutes without stopping:

“The song I have been afraid to sing is …”

“What I am here to echo through the ether is …”

“What I need to unlearn in order to sing freely is …”

THE THREAD

This week, carry this into the world: you are not waiting to become something. You are already a living song - ancient and not written, born to know and to dare. Take your sweet time. And sing.

Yours in radical hope … Amanda

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P.S. If this week’s poem stirred a longing to return to yourself more regularly, The Clearing is a monthly guided audio meditation, available to download and return to any time. A quiet, consistent practice of coming home to yourself. The next episode lands tomorrow.

The Clearing

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A small change you may have noticed: The Portal now arrives on Sunday evenings, as the week turns toward rest and the space between things opens up. It felt like the right time for this kind of letter. I hope it finds you in the quiet.

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THE THRESHOLD

We are so accustomed to facing what comes next. To bracing, preparing, and scanning the horizon for what might arrive. The backwards dive asks something different of us. We’re invited to release the need to see, to trust what the body knows before the mind does, and to fall into the unknown with our eyes open or closed, it doesn’t matter.

This requires a particular kind of courage. A surrender, not borne out of despair but the surrender of trust. The water, the poem tells us, already knows us. It rises to meet us. The only difference is what we discover when we stop trying to control the direction of the fall.

THE POEM

HOW TO DIVE BACKWARDS
from Reunion Songs

You can do it sight unseen.
Fingers know - trust them.
They hold your fear and promise.
Lie back now, heart undone, reaching,
eyes open or closed, no matter,
the same water rises to greet you,
the only difference surprise
and a multitude of lives.

THE PRACTICE

The poem is an invitation to trust what you already know before you can see it clearly. This week’s practice is a small backwards dive of your own. One deliberate act of trust in the face of uncertainty.

Choose something you’ve been holding back from, a decision unmade, a conversation not yet begun, a creative act unlaunched, because you can’t yet see where it will land.

Take one small step toward it this week. Not the whole dive. Just the lean towards.

Afterwards, find the prompt that feels most true and write from it for five minutes without stopping:

“What I am ready to fall toward is …”

“What my fingers know that my mind is afraid to trust is …”

“The multitude of lives waiting on the other side of this is …”

THE THREAD

This week, notice one moment when you reach for certainty before you’re willing to move. Pause there and feel your fingers. They already know. The water is already rising to meet you.

Yours in radical hope … Amanda

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P.S. How to Dive Backwards is from my poetry collection Reunion Songs - poems for reconnection and remembering yourself home. If this poem found something in you, the whole collection is available in limited edition hardback and paperback and ebook.

Order your copy

You are receiving this because you chose to. Thank you. If this moved something in you, would you be willing to share it? Together we can create a more just and loving world.

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This space is for us. Welcome to your weekly Portal. I’m glad you’re here.

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THE THRESHOLD

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from giving without stopping to receive. From pouring out continuously into the people we love and the causes that matter without ever pausing to sink back down into ourselves and refill.

Most of us, especially women, have been taught that this is what care looks like. That to tend to ourselves first is somehow a failure of generosity or even selfishness. It’s taken a lifetime of unlearning, and learning the hard way, but I have come to know the opposite is true. The most sustainable, genuine, and truly useful thing we can offer the world is not our depletion but our fullness. Instead of a cup running dry, we resource ourselves to become a spring that keeps rising.

This week’s poem is a practice guide for that. I invite you to read it slowly and let it find the places in you that are running low.

THE POEM

HOW TO HELP
from Reunion Songs

When waters in you rush up
to quench a thirsty world,
wait
take a moment to sink
deep down into your well,
cup your hand to your heart,
drink
let your beat and breath
find and fill you first.

Only then surge
from source to surface
so that when you can do
nothing you have
at least saved yourself.

Look at you now,
a cup and a spring,
rising and falling,
flowing freely
not flooding.
Filling cups,
never running dry.

THE PRACTICE

The poem asks you to do one thing before you give, to sink down into your well. This week’s practice is a daily two-minute pause before you pour out into the world.

Before you begin your day, place one hand on your heart. Take three slow breaths. Ask yourself honestly: am I offering from fullness or from depletion right now?

Try to just gently notice what rises without fixing or judging. This is the beginning of the return to the well.

If you feel like writing, follow your noticing or the prompt that feels most true right now and write from it for five minutes without stopping:

“What my well needs right now is …”

“When I am truly full, I can offer …”

“The place in me that is running dry is …”

THE THREAD

This week, before you give, continue to pause. One breath is all it takes to sink down before you surge. Put on your own oxygen mask and save yourself, then save the world.

