Betti Rooted Lionheart - Motherhood Through Despair to Divine Connection

What does it mean to raise children while carrying the weight of despair, and to find healing in unexpected places? In this episode of Quiet Connection, Chelsea sits down with Betti Rooted Lionheart, a mother, shamanic healer, and facilitator of “The Work That Reconnects.”

Betti opens up about her early conviction never to have children, her experiences with traumatic birth and a lifelong fistula injury, and the path that led her to shamanic practice, despair work, and a new sense of belonging. 

With raw honesty, she shares how she’s modeled healing and resilience for her teenage sons, how she navigates abandonment wounds, and why she believes every parent deserves permission to feel all their emotions.

🔑 Key Takeaways

1. Despair can start early. From childhood, Betti carried deep grief for the planet and humanity, which shaped her view of motherhood.
2. Birth trauma has lasting effects. A severe tear during home birth left Betti with a lifelong fistula injury and marked a personal rock bottom.
3. Community dreams are hard to sustain. Her efforts to build intentional community often clashed with isolation and burnout.
4. Healing begins with reclaiming voice. Through shamanic soul retrieval, Betti began to step into her power and speak her truth.
5. Parenting and healing intertwine. She has modeled openness, spiritual connection, and resilience for her teenage sons, inviting them into the journey.
6. All emotions are valid. From rage to despair to joy, Betti believes in expressing emotions fully, even inviting her kids to witness her rage practice. 

🎧 Soundbites

1. “I grew up in despair about what humans were doing to the earth — and thought I’d never have children.”
2. “A traumatic birth injury left me with a fistula that doctors still don’t have answers for — ten years later.”
3. “Shamanic practice gave me back my voice — and with it, my power.”
4. “Every emotion is valid. Rage, despair, joy — all of it belongs.”
5. “I want my kids to see that doing what feeds me doesn’t mean I’m abandoning them.”
6. “What if, instead of stopping our kids’ tantrums, we sat down and tantrumed with them?”

 To learn more about Betti, visit her website.

This episode discusses topics that may be triggering for some individuals. Please check the show notes for more information and be mindful of your own mental health and comfort levels.

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Transcript

Chelsea Myers (00:45)
Hello! Today I'm here with Betti Betti, how are you?

Betti Rooted Lionheart (00:50)
⁓ I, well, I'm gonna be really authentic. I am ecstatic in this moment and also like heightened emotionally because my ex-husband is moving out today and we've lived together for almost four years post divorce decision. So it's a big, it's a big, huge deal. And I had no idea when we scheduled this that that was gonna be happening today. Like the moving truck is literally in the driveway.

Chelsea Myers (01:16)
Yeah, that's a lot. That's a lot. I appreciate you being here while also navigating that. That is a huge life transition.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (01:18)
That's huge.

It's huge. It's a big, huge energy shift for me that is going to be amazing. I just feel it, you know.

Chelsea Myers (01:37)
Yeah, that's huge. And again, thank you for being here and for being willing to share yourself and your life with us. ⁓ As you know, I like to have my guests introduce themselves because I find it just it's so much nicer than having me read a list of things that I've that I kind of know about you. So if you would, could you sort of let us know who you are today?

Betti Rooted Lionheart (01:45)
Mmm.

Chelsea Myers (02:06)
as well as who you were before becoming a parent.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (02:12)
Yes. So who I am today is I am a parent of two boys, they're 13 and almost 17. And I'm also a shamanic healer. And what that means is that I have learned this skill of allowing a part of my spirit to safely leave my body and travel into the spirit world to communicate and interact with my spirit guides. And my spirit guides provide

You know, the guidance, the healing energy, the love, the transformative experiences that I'm seeking, whether it's for myself or for a client. So that is what I do. That's what my spirit is here for. That's why I came this time around. ⁓ I also work with ⁓ despair work.

So there's this beautiful body of work called The Work That Reconnects that was developed by Joanna Macy and many of her colleagues basically from the year that I was born, 1978. And I only found that work when I was, I think 37, even though I needed it all my life. ⁓ And it's this process of bringing people together in a group to ⁓ talk about our despair for the planet,

for what humans are doing to each other and all our relations, all the other beings. And it's this beautiful witnessing others in despair so that we know we're not alone and being witnessed and it's incredibly transformative. So that'll lead me right into who I was before I had kids. So from about the age of seven, that's when I became aware of endangered species.

