My name is Betti Rooted Lionheart.
And these are The Bones of My Story… so far…
Mine is a story of grief and despair for our Earth.
I felt deep grief for our Earth from the age of seven when I learned that the Ocelot, a wild cat of Central and South America, might one day become extinct. I lived in a growing fog of despair as I learned more and more about the harm humans cause our Planet.
I wanted, more than anything, to save the Earth, but the enormity of the problems and my despair kept me paralyzed.
It was only once I learned to Shamanic Journey, to let a part of my Spirit leave my Body to travel into the Spirit World, to interact with my Spirit Guides, that the paralysis and despair began to lift because I began to feel empowered to make a difference.
Because of the unconditional Love, Guidance, Healing, and Transformation that I’ve received from my Spirit Guides, I now live a life in which I take small steps every day toward making real my Vision for Myself and for the Earth.
I see a future where all humans live in Balance, in Beauty, in Creativity, and with Self-Respect and Respect for All Beings. I see a future where we each know our Purpose and our Connection to the Earth, to the Divine, to Ourselves, and to Each Other.
I am passionate about working with people who are overwhelmed by grief and despair for our Earth and for Humanity. I lived in those feelings for a long time. I know there is a better way to live. And I know how to get there.
Mine is a story that illustrates the power that the skill of Shamanic Journeying has to completely transform a person’s Life.
I now describe my life, before learning to Shamanic Journey, as an uncertain, fearful and desperate struggle to figure out, on my own, what I was supposed to do with my life. I would grab onto something and cling to it, give it my all, and then fail at each thing colossally.
By the beginning of 2015, when I was 36 and my boys were 3 and 6 years old, I had just failed at my BIG DREAM.
My Big Dream was creating a farm-based intentional community. I wanted to create an idyllic village or tribal experience of wholeness within a multigenerational community. I wanted each person to be valued and valuable. I wanted my children to be raised by the village that it actually does take to raise children.
I wanted this intentional community to become self-sufficient enough to survive the collapse of the failing human systems which are destroying life on Earth.
The four years that my now-ex and I, and our two young kids, worked at that dream were the worst, hardest years of my life.
In early 2015 I hit bottom. I’d failed at everything I cared about: farming, community, and raising my kids the way I’d imagined.
I wasn’t grateful for this experience then, but I am grateful now. Because I chose to place both feet firmly onto a Path of Healing.
At the beginning of 2016, I learned to Shamanic Journey, and it was like finding the thing that I was looking for all my life, even though I didn’t know I was searching.
Once I began to access my own direct connection to the Spirits and the Spirit World, I no longer felt alone. I didn’t have to figure everything out myself. I could ask for guidance and support from my Spirit Guides, from these Beings who have so much wisdom and so much love for me.
My Shamanic Spiritual Path has led to the best, most fulfilling, transformative, and exciting years of my life!
Mine is a story of remembering my Purpose for being in a Body on this Planet at this time.
A long time ago, we used to come into the world held and helped by a Living Community. The life of the community depended upon each of us remembering our Purpose; upon each of us honing our skills in service of Each Other, the Earth, and the Divine.
We each have a Divine Purpose and we each get to weave the tapestry of our own lives.
During those times past, all Community members supported each other in remembering our Purpose- the Purpose our Spirit chose before coming into a human body. It can be so hard to remember our Purpose in the modern absence of a cohesive, supportive Community.
It is okay to need help remembering. And it is okay to ask for the help we need to find the strength within ourselves to Claim who we are and why we are here.
Because I have learned to Shamanic Journey, because I have cultivated my own direct connection to the Divine, I have remembered that I am Shamanic Healer, a Minister, a Spiritual Empowerment Activist, a Teacher, and a Fire Weaver.
Fire is Transformation, and I am someone who weaves my own Transformations, and I help others weave theirs.
I’ve remembered that my Divine Purpose is to teach people to Shamanic Journey so they can develop their own amazing personal connection to the Spirits. So they can find their own inner power and Divine Purpose. So they can transform despair and paralysis into Empowered Action.
