Writing Fire

04/08/2026

HELLO friends!

During these rocky times, writing has been more powerful for me than ever. I'd love to share some simple, powerful writing practices with you that have helped me process and navigate the extreme highs, lows, and sideways life has been so very full of lately.

I'm offering two mini zoom writing activations over the next two weeks for us to gather in community, express ourselves, and transform together. The workshops are free for substack subscribers (valleyhaggard.substack.com) and $11-$44 for all else interested.

JOIN ME!

https://valleyhaggard.corsizio.com/.../69d40fa9fd52002c54...

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE GODDESS
Connect with the divine within, opening a sacred dialogue between you and the unseen forces that guide you. Through intuitive free writing and deep listening, we’ll receive insights, symbols, and blessings and develop a practice of direct communication with your higher self, your spirit guides, the Goddess. (Art by Jennifer Yane)
Sun, April 12, 2026
10:00 – 11:00 AM EDT
Zoom
$11-$44
FREE for substack subscribers!

TIME TRAVEL: Connect with your Past, Present, and Future Selves
Free-writing allows us to tap into our subconscious, transcending the boundaries of time and space. Let's send and receive messages to and from our past, present, and future selves!
Sat, April 18, 2026
10:00 – 11:00 AM EDT
Zoom
$11-$44
FREE for substack subscribers!
https://valleyhaggard.corsizio.com/.../69d40fa9fd52002c54...

03/15/2026

Welcome to the Halfway House for Writers:

You know everything you need to know.
You have everything you need to have.
Nothing has been wasted: none of your writing and none of your time.
Even lost years and lost manuscripts were necessary to bring you where you are now.
All that’s lost can be salvaged.
You bring with you the most sacred and the most profane.
You bring wisdom and humor and a broken, healing heart.
You bring your living bo dy and your limitless soul and enough stories, thoughts and dreams to fill a thousand books.
There is no hurry, there is no pressure, there is no wrong way to do this.
There is no rule book, there is no map save for what’s inside of you.
You know now which voices to trust and which to lay gently aside.
There is nothing you have to prove or solve or figure out.
There is no timeline or deadline.
You can trust the words that come.
You can trust yourself.
You were brought here for this.
You were led to this.
This is why you are here.
Welcome home.

03/15/2026

THE WITCHES OF SHADOW COVE: the first installment of Wildfire, my new substack saga!!

In a desperate bid to ward off loneliness after moving to the woods of rural Virginia on what could be described as a whim, I asked the local librarian out for coffee. I don’t drink alcohol which eliminates a vast array of opportunities for socialization but coffee is my life blood. I’d been slightly frantic when I could find only one coffee shop other than the 7-11 in a 30 minute radius, and the 7-11 was about to get shut down.

The librarian said sure, but her car was in the shop so I offered to pick her up, and took her directions as a test I’d have to pass to make it out of the woods alive.

Turn at the mailbox at X street. About 10 yards past their white mailbox are 2 mailboxes. Turn right into the driveway of a house. On the right is a little garden flag and an opening into the woods. Dip down into the trees, take a left at the fork and a quarter mile down the driveway is a steep hill up into our yard. Stay on the gas – If you hesitate, you won’t regain traction. Honk or call if you have trouble.

I felt like the Queen of Nascar as I gunned it up her driveway, still proud as we wound around the curving roads with no marked speed limits to The Wooden Pickle, the one and only coffee shop, plastered with pickle decor that offers free pickle juice shots.

“I don’t know if I should tell you this,” the librarian told me over lattes. “But the woman who owned the house before you fancied herself a witch.”

Oh f**k, I thought. What are they going to think of me?

🕸🕸To continue reading, please subscribe to valleyhaggard.substack.com!!!🕸🕸

03/08/2026

Introducing the new paid version of my substack: WILDFIRE.

Hello Brave Reader,

Welcome to the Void. Welcome to the Unknown. Welcome to my World.

For the last few years I’ve been trying to figure out how to structure my next writing project and I’ve come to this conclusion: I have no f**king idea.

I do know that I have been stuck in a massive relapse of perfectionism, self-doubt, and indecision, a purgatory where constipated writers go to die.

I do know that every 12-step program I’m in says “figure it out” is not one of the slogans and that if I do in fact sit here trying to figure it out any longer my insides will rot and my face will fall off.
I do know there’s a backlog of material and stories rising up like a tidal flood inside of me and that if I don’t open my throat I will choke, if I don’t open my mouth I will drown in the Ocean of the Unsaid.

I do know I need to write through my avalanche of a year and my divorce and my addictions and my moves and my mental health and my revelations and my dark goddess activations and my relationship with the dragons in a way that isn’t like trying to flat-iron Medusa’s wild curly snakes of hair.

I do know that I don’t need an agent or an editor or a book deal or even a book to write and share the work that’s burning a wildfire in my heart.

I do know that as an “expert” in helping other people write their stories, I had damn well better write my own. Doctor, heal thyself!!

I do know, as I always have, that if we are paying attention, truth is stranger than fiction.

I do know that I have a kaleidoscope of ideas careening around in my neurodivergent, “markedly atypical”ADHD manifesting generator brain and that trying to plan what I’m doing or how I’m going to do it is careening blindfolded through a labyrinth wrapped in an enigma buried in Russian nesting dolls of Infinite Mystery.