I lived in despair and depression, again, about what humans are doing to the earth, to each other. ⁓

didn't know that I was, I knew that I was despairing, but I didn't really have a context for depression. And it was only once I found my shamanic path and this work that reconnects that I was finally able to pull myself out of that depression and despair. So for the bulk of my life, I knew from a very young age that I was not gonna have kids because I knew better because I was not going to add.

humans to the problem on the planet. And I didn't want to bring other spirits in to have to experience and endure what's happening here. But obviously that changed because I have these two boys. And what changed is that I came to believe that raising kids in

that the right way and air quotes the way that I thought ⁓ was the best way to raise kids would actually have them be contributing to the solutions to our problems rather than to the problems themselves. And so my journey was very much one of moving through, doing well in school and getting a BA in environmental studies kind of in the early days of that even being a thing.

And from there straight into a PhD program and I was studying ⁓ global food systems like the genetically modified foods, all the toxins in our food systems. And so I was just very zeroed in most of my life, pretty much my whole life on all the negative, all the bad things. And it's a really difficult burden to carry that. I've actually...

really recently learned in one of my shamanic journeys that I have basically in my life sort of been an antenna for the collective pain. And that's hard. That's hard to carry that. Yeah.

Chelsea Myers (06:12)
Mm

hmm. Yeah, that is so much and I think it probably will speak a lot to your parenting journey. Like for you to be so open and vulnerable and saying like, I was not going to have kids. You were you were carrying so much from such a young age. When and how did that shift happen? I mean, you were really doing

some incredible work, like inner work and work to improve the world around us. When did the shift change to, okay, I think I will have children and bring souls into this world.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (06:56)
Yeah, so well, and the inner work, ⁓ the inner work started when I hit bottom, which is when my youngest was three. So the inner work started after having kids. And I think kids are kids help us hit bottom. They really help us hit bottom. ⁓ So my during that PhD program, I

Chelsea Myers (07:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (07:21)
wanted to learn how to do the opposite of what I was criticizing. So I wanted to learn how to grow food without all the poisons, without the genetically modified seeds. So I ended up applying for and being accepted into an organic farming training program in California. And I went there for a six month apprenticeship, and then I was hired to stay as a teaching apprentice for a year. So I was there for a year and a half.

That's where I met a woman who became a close friend who ⁓ germinated this idea that really is something that my spirit really desired, which is intentional community. ⁓ Being on that farm, lived on site. ⁓ Well, I lived on site for a year and a half and it was a situational intentional community and I had never experienced that before.

Chelsea Myers (08:01)
Mm-hmm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (08:15)
And so then that is also the place where I met my now ex-husband. And being in that kind of microcosm of this amazing different way to live on the planet is what made me feel like, I can do this. And the other important thing is I met another woman who ⁓ was very ⁓ vocal about breastfeeding, attachment parenting, home birth. These things were all new to me.

I knew I was terrified of hospital birth and my mom had horrible experiences with that and I will be talking about my mom some as well. But so all of these things really opened me up to like, ooh, you know, having children and, you know, having found, I thought the right person, I could have kids and they could be part of the solution. And so the, you know, the right way that I mentioned of parenting kids for me would have been

you know, raising them in that intentional community with other parents and kids and families, multi-generational situation, homeschooled within that community, ⁓ and skilled to, you know, live life beyond ⁓ systems collapsing. So one of the things about me is that I have always kind of expected everything around us to eventually fall apart during my lifetime. I still think that's true and I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.

But eventually no food in the grocery stores, no gas at the pump. How do we survive beyond that?