Yours in radical hope … Amanda

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P.S. If you’d like a regular practice of guided meditation to accompany this work, The Clearing meditations are available monthly. A gentle, consistent practice of returning to yourself.

Find out more here

You are receiving this because you chose to. Thank you. If this moved something in you, would you be willing to share it? Together we can create a more just and loving world.

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THE THRESHOLD

The world does not need more bystanders. It needs people willing to step forward and take the risk of being seen and show up with their whole selves in the face of overwhelming difficulty.

I know how easy it is to shrink. To decide that what you have to offer is too small or strange, or not enough for these enormous times. But I keep coming back to this: the small, strange, and unseen are precisely what the world is starving for. Less performance and more presence and courage.

This week’s poem is not a gentle invitation. It is a call to action. I offer it to you the way it arrived to me - urgently, and without apology.

This space is for us. Welcome to your weekly Portal. I’m glad you’re here.

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THE POEM

T H E  C A L L

Ring out now, don’t hesitate.
You are born for these times.
The whole world is on fire,
there’s no room for self-doubt.

You change worlds unseen
just by risking your heart.
Unlock the cage of another
and leave no heart behind.

Remember,
you are a signal,
a siren, a call to prayer.
Let yourself ring out now,
beautiful and dangerous,
through a desperate despairing world.

THE PRACTICE

The poem names something most of us are afraid to claim: that we are a beacon. That our presence, voice, and willingness to show up changes things, even when we can’t see how, or when it feels impossibly small.

This week, the practice is to ring out in one specific way you have been holding back. Not a grand gesture but something real and within reach. Maybe a conversation you’ve been avoiding, a piece of writing you haven’t shared, an opinion offered into a silence that needed it or a kindness extended across a divide.

Before you do it, write down what has been stopping you. Name the self-doubt honestly. Then do it anyway.

If writing calls to you first, begin here and find the prompt that feels most true to you right now and write from it for five minutes without stopping:

“What longs to ring out through me is …”

“What wants to be heard through me right now is …”

“What the world is waiting to hear from me is …”

THE THREAD

This week, remember that you change worlds unseen just by risking your heart. You may never know which cage you unlocked, which heart you reached, or which signal you sent that someone was waiting for. Ring out anyway. The world is listening for you.

Yours in radical hope … Amanda

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What’s coming up …

P.S. This week’s poem is an invocation and if you’d like to go deeper into poetry as spell, prayer and divination, Opening the Channel is a 90-minute online workshop happening this Sunday 17 May, 8–9.30am AEST. Under the fertile darkness of the Taurus New Moon, we’ll practise invocation - the art of calling in - and divination - the art of listening for what is already present. $33 AUD. If you can’t make it live, there will be a recording available. Reserve your place here:

More info & Register

P.P.S. The Call speaks of not leaving any heart behind. The Sacred Creativity Collective is where we practise that together. It’s a monthly online circle of people committed to creativity as a sacred and activist practice. Our next gathering is Monday 18 May. It’s not too late to join us. New members welcome any time. Find out more here:

Sacred Creativity Collective

THE THRESHOLD

We live in a world that cannot stop claiming things. Land, resources, attention, the narrative. The impulse to name, develop, and own runs so deep we barely notice it anymore. Even in ourselves. We fill every silence with noise and every moment with plans.

What if the most radical thing we could do right now is simply stop, sit in the uneasy emptiness and listen for what the world is singing beneath all our claiming of it?

This space is for us. Welcome to your weekly Portal. I’m glad you’re here.

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THE POEM

HOLY LANDS

Let’s sit in silence
no words, no plans
or staking of claims,
only untamed undeveloped
uncolonised uneasy emptiness,
a portal to the wild
inhabited holy lands,
its song, falling 
finding our ears.

THE PRACTICE

The poem is an invitation to a particular kind of silence. Not the absence of sound, but the absence of claiming.

This week, find ten minutes to sit outside, or near a window, without your phone, or a plan, or an agenda for the time.

Don’t meditate or try to be present, or make it somehow worth your while. Simply sit in the uneasy emptiness and let it be uneasy. Let whatever song is there to fall into your ears.

The world is always singing. We simply forget to stop talking long enough to hear it.

Afterwards, if you feel like writing, you might like to begin with one of these lines and write for five minutes without stopping:

“In the silence I heard …”

“What I have been claiming without knowing it is …”

THE THREAD

This week, notice one moment when you resist the impulse to fill the silence. Stay in the emptiness a little longer than feels comfortable. That discomfort is the portal. On the other side of it is something wild, holy, and entirely yours to hear.

