on divination, youth group, and creative embodiment: kendra austin in conversation with jeanna kadlec
One of the most visible and vocal curve models on Beyoncé’s Internet, odds are good you either recognize or already follow Kendra Austin. What you may not know is that she’s a brilliant writer who almost went to law school — and also happens to be one of the most powerful witches I know.
These days, Kendra has a newly launched, very spiritual newsletter “Come Home”, which is just one of her many irons in the fire. Trust me: You want to keep up with whatever she’s doing. (Which you can do on her Instagram, TikTok, & Twitter.)
Kendra joined me on Zoom from her home in Brooklyn to talk creative process, spirit, ex-evangelicalism, and more.
This interview has been edited for length.
Jeanna Kadlec: Kendra! We’ve been friends for some time now, but I’d love for you to introduce yourself to the folks who will be reading this.
Kendra Austin: My name is Kendra Austin. I am a Brooklyn-based multi-hyphenate creative, writer, content creator, model, comma comma comma, more to come. I developed a platform based on storytelling and identity that’s blossomed into a really gorgeous community of several intersecting previously othered identities. Now it's dipped more into spirituality.
Really, I’m just going up a mountain and letting everybody watch me do it.
JK: Yes you are! Can you share your Big 3 (sun, moon, and rising)?
KA: I am an Aquarius sun, Taurus moon, and Capricorn rising, and it shows.
JK: It very much shows in the best way. So, to kick us off: What is spirituality to you now in this moment, and how does it connect with your creative life?
KA: It’s always my goal to be a student of something. Right now, spirituality is my prime study — it’s the source from which I am doing all of my work, and I believe that that will always be true, so I’m building a foundation for what it means to be as authentic and grounded in integrity as possible. What greater source of integrity could there be other than your literal self, right? The greatest understanding of how you know yourself right now, I think, is the most powerful source of being able to tell your story.
JK: In what way does the writing process connect you to that spiritual part of yourself?
KA: Spirituality really stemmed from an obsession with divination as a study, and then I realized the reason why I was so fascinated by the information surrounding divination is because I am a natural diviner and an incredibly strong manifestor. My thoughts and my dreams and my wishes and the belief in the magic of my own life was how I was developing a life of such free expression, and my work is based on that.
Tarot reading, specifically, is an incredible tool for storytelling because our lives truly are a tale as old as time. We are not the first to move through these journeys — in fact, we ourselves are not moving through these journeys for the first time, and that's why we chose to come into the physical human experience again, in my personal spiritual belief and practice — and returning back to self is the source of all of my writing and the ways in which I share myself even interpersonally, let alone through my work.
That return home, that ritualistic return to belonging to something greater, is how I have found myself in a very practical and pragmatic sense. I want to share that.
Using my divination practices as a mirror for my own personal journey, whether in essays or in social media captions, creates a different language which I may not have translated otherwise, and that’s very helpful. So often folks will comment or DM like, “Kendra, what you shared today about your experience really resonated” and I’ll be like yeah, because what I described was an astrological transit.
I think people don't realize that like these tools are actually just a language to what we're already processing. It's just a reflection — divination is not a cause and effect. It’s a language, a way to better understand our own stories.
JK: I love that you talk about it as a language, which I think is such a helpful framework for speaking about the occult, the other-than-human, the spiritual realm, the things that are co-existing with us that are informing and reflecting our reality back to us that we may sense but not have the specific awareness of how to tap into it.
To connect that to what you were saying about study: What sparked your interest in divination? You mentioned dreams and this automatic awareness of a sense in your body and in your subconscious even. But tarot and astrology are very specific studies and practices. What got you interested?
KA: I was raised by a crystal bitch who wouldn't claim that she was a crystal bitch. My mother was raised in Catholicism, and because of that and her own teen angst that never left her, she raised us kind of like heathens — we didn't really go to church. I found that through a friend group. The search for something greater than myself was in me without her having to usher it into my life.
I almost feel like the vacuum of not having a parent or foundational family member really being a driving force in spirituality or in religion put me in a position to find it, because I just had that deep instinct to find something greater. So I stepped very early on into having hyper Christian friends, like extreme non-denominational, weekly devotionals, you know.
JK: Wait, did you go to youth group?!
KA: Of course I did! Youth group. Christian summer camp. I wore a purity ring. We were here, okay, we were here for it. I just clung to what was available to me. So at the time, I was in the ‘burbs, I was really only interested in being surrounded by people who had a firm belief in goodness, and sought that in something greater than themselves. And they sought Christianity, right, like that was their version, that was their form. So in that way, they were also seeking divination in the tools provided to them.
And while all that was happening, I also had this incredibly anti-mom, who had several astrology books, who deeply believed in the occult, who also had incredibly prophetic dreams. She was able to interact with family members who had passed away, and she was such an open channel for things that did not exist in the physical realm. That planted the seeds of me wanting to know more, because I had a mother who had incredible gifts that she also passed on to me, and that I was very aware of.