I do know that if I get out of the way, the way will tell me. I do know that if I let the raw ingredients tumble out on the page, they will form some kind of recipe.

I do know that I have given away or sold most of my belongings, that I no longer have a permanent address, that I don’t know where I’ll be living in the next few months, and that I had better make my writing world beautiful and abundant.

I do know with every proton, electron, nucleus and cell in my body that telling and sharing our stories saves and changes our lives because all of the stories I’ve heard have saved and changed mine.

I do know that today my friend Sarah said in the startup world sometimes you have to build the plane you’re already flying.
I do know that last week my girlfriend Shey said that the river knows where it’s going and though I am not the river, I am in the river and no table of contents or pre-laid plans are going to help me navigate the rocks or log jams or white water rapids–I just have to trust that I know how to float, and I know how to swim.
I do know that even though I might feel 15, I am biologically 50, and that, as all the wise sages in the world say, there is no time like the present to get in the saddle and ride, motherf**kers.
And so I present the new paid version of my substack, Wildfire. I don’t know how to tell you what you’re signing up for, the format or the timing, the frequency of the posts or the form they will take.

I do know Wildfire posts will be vulnerable in a way I want readers to opt into, rather than stumble upon.

I do know that if you’re on the verge of, or in the messy middle of change, transition, and evolution, if you also have no idea where the hell you’re going or what’s going on, if you’re also stepping into the void or the unknown, we are fellow travelers on this journey and there might be something of my story you can relate to, and in that way we will both feel less alone.

If you do choose to opt in, from the bottom of my endlessly grateful heart, thank you so much for coming with me.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to structure my next project and I’ve come to this conclusion: I have no f**king idea, but if you want to come along for the ride, I'd love for you to join me!

03/07/2026

Hi friends! I'm so excited to share this podcast interview I did with Intrepidtimes.com editor, Nathan Thomas in advance of the East Africa retreat with the Global Livingston Institute about why writing matters, even if no-one ever reads what you've written!

World travel is phenomenal, but as my mom Jennifer Yane told me 30 years ago, the real journeys are inside you!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/valley-haggard-on-why-your-writing-matters-even-when/id1281448368?i=1000753761570

Podcast Episode · Travel Writing Podcast · March 7 · 33m

02/27/2026

SAY HELLO TO MY NEW BABY DRAGON: WRITING FIRE!! And register below for a free community writing workshop on Saturday, March 14, 12 noon -1:30 PM EST!

It is with great excitement that I introduce to you Writing Fire, a dragon I’ve been birthing and wrangling and trying to tame for the past year–if not my entire life– if not all the lifetimes that came before.

She hasn’t learned her manners yet, but she is here, and she is flying, and she is breathing fire.

She began to stir during 9 months of ceremony and shadow work in the dark woods of Shadow Cove, a house my husband and I’d bought in rural Middlesex County in 2024. I’d been guided to move out of our big beautiful house in the suburbs to woods and water during a vision quest with a shaman two months before.

The sudden shock of rural isolation, silence, and immersion in nature resurrected a part of me that had long been gasping for air. I tended her back to life with loving care. I made a vow that she would never have to walk through the Underworld alone again. If she has to go, I’m going with her.

Together, we’ve sought what she’d been craving. Community, ceremony, ta**ra, ecstatic dance, the wild divine feminine. We camped, danced, swam in the frozen ocean. We jumped in rivers, built fires, and spent hours talking to the trees and howling at the wind. During a dance with women, we shook and shimmied off the role of householder and wife, a Queen Snake in full spiral, shedding dead skin.

On the first day of spring 2025, I signed my separation papers, filed the paperwork for Writing Fire, and then spent four days at a celebration of Beltane with a bunch of powerful, magical pagans. A heart celebration. A homecoming. I began to find language for the unnamed gifts and knowings and magic that have always swirled around inside me.

Untethered from old roots, new methods of writing, channeling and spellcasting have been rising. Never before has creativity, catharsis, sacred circle, storytelling, and community seemed so potent, so powerful. The cozy, sacred circles of women I’ve been hosting in living rooms and river’s edges have been fire and magic, creativity and sacred transformation.

I believe with all of my heart this is how we not only survive the insanity of these times, but thrive within them. Writing is how we release the old to make space for the new, make difficult decisions, wrangle chaos, channel wisdom, express grief and rage, transform thoughts into words and then words into actions. Writing is how we forgive, release, let go, call in, summon the unconscious into consciousness, rescue our dark and golden shadows.

Writing is how we cast spells for our past, present and future selves.

While the old structures of the world topple and burn, we can harness our power, and alchemize our pain into creation.
I’m releasing Writing Fire from her lair now, not because I’m ready, but because the time has come.

The world is already burning.

Writing is how we ride the dragon.

Would you be my guest?? I would love for you to join me for a free or donation based 90-minute generative Writing Fire workshop on Saturday, March 14 from 12 noon - 1:30 pm EST. I’d love to see you there!

REGISTER! https://manager.corsizio.com/events/697fa8f5925f93b2462f534f