Chelsea Myers (09:47)
So yeah, it sounds like you had kind of a shift in what your view of motherhood could look like and what your life as a mother could look like. Let's dive into that a little bit. You also mentioned your mother's experience and her experiences with pregnancy and childbirth. How did that influence your decision?

and experience with pregnancy and childbirth.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (10:15)
Wow, so many ⁓ ways to go here. ⁓ I think before I move into that, I just want to say that all of those right ways of raising kids that I was just talking about, none of that panned out for me. That's important to know, and that's part of my hitting bottom when my youngest was three. ⁓ in terms of my mom, so my mom's story ⁓ is that she was born and raised in Hungary in

Chelsea Myers (10:28)
Mmm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (10:45)
Eastern Europe, Soviet at that time. she had her first child at 30. My dad's American, they met over here because my mom's sister had come to the United States. And my mom came to the United States to visit her sister. She met my dad, they fell in love, they got married. ⁓ And in some ways that was the worst

decision of her life because she had so much community in Hungary. She had a career as an art teacher. And when she came here, she had no community. She could barely speak the language. And she also couldn't teach here without going through the US system. And so she found herself after having my older sister in 1976 just in deep

postpartum depression, but depression that never lifted. Like literally by the time she died at 76, she had been living in despair for 40, not despair, depression for 46 years. And maybe like in the last 10 years of her life had, you know, gotten diagnosed and gotten medication. And so growing up for a time until I was 10, she was a stay at home mom.

Chelsea Myers (11:58)
Mm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (12:06)
which meant she was physically present, but she was not emotionally, ⁓ mentally present really. And so, you know, growing up in that, ⁓ I think is also part of why it was so easy for me to, you know, slide right into that depression myself. And again, also not knowing that I was dealing with depression most of my life until much later.

My mom's first birth experience in a US hospital was traumatic for her because they asked her if she wanted natural childbirth and the language barrier. She didn't know what that meant. And I guess what that meant in that time is that she was basically left in a hospital room by herself without support. Or at least that's her version of the story. That, you know, it might not be quite exactly that.

Chelsea Myers (12:51)
Mm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (13:05)
that's how she tells the story that she was really entirely without support or any medical interventions and ⁓ alone and terrified. And so by the time two years later, it was time for me to be birthed. ⁓ She was just terrified, terrified of reliving that same kind of experience. And in my own healing journey, I

learned in this, ⁓ I was part of this three year program and we did this exercise where we experienced being born again. And in that experience, I learned that I was birthed in a literal wash of fear. Like just this, like my whole entire life in that moment was stamped with fear. And fear has been the, the ⁓ thing.

Chelsea Myers (13:49)
Mmm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (14:01)
that I've had to work with and work with and try to heal from and try to heal from.

Chelsea Myers (14:06)
Yeah. ⁓ I fully believe that, the emotional and mental state that we're in when we are pregnant and birthing does impact the children that we are birthing. so yeah, so that certainly resonates and hearing what you're describing, like, especially if you're,

So you're experiencing life as a child with a mother who doesn't really have the capacity to be emotionally present. And then also learning from her that her birth experiences were terrifying and not what she expected, of course would sort of put your mind in a space of, well, that's not a path that I want to walk at all. That's not an experience that I would like to replicate.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (14:50)
Yes.

Chelsea Myers (15:02)
So again, just guiding us down the path a little bit, you met your then husband and you met these women who were giving you a different perspective on what birth and parenting could look like when you made the decision and you did get pregnant. What, what

Betti Rooted Lionheart (15:23)
Mm-hmm.

Chelsea Myers (15:25)
was that like for you? How did that impact your sense of self? What was your mental state? How did you experience pregnancy?

Betti Rooted Lionheart (15:33)
So my first pregnancy, which again, this is like over 17 years at that time I was able to, at a certain point in the pregnancy, stop working and just be pregnant. And I started going to prenatal yoga and met other moms. We were living in an area where we were new, so we didn't have community around us already. I met a great group of other moms and

And then, you we all started having, we were all having our first babies and ⁓ I was able to just be at home with that baby. So that part of it was great, but I do remember the long labor. don't remember the exact number of hours, but it might've, it was something like 36 hours. ⁓ And I tore a little bit when he came out, it was a home birth, loved my midwife. ⁓

long hard labor, and as soon as I was holding this human in my arms, I was like, my God, I have no idea what I'm supposed to do now. Even though I'd read so many books and all of that, right? Like holding this human in my arms, I had no idea how to navigate this, what's next, how to take care of this human. And I also had no, ⁓ I grew up,

not being around babies, not being around younger cousins or this or that. I think a lot of people have that experience when we're not living in any kind of multi-generational situation or we're not living near our families and extended families and that kind of thing. So I had no experience.

