Lisa Marie Basile

Lisa Marie Basile

Bio

Lisa Marie Basile is the founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine--a popular magazine focused on literature, magical living, and identity. She is the author of "Light Magic for Dark Times," a modern collection of inspired rituals and daily practices, as well as "The Magical Writing Grimoire: Use the Word as Your Wand for Magic, Manifestation & Ritual." She can be found writing about trauma recovery, writing as a healing tool, chronic illness, everyday magic, and poetry. She's written for The New York Times, Refinery 29, Self, Chakrubs, Marie Claire, Narratively, Catapult, Sabat Magazine, Healthline, Bust, Hello Giggles, Grimoire Magazine, and more. Lisa Marie has taught writing and ritual workshops at HausWitch in Salem, MA, Manhattanville College, and Pace University. She earned a Masters's degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University.

Lisa Marie Basile Articles

Image courtesy of Lisa Marie Basile

A Guide For Witches & Writers: The Magical Writing Grimoire

The Magical Writing Grimoire is a book of inclusive and accessible rituals and writing prompts for anyone who feels called to using words as a source of healing, empowerment, joy, generativity, and self-exploration. Read...
Life is about so much more than whether or not you eat that cupcake.

When Your Body Is In Between "Fat" And "Thin"

When the spread was published, all the girls in the shot were small — small enough to notice their not-bigness. It was the first time I felt “othered,” the first time I noticed how some versions of thin weren’t thin enough.

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You’re a body of magic. (Photo by Ryan Moreno on Unsplash)

Gratitude Magic

Remember that your body is you, it is not separate. Treat it, yourself, with love. You’re a body of magic.

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Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Letters To The Dead: Shadow Writing For Grief & Release

Some grief is inert. Some grief is an engine. Sometimes actively participating in grief, I’ve learned, is one small way we can learn to escape its riptide.

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Photo by Katja Stückrath on Unsplash

Two Selves: Life With Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress

Loss was a language I’d learned early but had no way to speak it out of me. Read...
My personal goal was always to help writers tap into bigger social and cultural issues through their work — not to peddle exploitative shock-factor trash.

Navigating The Ethics Of Editing Personal Essays 

The fact of the matter is that content mills are dangerous and personal essays are a different beast. And there’s a vast level of discrepancy between a phone-it-in XYZ — and a Here’s What It Feels Like piece and other essays, where the language sings and the story is backed up by reportage. I’m aware of this. But there is also a middle ground.

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I’m An Exhausted Empath!

What’s Not Said: I’m An Exhausted Empath

If you’re an empath, you probably easily absorb the emotions of others and need time alone to decompress. If you're like me you're one exhausted empath!

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Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash

How To Use Tarot Cards For Self-Care

For the longest time, I've turned to tarot cards — usually read by someone else for me — to seek wisdom. Read...
I try to talk about it. I try to ask about it. I try to make a space for these realities.

Why It’s 100% OK To Talk To Me About My Time In Foster Care

When we think of foster care or wards of the state or orphans or homelessness, we hear poor. We hear the forgotten. We hear hopeless. We hear other. Let’s face it: we hear classism, trash, bad parents, drugs. The stigma cuts through the room, through the world, through the news reports we don’t read — and through our bodies.

So let’s get this out of the way now: Imagine not coming from a relatively typical family background, not having enough money to go on school trips, and knowing the structure of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and watching your mother at the podium. Imagine going from homeless shelter to foster care, and imagine your main source of support as a teenager wasn’t your mother or father, but your social worker or your foster parent — a stranger, for all intents and purposes. Imagine keeping all of this quiet, because there’s no way high schoolers could ever understand. This was my life. Now you know.

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