But I was 37 before I began to remember… Before I found the Teacher who could help me find my way.
It took me eight years of Healing, Growth, and Transformation to find the courage to Claim My Purpose, Claim My Power, Claim My Voice, and Claim My Self.
It is okay to allow ourselves the time it takes to become Brave.
Mine is a story of Healing and Transforming the patriarchal disempowerment and patriarchal sexual trauma that controlled and limited my life.
For a very long time the patriarchy has wanted us to believe in one father god, and to mindlessly obey their interpretation of that god. The patriarchy tells us that only a very few men have direct access to that male god. And the patriarchy tells us to deny and despise the Divine Feminine, the divinity within ourselves, and the sacredness of our physical bodies and of the Earth.
As a woman born into a patriarchal world, my body has carried patriarchal sexual trauma in every cell all my life. Ancestral patriarchal sexual trauma. Past life patriarchal sexual trauma. And this life’s dis-embodiment, sexual shaming, and woman blaming of a catholic upbringing paired with all the cultural messages about womens’ bodies and sex and sexuality led to a very unhealthy relationship with my body and my sexuality.
The patriarchy took from us our connection to our bodies as the Sacred Sources of Life that we are, took from us our Earth and Goddess-based Shamanic Spiritualities, took from us our own direct connections to the Divine.
Yet each and every one of us has the Ability and the Right to connect directly to Spirit/ Goddess/ God/ Creator/ Great Mystery/ Great Mother whatever you choose to call the Sacred Source of All Life.
Taking from us our direct connection to the Divine also took away our ability to know our Selves, our Truth, our Purpose, and our Worth.
A long time ago, humans used to believe that each of us was inherently worthy. But now, the patriarchy defines our individual worth based on our skin color, our material wealth, our age, our ability, our religion, our gender identity and sexual orientation, our cultural heritage, and our physical appearance.
I am a white American woman and thus I come from white privilege. I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s in the patriarchal American capitalist “culture” created largely by and for the white and the wealthy and the men at great cost to everyone else and the Earth.
Patriarchal disempowerment and patriarchal sexual trauma seeps into us from all directions. All our lives we absorb disempowering messages into our bodies and minds. Messages like: I’m not good enough, beautiful enough, sexy enough, thin enough, smart enough, white enough, rich enough, male enough, or straight enough.
Messages like: I don’t matter. I can’t make a difference. I can’t change the world. I shouldn’t take up space and be seen. I shouldn’t use my voice and be heard. I can’t do what my Spirit came here to do. I don’t deserve to belong in loving community. I shouldn’t love whom I wish to love. I can’t create the beautiful, just, and thriving world that I want to live in.
And yet all of these stultifying messages are paired with the relentless American cultural focus on fame and the lone hero.
I internalized all of it- I staggered around with the weight of the World on my shoulders, believing that I needed to save the planet single-handedly, all the while feeling worthless to do anything at all- feeling indescribably small, irrelevant, voiceless, and fearful.
Healing from the patriarchal disempowerment and patriarchal sexual trauma that was once lodged in every cell of my body means I now know that no one person can save the planet on her own. I now know that each of us is here to do our part.
It means I can now say:
YES! I can make a difference!
YES! I matter!
YES! I can change the world!
YES! I will be seen!
YES! I will be heard!
YES! I can create the beautiful, just, and thriving world that I want to live in!
It is much more rewarding, effective, and fun to weave our lives from the place of our Inner “Yes,” from our Inner Empowerment, from our place of being consciously Sourced and Resourced by Spirit.
Healing from patriarchal disempowerment and patriarchal sexual trauma means I can now live My Empowered Purpose.
So, grab a hot cup of tea and a square of chocolate, and settle in to savor the bones of My Story, to taste the bitter and the sweet of transformation…
I was seven years old when I went on a camping trip with my cousins and encountered a fateful pack of “Endangered Species” cards.