Chelsea Myers (17:14)
something that you're alluding to, and you're not just alluding to it, you're kind of saying it flat out, is this sense of community. And it seems like...

you sought that out as soon as becoming an adult. And as soon as going to like striking out on your own and through your schooling, you wanted that community living you wanted that community. Just the village, the village doesn't just exist like, well, the village doesn't exist for. We say that a lot. The village doesn't exist for parents, but but the village that you were seeking. And like you said, you had this beautiful home birth and you were holding this baby and you were like, what do I do next?

Betti Rooted Lionheart (17:42)
Thank you.

Chelsea Myers (17:52)
You're in a place where you didn't have that village that you previously were cultivating. ⁓ So you said you met some people through yoga and through classes like that. Were you able to build a community of support or were you kind of just navigating this with your partner?

Betti Rooted Lionheart (18:12)
did have a bit of a community of support in that place and during that time until ⁓ that child was a year and a And let's see, ⁓ I am wanting to say, maybe step back for a minute, because it's just so in my brain that like, just this very clear moment of like, my gosh, when this one was still an infant, when am I ever gonna have a hot cup of tea again?

that hot shower, right? Like it was so hard to take care of me during that time. And I know that comes up on your podcast all the it's just so striking that it's so hard to take care of ourselves when the little ones are that young. And my ex did have, he had a little bit of paternity leave. This was in California.

Chelsea Myers (18:43)
Yeah.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (19:04)
and he was working for a state college. ⁓ But then he went back and it was just me. And I don't think I left the house for like six weeks. Like, I don't think I, yeah, I just didn't, I guess I didn't have to, which I'm grateful for, but I also just couldn't even imagine like putting this child in a car and going And so there was, because of that, a little bit of a pause in ⁓ cultivating

Chelsea Myers (19:14)
wow.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (19:32)
community around myself. don't remember, some of the women and their babies came over. I don't really remember. ⁓ And then, that dream, that intentional community dream, we were living in California and ⁓ owning land to start an intentional community and an organic farm ⁓ was just not feasible because of the cost of land in California and also because of the water situation.

and the fires were not terrible yet at that time. But, you know, being someone who saw the writing on the wall most of my life, Actually, what happened is the the 2008 financial crisis meant that my ex's job at the junior college got cut in half. And so we went from like being fine financially to like

we couldn't afford to pay for half of the health insurance. And so at that point, we acted on what we thought was sort of a pipe dream of buying a used motor home and driving around the country and finding where we wanted to land, where we could afford to buy land with help from our families and create that dream, that intentional community and that farm. And so in 2010, we spent the summer of 2010 driving across the country

And we ultimately landed in August of 2010 in Trumansburg New York, which is where I am now and where we found 105 acres to try to create this dream. So when we started that journey, my oldest was a year and a half. By the time we like moved all of our things here, he was two. And so starting over again.

in a place with no family, no community around ourselves in order to create this dream. And there was nothing on the land. Like we had to find a used mobile home and have that pulled on and try to create farm systems. And I got pregnant and had my second in March of 2012. And so trying to like from 2012 to 2015 were

the worst, hardest years of my life, having an infant, having a three-year-old, three years and four months when the little one was born, and trying to create this farm and intentional community. And it was just, I would never, ever relive those years. It was horrible. ⁓ So the hitting bottom, when my youngest was born, he was also a home birth.

And he was actually born in ⁓ the water. And going back to my mom for a moment, with my first, I didn't want my mom there. And she was terrified of home birth. She was just, I mean, she was terrified of all of it, because her experience is in the hospital, but home birth, she was even more terrified of, because what if something goes wrong?

Chelsea Myers (22:36)
Mmm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (22:45)
And so that birth was just me and my ex and our ⁓ midwife and doula. Here, I invited my mom to come be with us, to be with my three-year-old son so that I wasn't having, or my ex wasn't having to focus on him. And she actually initially told me no, but then she changed her mind over time and she said no again because she was terrified of this home birth idea.

so she was here and most of my labor, this was a much shorter labor. Most of it was through the night and she and my, well, she didn't sleep. She was, very Roman Catholic. She was praying to her God for my safety and protection. And, but my younger son was asleep.