Yours in radical hope … Amanda

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You are receiving this because you chose to. Thank you. If this moved something in you, would you be willing to share it? Together we can create a more just and loving world.

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P.S. Last week’s Writing Across the Veil workshop was a beautiful gathering. Together we co-created a genuine container for encountering what lives in the silence, and in the words that arise when we stop performing and simply listen. If you missed it and this kind of workshop calls you, Opening the Channel is coming up on Sunday 17 May, 8–9.30am AEST online. Under the fertile darkness of the Taurus New Moon, we’ll practise invocation - the art of calling in - and divination - the art of listening for what is already present. $33 AUD. No experience needed - only a notebook, a pen, and your willingness to be present. Reserve your place here:

More info & Register

THE THRESHOLD

The news arrives each morning like a tide that doesn’t recede and beneath it, something older is stirring. A longing more ungovernable than despair - a refusal to stop caring.

As much as we think we might not know what to do. I believe we do know and we have always known. We know exactly what we are fighting for because, underneath it all we know exactly what we love.

This space is for us. Welcome to your weekly Portal. I’m glad you’re here.

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THE POEM

ON  HARD  DAYS

On days when hopelessness reigns,
remember, you came here
to love and to liberate.
In a sea of indifference,
be an island of tiny kindnesses,
each an illumination of the truth
of our belonging to each other.

On hard days, find that part of you
that longs to love more.
Stay close to it, let it lead.
Light up, let yourself
be found, otherwise
how will we ever find our way
back to each other?

~ from Reunion Songs - poems for reconnection and remembering yourself home.

THE PRACTICE

The poem asks you to be an island of tiny kindnesses. Something small and specific and today.

This week, make one deliberate act of love or connection each day. For example a message sent to someone you’ve been meaning to reach, a moment of genuine attention given to a stranger or something tended (a plant, relationship, or piece of neglected creative work…).

At the end of each day, you might like to write one sentence about it. What was the tiny kindness? What did it illuminate in you, in them, and in the space between you?

If you feel the impulse to write more deeply, I invite you to begin with these words and write without stopping for five minutes, let your heart lead:

“I came here to love and to liberate and what that means for me right now is …”

THE THREAD

This week, on the hard days especially, find the part of you that longs to love more. You don’t have to perform it or explain it. Just stay close to it. Let it lead. That longing is why you are here.

Yours in radical hope … Amanda

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P.S. If this week’s poem stirred something in you and you’d like to experience this kind of writing in community, I’m holding a free online workshop, Writing Across the Veil, on Friday 1 May at the threshold of Samhain & Beltane. It’s not too late to join us. You can find all the details here:

Register

Read more

Friend, I’m going to keep this one simple, because the times are asking us to be clear rather than clever.

The times are not calling for louder voices.

They are cal…

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There are days at the turning of the year that don’t quite belong to either side.

The old year has loosened its grip.
The new one hasn’t fully arrived.

In many traditions, this stretch from December 26 …

Read more

Dear friends,

As the year draws to a close, I want to begin with a simple, heartfelt thank you. This space exists because of your attention, and I am so very grateful for your presence here, seen and unseen.

As we arrive at this turning point of the year, I’ve been reflecting on the shape this newsletter, and my wider creative practice, has taken since I started out on a wing and a prayer nearly four years ago.

Over that time this space, has moved through many seasons. From writing and publishing my poetry collection last year, to the deep focus on courses, gatherings, and the Sacred Creativity Collective - each phase has emerged in response to what felt most alive, most needed, and most true at the time.

The Collective, in particular, has become a living, breathing practice of listening and attuning - to ourselves, one another, and to the greater turnings of the world we’re moving through. It’s been a place of shared presence, ritual, and slow creative tending, and it has shaped me as much as I hope it’s shaped those within it.

Lately, though, I’ve been feeling a quiet pull toward more writing again. Not instead of this community work, but alongside it. Over the coming break, I’ll be listening closely for where this newsletter wants to go next: how often I write, what form it takes, and how my work can best meet the necessity of these times - with honesty, care, and steadiness.

I don’t yet have clear answers. Only a sense that something is reorienting, and that listening, deeply and patiently, is part of the work.

A Seasonal Visualisation: Returning to Your Centre

As a small end-of-year gift, I wanted to share this min meditation, something you can return to over the holiday period whenever things feel full, tender, or in motion.