It wasn't really until I was at an impasse within the last few years, in such a liminal space of like, are you going to trust in the magic of your own life? that required like a deep trust in myself, a deep knowing of myself — that these tools brought me back to that.
JK: These last few years, you’ve been on such a journey of self-sovereignty and moving to New York and growing this incredible career. And also, the world has been a horrifically anti-Black, anti-fat, anti-woman, anti-queer place to live as you’ve been on this powerful, magical journey of going deeply within yourself and building this tremendous queen-Empress type energy — also as a Saturn-ruled person, so talk about authority. How has this tension manifested for you within your creative practice and creative journey?
KA: That’s honestly an incredibly topical and present question in my life. I am currently taking a step away from having to depend on structures that hate me. Right? That is what I'm moving away from right now in my career path and in my creative journey.
This last summer, I became incredibly aware that when I signed with Wilhelmina — one of the oldest and most powerful founded modeling agencies in the world — I had already known in my bones that they did not see me as anything greater than a human hanger. I did it anyway, because I was still seeking prestige. I was still seeking the validation of an authority that hated me.
I have since sought sovereignty by going into content creation. But the ability to create is aided by having to be essentially the shill for brands. That’s what supports the 20 other posts that are pure and total emotional labor. It doesn't feel like it is an uneven give and take. But ultimately, for the sake of reciprocity, in order to share so honestly and still be able to live — in order to write! — I have to then sell product.
Right now, I'm making a shift to be able to have a newsletter, a form of writing that I'm paid for outside of those things. I'm constantly being challenged more and more to own my authority. I have to face that [scarcity space] over and over and over again. Take the leap; take the leap. The Fool card has never come up more than it is right now in my life. It is so clear. It's the Fool and Strength, which is my birth card. Just The Fool and Strength, over and over.
Ultimately, what I'm speaking to is that I am not here to pay bills and die. I don't want to have to delineate what I create from my job from my community. I want them to all be the same thing, and I believe that that's possible.
JK: I love that. To get a bit granular, I wanted to ask you about the bones of your writing practice and writing routine. Walk us through what that looks like for you.
KA: I'm still very much figuring out. For one, Gemini is my sixth house [the house of the birth chart that deals with daily work environment]. The routines are a challenge for me. *laughs*
JK: And you’ve got that Pisces third [the house of the birth chart that has to do with writing routines].
KA: 100%. But I have noticed that there are a lot of grounding practices that are directly related to my writing. There are things that very much like kind of bring me back to a generative place. And then I'll immediately sit down and write after that.
I really love to get my day started with a long walk. Walking is a power zone for me. I go out on a walk super early in the morning, and when I get back home, my Notes app is just jam packed. I've got my Notes app going, I've got my voice memos. I do not believe that you have to sit down at a desk, and that's what makes you a writer. That is not a valuable source for me. When I start to get in that groove, it makes me feel really bad about myself, because I'm like, why can't I just sit down every single morning and get it done? But that’s not what works for me. It’s better for me to just go on my long walk and have my Notes app ready.
And, you know, I also think that a huge part of my writing practice is small bouts of being a human being and taking in media and enjoying life.
JK: Intake! Creative intake!
KA: I just think that sometimes you need something to re-jog the memory of your own personal source, re-jog the memory of what brings you joy, of why you do what you do. Sometimes that comes from a really nostalgic place for me. Two things that I really resonate with and have since a very, very early age are Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. I will come back to those stories over and over and over again if I am in a real stalemate with my own creative process.
Listening to music is also such a source of creative intake for me. Grounding practices are a huge source of inspiration. I learn a lot from my plants, like, from being a plant mom. I learn a lot from going on walks. I learn a lot from yoga. I really really love reading old folk tales and stories — they directly connect to the tarot. I love old archetypes, I think that’s every writer’s source?
JK: I would just like to sidebar this by saying that literally everything you just said is, like, peak Pisces third house.
KA: Completely. I love an old story. I'm like okay wait, I am bigger than this, this is something that's existed before me, I can return back to that.
JK: That’s so beautiful. My last question is, has there been a particularly magical creative moment for you this last year?
KA: The big thing was truly coming to own spirituality as a source of my writing. It’s entirely transformed what I write about. I now actually understand what my voice is and why I’ve been offered opportunities to write. I know exactly what my message is.
You and I have talked about this so many times — how if you write, you’re a writer. Because if you count on capitalism or prestige to validate who you are as a creative, it’s not gonna happen for you. You’re never gonna find fulfillment, you're never gonna find joy in those spaces. So I think that recently, really finding that for myself has been amazing and realizing that so much of the work I’ve done already [with modeling] has actually led me to this point. It’s such a satisfying moment, founded in gratitude, realizing that these things I already do on a daily basis are supporting the writing. A life that supports creative embodiment is truly the goal.
JK: What a gorgeous note to end on. Thank you so much.
KA: Thank you for having me. A total fucking joy.
You can follow Kendra Austin on Instagram, TikTok, & Twitter. Be sure to subscribe to her newsletter, Come Home!