My heart was particularly wounded by learning that the Ocelot was in danger of becoming extinct. I trace the origin of my despair for the Earth to that moment, for until then I had no awareness that humans were causing such damage to the Earth. I had not known what extinction was. I was devastated.
The next experience that was incredibly formative was joining the Animal Club in the sixth grade when I was eleven.
I thought it would be a group of kids talking about their love for their pets and animals in general. I myself was a devoted Cat person- the walls of my room were plastered with those cute cat posters from the scholastic book club. We’d had cats for as long as I could remember.
I couldn’t have been more wrong! The Animal Club was the project of a vegan math teacher who was on a mission to stop all animal cruelty by introducing middle schoolers to the harsh and horrible realities of the world. She showed us shocking videos on animal research, like putting beauty products into rabbits’ eyes to study what would happen.
She showed us videos of monkeys with their skulls cut open and electronic devices attached to their brains.
We saw thousands of chickens stuffed into tiny cages, forced either to lay eggs or to put on pounds for human consumption. We saw calves being raised in confinement for veal. Week after week I was traumatized by these images. At some point I couldn’t take any more so I stopped going.
I didn’t have anyone I could talk to about how I was feeling, so the feelings just got shoved down inside.
In high school my radar was attuned to the environmental issues that were printed in the paper and aired on National Public Radio. At the time, Global Warming was the term for what is now called Climate Change.
Reading the 1962 “book that started the environmental movement,” “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson, deeply impacted me. As did “The Population Bomb” by Paul Ehrlich, which spoke of the dangers of overpopulating the Planet.
I was particularly saddened by the destruction of the rainforests and the species loss that went along with it. I yearned to buy 100 acres of rainforest so I could protect it and all the animals that lived there.
And I decided I would never, ever have kids because I did not want to add to the Earth’s problematic population growth.
I wanted desperately to help save the Earth, but I was paralyzed by my despair and by the vastness of the problems. And I wasn’t sharing my feelings with any of my friends. I wasn’t talking to any adults about it either.
I felt all alone in my despair and like I was the only person in the world who cared.
I graduated high school in 1996. In 1997 I was driving my car when National Public Radio aired a piece on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). I don’t remember what the story was about, all I remember is that all the traumatic images and information from the Animal Club came rushing back at me and I didn’t eat another bite of meat for the next seven years. Not eating meat was an action I could take to end my part in the suffering of animals raised as food.
Then, in an Environmental Studies program in college, I took a course called “Global Hunger” that shaped the direction of the rest of my life.
I began to understand how global politics and economics create scarcity and hunger.
I began to realize the extent to which food was globally being grown with poison, and my eyes were opened to the dangerous genetic modification of food.
I began to understand how global politics and economics create scarcity and hunger.
I began to realize the extent to which food was globally being grown with poison, and my eyes were opened to the dangerous genetic modification of food.
I’d known for quite a while that driving my car was a huge part of the problem- but now I realized that simply eating anything at all, unless it was organically grown, was engaging in an act of destruction!
I wanted to do something to change this shocking, disempowering fact.
I thought I might save the Planet by getting a PhD!
I thought if I followed the path to success that the patriarchy sets out for us: education and attaining the highest amount possible, I would earn the “credentials” to convince the world’s governments and the massive food industries to stop growing food with poison. To stop playing God by genetically engineering our food. How silly that seems now, looking back.
So I went from earning a BA in Environmental Studies in 2000 directly into a PhD program in Geography with an emphasis on Global Food Systems Studies.
As a student, I was criticizing big systems from the comfort of my desk, but I also wanted to know, hands-on, the how-to of growing food without poison.
My first introduction to this was volunteering at a small farm about thirty minutes from the university. I’d just learned about Community Supported Agriculture and had joined the farm along with some other graduate students. The farm offered a “working share,” a discount on the cost for an agreed upon number of labor hours.