Remember, this hearth lives within you.
You can return to it whenever you need. A faithful light at your centre, steady through the season and into whatever comes next.

A Few Gentle End-of-Year Notes & Reminders

As we move toward the close of the year, here are a few practical notes about what’s ahead:

✨The founding member discount for the 2026 Sacred Creativity Collective has been extended until 31 December, offering a little more breathing space if you’ve been considering joining us next year. Use discount code FOUNDINGCIRCLE10 at checkout.

✨Our final live workshop of the year, Poetry as Prophecy, takes place online on the Solstice - 22 December 6-7.30am AEST - a shared space of imagination and listening, where we can pause together, attune to what is quietly stirring, and begin to sense what each of us might carry forward into the year ahead. If you’d like to join us, you can find out more HERE.

✨In early 2026, I’ll be offering new community-based courses at potent thresholds including Meeting & Mapping Your Creative Project, Poetry as Portal (in community), and Opening the Channel: Poetry as Invocation & Divination.

✨A reminder that my free three-lesson mini course, Creating a Clearing, is available anytime as a gentle way to reconnect with your creative practice over the holidays.

✨And finally, if you’re looking for something gentle and meaningful to companion you through the holidays, Poetry as Sacred Activism is available on-demand. It’s a quiet, self-paced journey into presence, remembrance, and creativity as subtle, steady change - a beautiful way to stay connected to your practice during the slower season.

✨I’ll be taking a short pause with family from mid-January to early February, and I’m looking forward to returning rested and ready to begin again.

As we step into the turning of the year, may you and your loved ones be met with rest, warmth, and moments of quiet joy.

May your creative practice feel like a place of refuge and remembering.

And may 2026 open gently - with clarity, courage, and care.

With deep gratitude,
Amanda 🌙✨

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Hi lovely one,

A quick note to let you know that I’ve extended the founding circle discount for the 2026 Sacred Creativity Collective by one week, until Sunday 21 Dec…

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Dear friends,

As this year draws to its quickening close, I’ve been reflecting on the profound, steady way the 2025 Sacred Creativity Collective has grown this ye…

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Hi friends,

I’ve been quietly tending behind the scenes these past few weeks - reshaping and rebuilding - and I’m delighted to finally invite you into a refreshed vers…

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At this time of year, I feel like my life enters a familiar spiral. The pace quickens, the lists lengthen as though I’m caught in a vortex - drawn into motion that’s bigger than me, pulled by forces I can’t quite name or control.

With the world already feeling like it’s tilting off its axis, the spiral can feel even more out of our hands.

In that swirl, it’s easy to forget our centre. To lose the thread of what is quiet and true. But even within the turning, there is a still point - the pulse beneath the noise, the rhythm that belongs to the earth and to us.

When I manage to make space for a small moment of stillness in between the increasing movement,I’m reminded not to hold tighter, but to soften my grip on life. To return to my body and breath, and to listen. Because while much may be outside our control, our attention - how we meet the world - remains our greatest act of agency.

For me, poetry has always been a way back to that centre. A place where intuition becomes the small, steady light that guides me through uncertainty. Writing in this way isn’t about producing something perfect; it’s about presence. It’s about remembering that the world is alive and listening - that every word can be part of an ongoing conversation with life itself.

I’ve been working away quietly on something that grew from this remembering. Something I hope will help you find your own way back to your inner flame and back out again towards action.

Poetry as Sacred Activism is a seven-spiral journey into how writing can become both prayer and action. It’s an exploration of what it means to write with reverence, courage, and with care for the world we’re part of.

Because art, in its truest form, is activism.
Not always in slogans or shouts, but in attention.
In the courage to feel deeply when numbness is easier.
In the choice to create beauty and meaning even as the world unravels.

This is the kind of activism born from reciprocity - from listening, from tending the inner fire that fuels outer change.

If you feel called to reconnect with your voice, your intuition, and your role in the greater weave of life, Poetry as Sacred Activism is now open.

The course unfolds in seven spirals - Invocation, Divination, Witness, Medicine, Call to Action, Offering, and Prophecy - each beginning with a guided meditation and a writing invitation designed to help you remember your place in the living conversation.

The self-paced online course is a space to write, reflect, and rekindle the flame of creative presence - at your own rhythm, wherever you are.

Get a glimpse & listen to a snippet of the guided meditation for Spiral 1 - Poetry of Invocation:

You can learn more and begin the journey → HERE.