He woke up like literally minutes before I pushed his brother out. And so he and my mom both saw my youngest being born, which is beautiful and amazing. And I tore so badly, like all the way to my anus and up my colon that, you he was born at home, but once the midwife figured out what was going on, we were transporting to the hospital.

for me to get sewn up. And so myself and the infant and my ex to the hospital, thank goddess my mom was here, she and my three year old stayed at home. ⁓ And that tear is ultimately what brought me to hit bottom. I was sewn up and basically what happened is I still today have a rectovaginal fistula.

because a small portion of that tear did not heal. And so in case not everyone knows what that means, it means that there is a little passageway between my colon and my vaginal canal that poop can move through. And so after the healing that was gonna happen happened, I knew that there was something wrong down there and like that was the terminology, even though I tried.

Chelsea Myers (24:38)
Mm.

Yeah!

Betti Rooted Lionheart (25:00)
use the terms vulva in like the actual anatomical ⁓ terms, which, you know, I guess men are the ones who have named all of our body parts. And so I don't know how I feel about that. But, ⁓ but down there, right, like the, the zone that we don't pay any attention to because we're taught not to or taught to fear it and be disgusted by it and all of that, like I knew there was something wrong and I just did not, ⁓ did not want to face it.

Like it was over a year before I reached out to my midwife to say, Hey, there's, can you come check me out? There's something wrong. ⁓ and then, ultimately she checked me out. went to, she took me, went with me to, I can't remember what kind of doctor and, ⁓ finally scheduled a surgery to try to have it fixed. ⁓ and that was almost, you know, my, my son by that point was almost three years old.

And the surgical options for that are pretty limited. ⁓ A couple of them carrying with them the risk that if something goes wrong, like my anus could be permanently damaged. And my anus works fine. And I am not treading into that possibility, even if it is not a huge percentage chance.

Chelsea Myers (26:17)
Yeah.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (26:25)
⁓ So what we ended up doing, the surgery was inserting a pig tissue plug. you know, it was something like a 60-ish percent chance that that would work. The body might not accept a pig tissue plug. And so my hitting bottom moment was when I realized that the surgery had not taken, it had not fixed. And so I was looking at... ⁓

essentially knowing that I was gonna spend a lifetime with this rectovaginal fistula. And I actually just a couple months ago went to ⁓ meet again with the colorectal doctor who did the surgery 10 years ago now ⁓ to see like, okay, what new developments? Like, is there something new? And no, there isn't. And it's kind of like, you know, even from the beginning, felt very,

Chelsea Myers (27:16)
Yeah.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (27:20)
clear that like, if this was a man's penis problem, there would be like so many really good solutions, but this is a woman's problem. so 10 years and there's no change in what they're, you know, what they're offering to fix this. Yeah.

Chelsea Myers (27:32)
Mm.

Yeah,

yeah. That was like so for people so for listeners that was like, ⁓ that was like a deep sigh moment there. Like, that's so much that you just encompassed into like, three to four minutes. Like, you talked about having a child uprooting yourself from from a place of just barely starting to build a community.

to a new space where you don't have a community again, trying to build that community again, finding yourself pregnant, having another child and then experiencing what is birth trauma. Like, yes, you had a home birth and it sounds like ⁓ the experience of having your older child and your mother there was beautiful, but you experienced something.

that has now continued throughout the rest of your life or has continued to affect the rest of your life. And just like you said,

issues affecting uterus owners are just not taken as seriously. And that goes across the board. It goes for childbirth. It goes for reproductive issues. It goes for gender affirming care. And just like in your circumstance, this is something

that continues to this day to affect your life.

So as you're experiencing these things and you're navigating new motherhood, you had mentioned your mom was there with you this time, like we said, were you able to start building any sort of support network during that time?

Betti Rooted Lionheart (29:23)
Not, let's see, a little bit, but I would say mostly not, not yet. When we first landed here and before I had my second, I did meet a couple women who had young kids and ⁓ hung out with them some.

