Sometimes life eats the newsletter.
In this case, it wasn’t grief or burnout that stopped our words, but a deep submersion in the making — producing the Fall season of the Missing Witches podcast – and the time we had with our heads outside the computer we used to go soak in great art, and swim in a freezing cold lake with the yellow leaves like sunlight across the basin of the bare grey mountains, and our old friends the larch coming out for their once a year exclamation of their brilliant selves.
A recent study in The Lancet landed like a gut punch, in other words like a spell:
“Time is an under-recognised social determinant of brain health, and is potentially as important as education or income for dementia risk. Temporal inequity refers to the unequal distribution of discretionary time owing to structural conditions shaping daily life. Temporal inequity encompasses insufficient time for rest, misaligned biological rhythms, fragmented leisure, and the encroachment of work or digital demands into personal time. Time poverty is a measurable manifestation, denoting insufficient time for brain health, disproportionately affecting structurally disadvantaged populations and exacerbated by performance-driven cultures.”
I feel my memory slippery and fragmented already from the chemo and the sharp cliff of chemical menopause, and my people aren't known for their steel traps as it is, so I am determined to take the time to un-fragment my leisure, claw out sufficient time for rest, and join folks like the Nap Ministry who have long declared the powerful anti-capitalist weight of resisting productivity culture.
Maybe you feel this too — temporal inequity, the way capitalism tilts time towards the few and leaves the rest of us feeling drained of our power.
So this week, instead of apology, we offer a prescription of restoration.
Because Witches have been here, tending our gardens in the margins for millennia. And we're not going anywhere.
🜃 This Week’s Prescription
From Vermillion’s “A Woman With Problems” on the Missing Witches Zine:
You, in your full individual glory, are valued.
You are not the equivalent of the labels people have chosen for you.
Your access needs matter and are valid.
Rest is productive.
You are loved and completely necessary in this world.
Just because you aren't feeling seen, does not mean that you deserve to be invisible.
Make absolutely sure that one of those people who see you and love you is you.
→ Read and repeat: A Woman With Problems
🎧 What We Made While We Were Resting
Here are the episodes of the Missing Witches Podcast we released since the last Rx.
- MW Killing Joke: We Must Dream of Promised Lands
Punk as shadow work. "Robert Smith of The Cure once described Killing Joke’s early records as “terrifying and beautiful.” Something that he channeled for his own music - and something we as Witches can relate to ourselves. The terrifying beauty that is Witch, that is truth. A beauty that can only be found beneath the shadows." - MW Lydia Cabrera: Admit to the Reality of the Unreal
Listening as preservation. Lydia Cabrera documented the sacred stories, deities, and plant magic of Afro-Cuba — the roots of Santería and Lucumí — keeping a flame alive against erasure. - WF Liv Albert: I’m an Atheist Witch Who Talks to the Ancient Sources
Liv Albert of Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby joins us to unearth women, witches, and goddesses buried under the weight of empire. - WF Jessica Hundley: Cathartic Messages from the Divine
A conversation about art as spellwork and the new magic library she’s building for Taschen. - WF Dr. Cyndi Brannen: Hekate the F*ck Out of It
Psychology meets witchcraft at the crossroads.
🔮 Upcoming Coven Events
💫 Bringing in Disabled Justice and Collective Access to the Coven — Meeting 2
Hosted by: Jasmin
When: Monday, Oct 20 • 7–9 PM ET
An opportunity to reflect on our practices, centre care and interdependence, and co-create a framework that actively works against exclusion in all its forms — through a lens of witchcraft and magic.
🔗 Join the Circle
🌑 New Moon in Libra: Samhain Is Nigh
Hosted by: Risa + Amy
When: Tuesday, Oct 21 • 8–9:30 PM ET
Samhain invites us to bear witness as trees release what no longer serves. For this New Moon, we’ll craft masks for concealment, invisibility, and protection — superhero disguises for witches who refuse fear.
🔗 Enter the Circle
👻 Samhain Spellbound Show & Tell
Hosted by: Jasmin
When: Thursday, Oct 24 • 7 PM ET
Gather ‘round the cauldron. Share tales of hauntings, folklore, cryptids, or eerie local myth. Costumes optional (but strongly approved).
🔗 Join the Spellbound Show & Tell
🌕 The Maiden Gathering of (Not Your Mother’s) Crone/Hag Circle
Hosted by: Reed Stephenson
A gathering for the menopausal, peri-menopausal, post-menopausal, and those careening toward it — to share knowledge, laugh, and dream what this circle could become.
🔗 Meet the Hags
💌 Help Shape the Future
Heads up! We sent out a survey to all supporting members yesterday to understand your experience and help us co-create what comes next.
→ Take the Survey
Thank you for taking the time — your time — to share your insights.
This week’s prescription:
Take your time back.
Unfragment your leisure.
Rest as an act of resistance.
And remember: You are seen. You are necessary. You are loved.
💛
Risa + Amy
Missing Witches
