We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Netta Fei. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Netta below.

Netta, appreciate you joining us today. Can you walk us through some of the key steps that allowed you move beyond an idea and actually launch?

Out of a seven-year inner wilderness sparked by a crumbling marriage, my idea–my mission–was born: to help women remember who they are and be their True Self.

It began in that wilderness, in solitude. I started writing a fictional story as my own story, imagining how a biblical woman, Abygael, found herself married to a fool—and how she ultimately tapped her buried wisdom to reclaim her peace. That story became my debut novel, “A Most Useful Betrothal”, which I self-published in 2024. The book received the Georgia Writers Association’s 2023 John Lewis Grant for Fiction and opened the door to podcast appearances, book club chats, and rich conversations with readers.

As those conversations grew, I realized the novel wasn’t just a story—it was the message. I distilled its heart into my call to women: shed falsities, rise in True Self, awaken goddessness, embody divinity, and live on 10—elevated, free, and joy-filled.

I sought to build a platform for that call and I chose Substack. I studied the landscape, learned the culture, and listened deeply to what community on the platform required. I engaged my network to help name and shape the brand, which became True Self Society. I aligned my social channels with both my personal brand and the publication, spoke about it consistently, and shared the vision across podcasts and conversations.

In March 2025, I officially launched True Self Society on Substack. Today, I publish weekly essays, host live video conversations called True Talk, and collaborate with fellow creators—all in service of helping women ascend into their highest, truest selves.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am Netta Fei—writer, certified spiritual self coach, and founder of True Self Society. I am enchanted by women, especially women of color, who reclaim and embody their True Selves to live high every day. I am the author of the award-winning biblical fiction novel, A Most Useful Betrothal, recipient of the Georgia Writers Association’s John Lewis Grant for Fiction, and the creator of the Substack publication and community, True Self Society.

My work emerged from a seven-year inner wilderness sparked by a misaligned marriage—a season that stripped me down to what was false and initiated my return to what was true. During that time, story became both my refuge and my revelation. I wrote “A Most Useful Betrothal” by imagining how a biblical woman, Abygael, awakened her buried wisdom and reclaimed her peace. What began as fiction ultimately revealed my life’s calling.

Drawing on my lived experience as a preacher’s kid, a Southern Black Baptist, a journalism and MBA student at a predominantly white institution, a former corporate marketing and communications executive, and a woman who has navigated identity fracture and spiritual reclamation, I now help women shed inherited falsities, reconnect deeply with themselves, awaken goddessness, embody divine feminine energy, and live on 10—their highest, most liberated expression of life.

Through True Self Society, I offer weekly essays, live video conversations, community gatherings such as The True Self Ascension Circle, and collaborative spaces designed to guide women out of identity shrinkage and into spiritual authority. The core problem I solve is disconnection from self—rooted in fear, conditioning, and distortion. My work restores remembrance. Rather than surface motivation, I urge and offer a return to origin.

What sets me apart is the way I blend sacred storytelling, spiritual truth-telling, and practical integration into a pathway of ascension. I don’t teach women how to become someone new. I guide them back to who they were before the world edited them.

I am most proud of building a body of work that calls women home to themselves without apology. In that vein for 2026, I am uber excitedly anticipating the release of my next book, “The Book of Burnett: 42 Truths for Living Well, Fully, and Without Regret” and a 42-day program called “Live High: The Jacob’s Ladder Ascension Way”.

I also support literary and sisterhood communities as a Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective donor and as a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, Black Authors Association, Georgia Writers Association, and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.

What I most want people to know about my brand and my work is this: your True Self is not lost, your divinity was never revoked, and your life was always meant to be lived at full height. Everything I create is an invitation to rise.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

One of the most defining pivots of my life came when I moved back into my childhood home for two years to care for my aging father as he declined with dementia and severe sundowning. My then–14-year-old daughter came with me. What I thought would be a temporary adjustment became a full-body reckoning with love, loss, duty, and truth.

At the time, I was balancing two worlds: I was deep in the writing of my novel, “A Most Useful Betrothal”, while also running a corporate writing and consulting business. Very quickly, those worlds collided. Dementia does not pause for conference calls. Sundowning does not respect deadlines. There were nights when my father was awake, disoriented, and afraid, just as clients expected deliverables by morning. I tried for a while to hold it all together. But eventually, the truth became undeniable and something had to give.

I made the difficult decision to shutter my corporate writing business.

On paper, it looked like loss. In real life, it was liberation. That pivot forced me to confront what mattered most, what was compatible with my season, and what was no longer aligned with who I was becoming. It stripped me of productivity theater and returned me to purpose. I continued work on my book. I mothered my daughter through adolescence with presence. I managed our interaction and care when COVID hit. I learned how to sit with someone who was unbecoming himself and not fully aware of it—a sacred, heartbreaking initiation into compassion I could never have learned any other way.

That season taught me three unshakable truths. First, compassion deepens when you witness someone losing their grip on identity. It forever changes how you see the human condition. Second, time is far too precious to spend performing versions of yourself that are rooted in untruth or misalignment. And third, life does not reward delay when it comes to your calling. Postponement is costly.

That pivot was not the end of something but the beginning of everything I am now building. It was the soil in which my voice matured, my authority clarified, and my mission crystallized. It led directly to the completion of “A Most Useful Betrothal” and, ultimately, to the launch of my publication and community, True Self Society.

What felt like a detour was actually a divine reroute. It taught me how to let go of what no longer fit so that what was always meant for me could finally emerge.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A lesson I had to unlearn was the belief that endurance is the same as devotion. I was taught by faith culture, family expectations, and generational conditioning that staying, sacrificing, and suffering quietly were signs of strength and spiritual maturity. For a long time, I wore that belief as virtue.

The unlearning came through my divorce.

From the outside, I was doing all the “right” things. I was holding the home together, performing partnership, and managing life with composure. From the inside, I was disappearing. I had learned how to negotiate away my own needs in the name of peace. I normalized misalignment. I spiritualized self-abandonment.

What finally broke me open wasn’t just the ending of the marriage; it was the realization that I had been practicing a slow, socially acceptable form of self-erasure for years. I had confused loyalty with loss of self. I had mistaken long-suffering for love. I had stayed committed to a version of life that was incompatible with who I truly was and that self who I was remembering. Walking away required me to unlearn the lie that letting go of unproductive things was “sin” and choosing myself was failure. It wasn’t. It was faith—in my life, my voice, and my divine right to wholeness.

That unlearning changed everything. It’s what gave birth to my novel, “A Most Useful Betrothal”. It is what clarified my calling of True Self. It is why I now teach women that endurance is not the same as alignment, and that sacrifice without self is not sacred. You do not have to disappear to be faithful. Sometimes the holiest thing you will ever do is leave what no longer lets you live.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nettafei.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nettafei
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NettaFei/
• Other: https://trueselfsociety.substack.com/