But then I had my second and I, know, and we were trying to, it's really hard farming, small farming, organic farming is notoriously hard. And so just the realities of the life that we were choosing to live meant that we didn't have a lot of time for people, for friendship. And at a certain point too, I have, like my primary wounding is, ⁓

abandonment and lack of belonging. so, and like the, the origin probably for me is that about two weeks, when I was about two weeks old, my mother, because of her deep depression, she needed to go home to Hungary. Like for her own mental ⁓ health, she needed to go home to her community, her mother, her family. Well, actually her mother came here to be with me.

two weeks old and my sister who's two years older than me. And she went to Hungary to be with community, friends, family. ⁓ But basically abandonment, right? Like the mother figure leaves for a couple of weeks. And ⁓ it's interesting because I learned later in life that the reason she left us here is because my dad's mother actually wouldn't allow her to take us with her.

Chelsea Myers (30:57)
Yeah.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (31:14)
because she was afraid that if my mom went home to Hungary with her two kids, she would not come back. Like her depression, her outlook on life was so severely ⁓ problematic that my dad's mother was worried about that. that was like keeping the children here meant that the mom was gonna have to come back.

Chelsea Myers (31:20)
Mmm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (31:33)
And so those things kind of reared up in me when my kids were little and we were trying to start that farm and build community, that there was a part of me that felt like these women that I was hanging out with were just too cool and I just didn't belong. I really just kind of went.

inward, like went into that depressive ⁓ inward, I'm not good enough, I don't belong kind of space. ⁓ I really like, again, what brought me out of that was finding the work that reconnects and my shamanic teacher. So the way that I found my spiritual path was that in the local food co-op,

⁓ On the community bulletin board, I saw a flyer and it was a flyer for some kind of shamanic ancestral class. I didn't know what that was. I really wasn't interested in what that was, but it also said the Church of Earth Healing. so that like, know, neon lights was flashing at me like that is what I need to find out about. So I took that flyer home and ⁓ didn't call the person right away.

Chelsea Myers (32:41)
Hmm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (32:54)
I think I shoved that flyer into a drawer and then like some months later was cleaning the drawer out and I saw it. And that's when I made the phone call. And so I met my shamanic teacher in December of 2015. And ⁓ when we met, just connecting with this as another person who has been so aware of ⁓ and despairing about what humans are doing to the planet and her

path was one of using ⁓ this incredible spiritual path, which is all about us having our own direct connection to the divine. Like that was how she was making a difference in the world by teaching other people to have their own direct connection to the divine. And like I mentioned, my mom, very, very Roman Catholic.

Part of the reason for that is that in communist Hungary, religion was illegal. So for her, being Catholic was a form of protest. For me, it was just something that was imposed upon me that I felt very, very young was not ⁓ for me. And I remember pretty distinctly, I was in middle school when the first Gulf War broke out and the

Chelsea Myers (33:54)
Mmm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (34:19)
priest, like that weekend, his sermon was all about how, if we were just all good Catholics, none of this would be happening. And even at that young age, being in middle school, I was like, no, actually what you just said is why this is happening, right? It's the intolerance of other religions. mean, and at that point, I wouldn't have understood the oil and the money and the global economy, but like I understood

that like their religious intolerance was part of why this was happening. And so I needed to step away from that. But I hadn't found my spiritual home. And so with this Church of Earth Healing, I finally found my spiritual home and I learned to shamanic journey. took my teacher's workshop at the end of January of 2016 and it was just...

⁓ I was just like finding the thing I'd been looking for all my life, even though I did not know that I had been looking for it really. And so in that workshop, learning to ⁓ ground and center and shield, which I was doing as imagining myself as a tree and putting a deep taproot into the earth. That's a pretty common thing. And then reaching my arms as branches up to the moon. I'm really connecting with the moon.

I had known for probably 10 years that I really wanted to connect with the moon, but hadn't done anything about it. And in one of those early journeys, grandmother moon in the human form that I see her as came through to be my primary spirit guide. And, oh, and actually, yeah, I'll share this that the...

The rectovaginal fistula, the scarring, right? There's scarring there. Whenever I would be sexual with my now ex at that time was my husband, ⁓ and the blood would rush into that area, it felt like the blood was crashing into a brick wall along the scarring and was painful, like not horribly painful, but.

painful, you know, like that's not necessarily what you want to be feeling when you're trying to be sexual and having pleasure in your body and being with this other person. ⁓ Grandmother Moon in that first weekend of working with her, she healed that such that for a period of time, that feeling went away, like that pain of the blood rushing to that spot and crashing into the brick wall, that pain.