Once I got my hands into the Earth at that farm, I learned that I love soil and I love working with my hands.
I realized that I’d never been encouraged in the direction of working with my hands because American culture looks down on people who earn their living with their hands and idolizes those who earn their living with their brains and bank accounts.
In April of 2002 I took time out from the PhD program to train as an organic farmer at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at the University of California in Santa Cruz. What was supposed to be a six month apprenticeship turned into a year and six months when I was hired to be a teaching assistant from October 2002 through October 2003.
For a year and a half I lived on this organic farm (first in a tent, then in a barn) in a community of 40 Apprentices and eight teaching assistants.
We all shared the work of growing great organic food. We shared a rustic “Farm Center” building with a commercial kitchen for cooking that great organic food. We shared a large dining room where we would all come together to eat the food we had grown and cooked together.
We shared in the most basic work of life in a way that I had never experienced before.
At that farm, I met a woman who was a home birth, breast-feeding, and attachment parenting advocate who taught me about these “alternative” yet ancient ways of birthing, feeding, and raising children.
She helped me feel open to having kids- to feeling like kids raised in these ways would be part of the solutions the Earth needs rather than part of the problem.
And, at this farm, I met the man I would marry and who would father my two children.
When our time at this farm was coming to a close, my closest friend called a meeting of the eight of us teaching assistants who had spent the full year and a half together. She wanted to brainstorm ways we could continue to be in each other’s lives.
Her suggestion was that we form a farm-based intentional community- a place loosely modeled on the experience we had just shared.
This idea so deeply resonated with my soul that it became the driving force of my life for the next 12 years.
At the end of this immersive community and farm experience, and with my new partner in tow, I returned to the PhD program in Massachusetts in October, 2003. While he started a one acre “Community Supported Agriculture” farm I was frantically studying for my oral exams.
After a year of intense preparation, I failed my exams.
I left the program in 2005 with an MA instead of a P, h and D to follow my name. This was my first experience of “Big Failure.” But after the initial shock of it, it felt okay, or at least that’s what I told myself, because I had a Big Dream to hold onto, and a partner who I thought shared my dream.
I didn’t need a PhD to succeed at creating a farm-based intentional community.
As I researched and planned this dream of intentional community, my yearning deepened for the “tribe,” for the “village,” for living in the fold of an intact community.
I wanted to live in a place and among people where each person had a valuable and valued role within the community. Where art, craft, song, and dance were central to our lives.
I wanted to create this different and idyllic life with others of like mind. I wanted to share ownership of land that we would love and protect and listen to. I wanted to share the work of farming, of cooking, of raising kids.
I wanted to be a woman among other women doing the work of mothering and of life together.
I wanted my children to grow up close to the Earth, running free and wild with other kids. I wanted them to be mentored by the many adults of the community, helped to know and develop their skills and Purposes.
I wanted my kids growing up to the rhythms of the Moon and the growing seasons, and with Rites of Passage for all stages of life, especially puberty.
My partner and I moved from Massachusetts to California to be near his family and the two women we were plotting this community with. He and I lived and worked on a goat dairy in 2006. In 2007 he got a good state job working at a community college farm, and we got married.
I birthed our first son at home in 2008, and I became a full-time, breast-feeding, attachment-parenting mom- the only way I was willing to do the earliest years of motherhood.
I birthed our first son at home in 2008, and I became a full-time, breast-feeding, attachment-parenting mom- the only way I was willing to do the earliest years of motherhood.
When the financial crisis of 2008 impacted his job in 2009, it felt like it was time to act on our dream. We’d talked, in an it-won’t-ever-happen sort of way, of taking a motorhome cross-country to find our place to land. We could never afford land in California, and the water scarcity didn’t suit my criteria for surviving collapse.
So, in 2010 we bought a used motorhome and we visited existing intentional communities and liberal areas from the midwest to New York State.
We had our “ah-ha moment” on the 105 acres of land that is now our home.
