The Queer Despair and Resilience Circle is a Powerful Virtual Group Space that Offers:
- A virtual sanctuary for 2SLGBTQIA+ souls who feel deeply, love fiercely, and ache for justice, healing, and hope
- A space for collective witnessing, emotional release, and regenerative connection in a time of global uncertainty
- Emotional soul-tending for queer folks who know that healing ourselves is inseparable from healing the world
- A place to be real and remember that you are not alone, and that you are not too much
- We grieve, rage, remember, and rise… together
Next Circle Gathering
- Date: Monday, September 8, 2025
- Time: 6:30 PM – 9:00 pm (EST, USA)
- Location: Private Zoom Space
- Energy exchange: $33 per gathering
Drop in once or become a regular! We meet remotely on the second Monday of each month from 6:30 – 9:00 pm (EST, USA)
This is an intimate, confidential space, limited to 10 participants.
Registration is required to join.
In this circle, we are invited to:
- Acknowledge our grief, despair, rage, numbness, longing and hope — not as burdens, but as sacred responses to a world out of balance
- Share openly in a queer-affirming space, where your truth is honored and your pain is not pathologized
- Be witnessed without judgment or pressure to “fix” anything
- Cultivate resilience together — resilience that is active, embodied, and powerful!
- Explore ritual, reflection, and group practices that reconnect us to our inner wisdom, each other, and the Earth
- Reclaim our sacred gifts, queer magic, and ancestral strength to fuel resistance, imagination, and transformation
This circle is for 2SLGBTQIA+ beings who:
- Crave a Queer space to process big emotions
- Are feeling the weight of personal and planetary suffering
- Want to be in authentic, inclusive Queer community
- Believe that inner work fuels collective liberation
Inspired by The Work That Reconnects (Root Teacher Joanna Macy) and The Despair and Discovery Circle (created by Betti Rooted Lionheart).
Testimonials
I'm an introvert, and feeling safe enough in a new group to speak is unusual, so I arrived at my first Despair Circle feeling lonely, scared and sad. But at that very first meeting I was able to tearfully take my turn because Betti has an open, calming, loving way about her that makes people feel safe and welcome. I always felt accepted at the Despair Circle just as I am.
I’ve attended many Despair Circles with Betti, and found them to be a safe and comforting place to be as I worked with my feelings of grief. The Despair Circle has helped me to be more curious about the part of myself that needs to feel and hold the pain for this planet, and the Circle helped me to look at that pain and find ways to do my small part towards healing the planet for all living beings.
The Despair Circle is quite beautiful, giving people the opportunity to grieve together, to go deeply into difficult emotions, while also offering lightness, fun, and uplift. Betti is a skilled facilitator of groups, creating safety for people to go deep. She strikes a great balance in holding space and agenda firmly, without being controlling or rigid about structure or style, allowing what needs to happen in the moment. Betti is a person of impeccable integrity, genuine, completely trustable, warm, playful, and filled with love for and dedication to the Earth.
In 2022, I met Betti at a Wailing Circle she was leading. It was at a time that I was interested in allowing grief to be uncovered and experienced. Betti was a relief. She had no signs or symptoms of her ego being fed by our presence. She allowed our grief to process in whatever creative way we needed. She kept to the structure of opening the circle, respecting the elements, allowing space/time for each participant, and brought us to closure gently.
What was brought forth that day had a ripple effect: I cannot recall a word that was said, yet the profound feeling of connecting in a space that did not require anything other than my presence (where I was enough as is) became a beacon of spiritual light.
Meet Your Facilitator:
Betti Rooted Lionheart (she/her)
Betti is passionate about working with Queer People, Teens, and anyone who feels despair for the Earth and Humanity. She is a Shamanic Healer, a Spiritual Empowerment Activist, a Fire Priestess, a Writer, a Facilitator of the Work That Reconnects, a Minister of the Church of Earth Healing, the Mother of two Sons, Queer, and the founder of Braided Root Waters Healing Sanctuary in Trumansburg, New York, USA.
Betti offers powerfully transformative one-to-one Shamanic Healing Sessions.