Chelsea Myers (36:41)
Mm-hmm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (37:09)
went away and it was a real like, my gosh, isn't just my imagination. This actually changed something in my physical body. And so, you know, that didn't last forever. It was really just something I feel like that was like, here, you need some proof? Here's some proof. Like we can actually change things physically.

⁓ And the shamanic healing, it works with all of our realms, right? The physical, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual. We are all four of those realms.

Chelsea Myers (37:44)
there's so much evolution and transformation in this journey so far, but at the root of it is this deep, deep, I don't want to even call it need, but like purpose of connecting. So connecting to others, connecting to earth, connecting to self. And I mean, again, we are we're a

We're a parenting and postpartum podcast, so like steering it into that realm. It sounds like.

becoming a mother and the act of childbirth and the act of stepping into that role was sort of a catalyst to finding what felt right for you in life. And I don't say that as like becoming a mother helped you find yourself. Because I don't think we're defined by those roles and I don't like to oversimplify it that way.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (38:36)
Thank

Chelsea Myers (38:49)
⁓ but what it sounds like is that the experiences that you went through and the trials that you went through, again, I, if you've heard any of my episodes, I don't like silver linings and I don't necessarily like to say like, well, this bad thing happened so that this good thing could happen. It's more of these things happened.

they took you down a path that was a dark, gloomy, yucky path that no one needs to be on, but within it, you found things that actually resonated with you and started to make sense for you. Would that kind of be accurate?

Betti Rooted Lionheart (39:25)
Yes.

Yes, very, very accurate. And yes, I do firmly believe that having my kids and hitting bottom, those are the things that put me on my path and that I am exactly where I am meant to be. And I'm so, so grateful to be where I am doing the work that ⁓ I love doing and that feels meaningful and like I am making a difference in the world.

Chelsea Myers (39:56)
So through this evolution, you are learning more about yourself. You're learning more about what you truly want from your life. You talked about isolation. Even you can even experience isolation when there are people around you. When they're, like you said, like there were good intentioned people around you and you still felt isolated and disconnected.

When you started learning more about yourself, what sort of shifts started to change and how you were developing this life that you wanted to create for you and your kids?

Betti Rooted Lionheart (40:33)
Yeah, so a huge part of my healing journey has been about reclaiming my voice. ⁓ And so I'm that young person who like was shaking in my boots when it was time for me to go up in front of the class and recite the poem or, you know, whatever they make us go up in front of the class for. I have this memory of in high school, like having to do that and like literally shaking and stuttering.

awful. And so much of my healing journey has been about reclaiming that voice. So one of the early ⁓ examples of that is in the shamanic framework, there's this idea that in moments of trauma, we lose ⁓ pieces of our soul, like a part of ourselves cannot handle what's happening, and a part of ourselves leaves. And so over time, we get less and less whole.

And we live in such a traumatic world that I doubt there's anyone on the planet that has not lost pieces of themselves in that way. And so ⁓ what can happen shamanically is that we can, our spirit guides can find those lost soul parts and heal them and bring those back to us. And so my teacher for me, ⁓ super early on, she found

Chelsea Myers (41:53)
Mm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (41:58)
a lost soul part from when I was four years old that had to do with my voice ⁓ and healed it and brought it back to me. And we can't do all of our lost soul parts at once. We can do one or two. Like all of them would absolutely overwhelm us. But that was such a critical ⁓ soul part for me. And from that, I went pretty immediately into

Like I mentioned, I had found the work that reconnects. like within a month or two of getting that soul part back, I was in a work that reconnects workshop in Massachusetts, experiencing that amazing process as a participant for the first time. ⁓ And there was something that happened, and I won't go into the details, but that really

was uncomfortable for like a lot of people there and I'm the one that spoke up, like used my voice to say, hey, didn't happen right, this didn't feel good, we need to address this situation as a group. And I would have never done that before. so that was part of, I would say when we have these healings, when we get soul parts back, there's work for us to do to incorporate it.

because it is magical, but then we have to work with that part and use it, right? So being able to use my voice in that situation was part of making that voice soul part feel like, yes, I belong here. And having that there is what made it possible for me to speak by October of 2016,

And I had just learned to shamanic journey in January and that workshop was in March. By October, I was facilitating leading work that reconnects workshops. So me, the one who was stuttering and shaking is like in front of a small group of people guiding this process. that, you for anyone who knew me before that's just like, Whoa, is that really Betti up there doing that? ⁓ it was just phenomenal.