Next month, I’ll also be holding the first of what I hope to become regular live online workshops exploring poetry as medicine & oracle through guided meditation, sacred reading & intuitive writing. You can find out more here:

Poetry as Prophecy - an online Solstice workshop exploring the prophetic voice of poetry - how language can listen, receive, and speak the world back into balance.

22 December 2025 6-7.30am and 8-9.30pm AEST ONLINE.

If you can’t join live, each circle will be recorded.

In the meantime, go well.

With love,
Amanda

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Wherever we find ourselves on the wheel, something is shifting. The air feels charged and alive with presence. The veil between worlds is quietly thinning, and the boundaries between the seen and unseen are gently softening. These are the weeks when we’re invited to pause and listen more deeply to what moves beneath language.

Here in the south, Beltane, the season of blossoming and renewal, is rising. In the north, we’re descending into Samhain - a time of ancestors, shadow, and release. Two points on the same circle, both portals of transformation.

This turning invites that kind of listening. Whether through grief or renewal, darkness or bloom, each path leads us closer to the heart of what wants to be remembered and reimagined.

I’ve been feeling that hum lately - a reminder that these thresholds are invitations. To pause and attune to what’s moving just beneath the surface of things.

In a world that feels increasingly loud, fast, and fragmented, these pauses matter more than ever. They help us remember that we are part of a much larger conversation - one that includes the living and the dead, the visible and invisible, the inner and outer worlds.

In the weeks ahead, I’ll be holding two new writing circles at these seasonal thresholds:

• Writing Across the Veil - an online Samhain/Beltane poetry workshop exploring intuitive writing, ancestral connection, and the unseen through guided ritual, sacred reading and intuitive writing.

• Poetry as Prophecy – an online Solstice workshop exploring the prophetic voice of poetry - how language can listen, receive, and speak the world back into balance.

Both gatherings are open to all levels of writing and spiritual experience and will be gentle, guided spaces to write, listen, and reconnect.

I hope this season invites you to create your own small rituals of remembrance and renewal - moments of listening for what wishes to speak through you.

With love,
Amanda

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P.S. If you feel called to gather and write together, you can find the details and registration below:

Writing Across the Veil - 31 October 2025 6-7.30am AEST ONLINE. Check your timezone HERE.

Poetry as Prophecy - 22 December 2025 6-7.30am AEST ONLINE. Check your timezone HERE.

If you can’t join live, each circle will be recorded. xA

Today I’m closing the doors to a small online workshop I facilitated and I’m reflecting on the special kind of magic that’s made in community. When we are held in a reciprocal space of presence, sharing and witnessing an alchemical process unfolds.

What began as a wild experiment - taking what I knew to be true from my own creative practice and lived experience - into the wild itself, quickly became a container for transformation for all of us.

There is a myth that creating, like personal transformation and growth is solitary. The over culture of individualism tricks us into believing we alone are responsible for our successes, and alone we bear our burdens.

I spent years trying to figure things out myself until I found writing and began my own journey of inner alchemy. But it was only when I risked sharing my truth or an imperfect poem on Facebook, that I saw the larger pattern and the cyclical, relational nature of transformation. My work was never just mine; it was always unfolding within the greater web of Life.

Whether it’s creating or contemplating, working regularly in communities of care inoculates us against silo thinking, bias and hubris.

This is the Great Work of our time, to hold space for each other’s transformation, to reflect back what is sacred and to learn from what another endures. Like different facets of the same diamond, we help each other see and know and reunite with our most precious and divine original form.

That’s not to say that periods of solitude, rest and quiet contemplation are not transformative. Like a seed planted in the earth, all new growth begins in the dark but it also requires direct exposure to the elements and shared resources to thrive.

Creativity at its heart, like alchemy, is relational. It’s a language of connection and interaction between spirit and matter, self and other, inner and outer. As above, so below. When we meet and create in community, the work itself becomes a shared right of passage and a remembering of our intrinsic intimate interdependence.

To walk the path together is to move beyond the language of self care and self improvement into something richer, more reciprocal and more real.

And when we forget, which we will, over and over, we at least remember we’re not alone on the path.

E T E R N A L  R I V E R

Born from yearning
into a river of forgetting,
upstream is now a dream.
Oblivious to my fate,
I flow and forget,
purely for the joy
of remembering.

~ from Reunion Songs - Poems for Reconnection & Remembering Yourself Home.

In community, we all become alchemists with the power to transmute base materials into gold through our presence, listening, attention, and lived experience. That’s how new worlds are forged, within and without.