It wasn’t rainforest, but with help from our families, we finally owned that 100 acres of land that I’d longed to protect since childhood.
Our second son was born at home, on the land, in March of 2012… and we began to realize how vastly we had underestimated how difficult it would be to raise very young kids while starting a farm on land with no infrastructure, while also trying to meet like-minded people to grow a community with.
I’d desperately wanted to raise my sons in a community of other families sharing land and labor together, to feed them only the healthiest and home-grown organic foods, to homeschool them, to teach them survival skills, to shelter them from screens and patriarchal messages.
I’d wanted to raise them to be a part of the solution to the world’s ills, not part of the problem.
But by 2015, our farm had failed, and we were still living a regular, consumptive, Earth-destroying American life with two boys going to school and being indoctrinated into becoming good consumers and good cogs in the wheels of American capitalism.
I despaired at having gone against my earlier deep knowing that I would never have kids.
I’d had no idea how hard it would be to be a mom. I’d had no idea how impossible it would feel to raise them in the ways that resonated with my heart’s longings.
I had just lived the hardest and worst years of my life, failed at all I held dear, and I was dwelling in the bottom of my own personal pit of despair.
My body, my mind, and my Spirit were all broken.
At the same time, with the failure of our farm, My husband and I were both scrambling for work, so I spent the growing season of 2015 on the grounds crew at Cornell University. Thanks to my farming and gardening background, I was placed working in the gardens with my hands in the dirt, rather than spending 8 hours a day running a weed wacker like all the other temp workers.
I was so broken and so desperate just to support my family that I applied for a permanent job on grounds, a job that would have involved spraying the toxin round-up as a matter of course. A toxin I had studied and reviled in college and grad school.
Basically, I was at the point of signing up to do what I had never before thought myself capable of- purposefully poisoning our Planet.
Three things happened at the end of 2015 that changed my life:
First, and thank Goddess! I did not get that job!
Next, I started reading a book called “World as Lover, World as Self” by Joanna Macy. In describing her own despair for the Earth, I felt like she was writing about me! I had never experienced this before!
I was immediately turned on to Macy’s powerful process called the Work That Reconnects- amazing circle work that helps people process and move through our despair for our Planet so that we are not stuck in and paralyzed by our despair.
I sought out Work That Reconnects workshops within a day’s driving distance, and was fortunate to attend the last workshop Macy held on the East Coast in September of 2016.
In that workshop I experienced the bone-deep knowing that expressing our pain and allowing our emotions to flow, that witnessing and being witnessed, is Transformative and Empowering.
In a group ritual called a Truth Mandala, I was gifted a Spiritual Energetic experience, a baptism of sorts, into knowing that I would be doing this work in some form for the rest of my life!
The third life-changing thing happened in December of 2015- I called the phone number on a flier I'd picked up months earlier.
The flier was for a Shamanic ancestry workshop. I didn’t know what Shamanism was and wasn’t even interested in that- what I needed to know more about was the smallish print at the bottom:
The Church of Earth Healing.
A few days later I met Bekki Shining Bearheart, co-founder of the Church. That was the beginning of our 7 ½ year student- teacher relationship, and in January of 2016 Bekki taught me how to Shamanic journey.
I learned to allow a part of my Spirit to leave my body and travel into the Spirit World where I could communicate directly with my Spirit Guides.
Bekki’s Weekly Shamanic Journey Circle became my church- it was the thing that I lived for week to week. The Shamanic Path of Healing, Transformation, and Empowered Action became my way of life.
I was in an intense period of cocooning within, coming entirely apart so that I could grow into a more authentic, beautiful, free, and purpose-filled Me.
From January of 2016 to January of 2024 My Spirit Guides took me through an eight year process of Healing, Growth, and Transformation.
I left behind the paralysis of patriarchal disempowerment and despair and began to live a life of Empowered Action.
It required uncovering layer after layer; it required undergoing transformation upon transformation.
It required connecting with my Inner Fire, my astrological Fire, with physical Fire, and coming to know that I bring People together around Fire.
My spiritual journey has led me to spend a lot of time outdoors, in relationship to the Earth and to Sacred Fires.
Fires of Transformation. And I find particular joy in spending time with others in the presence of Fire, with Sacred Intention to Listen and Speak, to Witness and be Witnessed.
My Inner Fire came to life when I discovered my own direct connection to the Spirits and the Spirit World, and with their help, I began to remember why I am here.
I began Remembering that I am here to help other people learn to Shamanic Journey, to develop their own personal connection to the Spirits, to remember their own unique purpose, and to transform despair and paralysis into empowered action, like I was beginning to do.
I started by teaching my sons to Shamanic journey alongside developing my own skill. At 5 and 8 years old, they were pretty excited about having Animal Spirit Guides to connect with and they both journeyed easily.
I began a process of reclaiming My Voice and My Inner Power.
I’m a Leo who is cuspy with Cancer, and I felt much more resonance with Watery Cancer than with Fiery Leo most of my life. I was much more comfortable with hiding in my shell than with expressing my passionate, and secret-from-myself, desire to be seen.
I had to learn to have the courage to embrace my Leo-ness, my Inner Lioness, my Leadership.
By September of 2016, right after the workshop with Joanna Macy, I stepped into co-facilitating the Work That Reconnects. With two other women, I was leading small group workshops, and I’m someone who was terrified when I had to speak in front of a class throughout my many years of schooling.
I was surprising myself each time I found the courage to go to the front of the room and speak and lead.
And it was exhilarating to help people feel seen, heard, and empowered!
I was simultaneously growing deep roots into the Land that we own in the white colonizer way, that we’d tried to farm, and that I’d tried to bend into being of service to my own dreams.
I learned to speak to the Land, to ask Her, and the Spirits of the Land, what they desire.
The Land wants people to come here to Heal, Transform, and take Empowered Action through reconnection to the Earth, to Spirit, to Fire, to Beauty, to Purpose, to Truth, to Ourselves, and to Each Other.
I learned the Spirit Name of the Land: Braided Root Waters.
I learned that I am to manifest a healing sanctuary here: Braided Root Waters Healing Sanctuary.
And I learned that the Land held a Place of Power, a Medicine Wheel.
My Spirit Guides began giving me detailed instructions on how to make the Medicine Wheel visible to us humans. By the end of November 2017, the initial phase of that work was complete.
In 2018 I eagerly stepped into my year long Apprenticeship in Shamanic Healing with Bekki Shining Bearheart.
I simultaneously needed to be contributing financially to my family so I needed to have control of my time in order to take the apprenticeship.
At a friend’s suggestion, I decided to start my own small housekeeping business.
I called it Whole Hearth Housekeeping, and I marketed myself as both a physical cleaner of homes and also as a Spiritual/ Energetic cleanser. I would sing as I worked and I soon found this to be soul-enriching as well as space-cleansing.
As I scrubbed and vacuumed and sang, I grew my skill as a Shamanic Healer through growing the strength of my connection to the Spirits and to Braided Root Waters.
All the while, I continued to undergo Transformation after Transformation.
In January of 2019 I co-founded the ongoing “Despair and Discovery Circle” in Ithaca NY. This was an outgrowth of the series of Work That Reconnects workshops I’d co-facilitated in 2016 and 2017.
It has been a wonderful journey of grappling with my own despair while creating space for others to face theirs. And I’ve grown a deep appreciation for the ancient practice of sitting in a circle and passing a talking piece, each person taking a turn to speak and be heard.
By mid-2019 I completed my apprenticeship with Bekki, but I was not ready to step out into the world as a healer yet.
There was more of my own healing work to do. More Cocooning to experience. More growing of my relationship to the Spirits, to the Land, and to My Self. More transformations yet to take place.
In October of 2021, after years of unhappiness and disconnection in my marriage, I chose divorce.