As the seasons turn, I’ll be opening new spaces for writers, seekers and anyone longing for a more resonant relationship with themselves and Life. Each offering is a small held group, a meeting place around an person or virtual campfire for us to explore what it means to create, remember, reconnect and rise together. Read on below for details.

Interested but in your hermit era? I’ve listed a couple of my self paced online courses below also.

May we find the others.

May our quiet acts of collective remembering, reconnection and transformation ripple out like a quiet storm.

With love, Amanda

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Writing with Resonance - 19 October 2025: A two-hour in-person workshop weaving sound bathing, meditation, and intuitive writing practice. Brisbane, Australia.

Poetry as Prophecy - December Solstice 2026: Join me at this potent turning point for a 2-hour online workshop exploring poetry as prophecy. Through guided visualisations, we’ll connect deeply with the solstice energy and engage in sacred readings and intuitive writing prompts designed to help you receive and articulate your own prophetic poem.

Meeting & mapping Your Creative Project in Community - January 2026: Live Online Course | 15 - 22 February 2026 | Hosted on Mighty Networks. Over 7 days you’ll journey in community into the heart & soul of your creative project with my on demand course Meeting and Mapping Your Creative Project, as your guide. By the end of the journey, you will hold a celestial map - a framework that reflects your project’s essence and composition - and a set of soulful tools to guide its continued unfolding including creating new material, refining and editing, deepening your voice and honing your vision.

Poetry as Portal in Community - 2026: At the March and September equinoxes, moments of perfect balance between light and dark, we’ll journey together online for 7 days with Poetry as Portal on Demand as our guide. This offering is an invitation to return to presence, ritual, and poetic practice at a time when the earth itself pauses in stillness and renewal. Each day will offer additional opportunities to deepen and expand our individual and collective journeys with the option to share your reflections and writings around our virtual campfire.

Sacred Creativity Collective - the doors to our 2026 collective open next month. I’ll have full details and dates in the November newsletter so stay tuned.

Poetry as Portal on Demand: A journey of remembering and reconnection through everyday ritual and verse.

Meeting & Mapping Your Creative Project on Demand: A seven night celestial journey into the heart and soul of your creative project.

Poetry as Alchemy | Poetry as Sacred Activism coming soon!

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From what I’ve read, eclipses are times when veils thin and the usual order gives way to reveal something deeper. And, when in Pisces, we’re invited towards a surrender that dissolves separation. We remember our interwovenness, allowing the waters of imagination and intuition to flow freely. Our intuitive powers are supercharged, the perfect accompaniment to an intuitive writing hour of power.

In moments like these, I am reminded that resonance is the language of the cosmos. The tides respond to the moon’s pull, birds migrate guided by invisible magnetic lines, and our bodies, too, carry their own rhythms of beating hearts, cycles of breath, and the subtle vibration of nerves and cells. We are never separate from the greater field. We are always part of its music. Ancient and not yet written.

But so often, in the noise and pace of daily life, we forget.

This is where practices of sound bathing, meditation, and intuitive writing can guide us back. Sound is one of the oldest medicines. It bypasses thought and enters directly into the body, clearing blockages and attuning us to deeper frequencies. Meditation opens the portal to our inner ear, quieting the surface to reveal what lies beneath. And writing, when approached not as a task, but as a listening practice, becomes a channel for voices we didn’t know we carried.

When these practices meet, something shifts. Words arrive as if from a larger ocean. Stories surface that feel both ancient and timely, carrying not only our own truth but a resonance that belongs to the collective, the cosmic. Our writing begins to carry resonance, not just personal meaning.

Simply looking up at the moon reminds us we are part of larger cycles, older stories, and much vaster harmonies. Our task is simply to remember, attune, and to listen.

A note for those nearby: On Sunday 19 October in Brisbane, I’ll be holding an in-person gathering - Writing with Resonance - a two-hour immersive workshop weaving sound medicine, meditation, and intuitive writing.

Together with energy/sound medicine practitioner, Dr Violeta Davis, I will gently guide you on a journey where sound and meditation clear the channel for writing that resonates with your deepest knowing and the greater field of life.

If this speaks to you, you are warmly invited to join. Together, we’ll open channels to insight and creativity, allowing what longs to be written to flow through us.

When: Sunday 19 October 2025 | 10am - 12pm
Where: Vacant Assembly, 266 Montague Road, West End, Brisbane
Tickets: $77 AUD

Info & Tickets

May our small acts of remembering and reconnection ripple outward like a quiet storm.

With love, Amanda x

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