I chose divorce when I finally understood that my husband had never shared my dream for intentional community and that therefore my dream had never even been possible, no matter how hard I tried. I realized I could also never live my Purpose while bound to a person who begrudged the time I gave to my Spiritual Path.
I chose upheaval and healing so I could move forward with my Purpose unhindered by a broken relationship with a partner that did not support my Vision for My Self and the Earth.
In January of 2022, I became a Minister of the Church of Earth Healing, an undertaking of personal growth that helped me cope when, in May, my Mom had a stroke and died 7 days later. I was at her side when she took her last breath.
Although my connection to Spirit helped me feel at peace with her death, I entered a period of even deeper cocooning within, and my deep desire to create a Wailing Circle emerged. I wanted to create a space in which people can come together to move trauma out of our bodies though making sounds and moving our bodies in ways that are not supported in our culture.
I have co-facilitated four wailing circles so far, each time getting closer and closer to the vision that I hold. I have a knowing that the Wailing Circle will become a foundational offering at Braided Root Waters Healing Sanctuary
For me, 2023 can be summed up by my Tarot card of the year: the Hanged One. This card symbolizes all that we think we know being turned on its head.
I thought I knew I was a woman who had had clarity early in life that I did not want to have kids and add to an already overpopulated planet. My identity was so wrapped up in believing I’d lost sight of that and had kids because I thought I’d found the partner who shared my dreams and my Vision for our kids and for the Earth.
I thought I knew I didn’t want to be in another romantic relationship for a good 20 years after choosing divorce, because I never wanted to give so much of my precious life-force energy to another person in that same way again.
I thought I knew I was heterosexual.
I thought I knew my purpose was to follow in my Teacher’s footsteps and learn to teach what she teaches and how she teaches it and to carry her work forward in the world.
I thought I knew my story of Healing, Growth, Transformation, and Empowered Action was to be held close to my heart and shared only with a select few people.
But in February of 2023 I experienced a Powerful, Powerful! healing of the patriarchal sexual trauma that had lived in every cell of my body my entire life!
When I identified the need to meet and heal the “self-judge/ self-hater” within, I came face to face with Patriarchal Sexual Trauma. And the Goddess of Compassion, Kuan Yin, came forth to heal it, to heal me.
And my life was turned upside down.
And I realized my deepest, hidden-from-myself truth was that I had wanted kids. My Female body had wanted to conceive, grow, and birth children. And my life’s journey had required it.
And I realized I deeply desired to be in an emotionally nourishing, mutually supportive, sexual, romantic relationship with another person.
And I realized that a woman might better meet my needs and desires than a man.
And in June, I fell in love with a woman and began to grapple with my unexpected and new bisexual/ Queer identity.
And with my new partner, I began to feel for the first time what it is like to be in an intimate and true partnership with someone who whole-heartedly supports My Purpose and My Vision.
And in July, the time came for me to fledge from my Teacher’s nest. It was time to shed the mantle of student and step into my own as a Teacher, a Shamanic Healer, a Minister, a Spiritual Empowerment Activist, and a Fire Weaver.
It was time for me to stop hiding in my shell, to step into my Leo-ness, my Inner Lioness, my Leadership and to tell my story so that others might be touched and transformed by it.
It was time for me to start recording my own podcast to share the intimate details of my own transformations, to flesh out the bones of this story, My Story, for all to hear.
It was time for me to fully claim My Voice, My Power, and My Purpose and bring into Being what is mine to create and share with the World.
What I most want for each of us is healing, growth, and transformation so that we can live lives of Empowered Action and together create the larger exponential transformations needed for life on Earth to continue.
What I most want is for each of us to learn to Shamanic Journey so we can access our Direct Connection to the Divine and know the Power that we have to heal and transform ourselves.
What I most want is for each of us to know the love and support of a Community of people who see the Divinity in us, who support us as we walk our Paths of Purpose, and who we in turn love and support in their Divinity and Purpose.
I am here to create these Communities.