Chelsea Myers (44:11)
Yeah, another huge evolution and part of reclaiming these parts of your soul through this journey. I'm super curious what, and again, it would be your perception of how your kids experienced all of this. What were your kids' thoughts of all of these evolutions that you were navigating?

Betti Rooted Lionheart (44:39)
That's an interesting question. when I was just learning to shamanic journey, so 2016, so the young one would have been three, four. So four and seven-ish. I pretty quickly started to teach them. Like I would take them on guided journeys. And at that age,

They were so excited about animal spirit guides, right? Some of the spirit guides we work with are animals. And we can work with animals, plants, goddesses, and gods, ancestors, like there are so many elements, ⁓ water, fire, earth, and air. There are so many spirit guides, but they were like, ooh, the animals. They were so excited to go on these journeys and meet a new spirit guide, a tiger or a bear. ⁓ And so they were... ⁓

Chelsea Myers (45:10)
Mmm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (45:36)
They were doing it alongside me to some extent. my own struggle, because again, part of my abandonment, wounding with my mom when I was 10, like I mentioned, she couldn't get a job as a teacher without going through the US school system, but she could start her own small private school. And she did that when I was 10. And then suddenly we were like,

stay at home mom to like, mom is just always at the school like 24 seven, know, almost literally. And so that's a, you another layer of the abandonment piece. My, so my own struggle with the like, if I'm doing what my soul needs me to do, if I'm focusing on myself, that means I'm abandoning my kids.

Chelsea Myers (46:29)
Mmm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (46:30)
Right,

like that is very hardwired into me. And so I've had to work with that. ⁓ And I still, I mean, I understand that that is not true. I have worked with it a lot. I understand that that is not true. And I still find myself sometimes needing to tell myself, Betti, doing what I need to do does not mean that I am abandoning my kids. Or one of the things that my mother would say on repeat,

I don't know when she started saying it, but she would say of herself, I was such a bad mother. And so when I find myself starting to think that, I have to be like, no, Betti, that is your mom's and that is not yours.

Chelsea Myers (47:09)
Mmm.

Yeah. And I think that that's a very common belief that mothers especially, but parents in general hold. And it harkens back to something that you said in the very, very beginning is that finding what feeds you and finding that self care that we talk about, the self care feels like a buzzword, but

It really means finding what fills your soul and finding what fills your cup. And that's so important because without those things, then you're not your best self for you or your kids. But yeah, I can say that and you can say that and you can still have that voice in the back of your head when you're doing the things that bring you joy saying you should probably be with your kids right now.

Or like when I'm doing this and I told you I heard the Roomba and it's like, well, the kids kicked the Roomba off the stand. I should probably go do that because I'm mom, right? Like, I think it's ingrained in so, so, so, so many of us and it, whether it's a product of culture, whether it's a product of just generational trauma, because your mom wasn't born and raised here. So we can't say it's a uniquely American.

thing. But I think that's so common. And I think that will resonate with so many. But it's so powerful to hear you say that you're able to talk to that voice and be like, No, that's not me. That's mom's voice. I am okay. I am doing the things that I need to do to be the best version best version of myself.

So you're at a place now where you're feeling like you're doing what you're called to do. How does that translate into your relationship with your kids? and like so you're navigating like you said, you're navigating this big shift again, your ex husband is now leaving the home for the first time after four years of being separated. But you're in a

sounds like you're in a good place. What is your relationship like with your children today as teens and how do you see yourself as their mom?

Betti Rooted Lionheart (49:37)
Hmm. let's see.

Well, feel like my relationship with them is pretty good. I do feel like I have modeled for them that it is important to do what we're passionate about. And it is important to put ourselves first, even, you know, decisions like ending an 18 and a half year relationship.

I will say that because we lived together for these almost four years, that has been so, so good for our kids because nothing in their world changed. And now at 13 and 17, they're just excited for their dad to have this new place, which is actually in town, walkable to school and friends. And we've always lived five miles outside of town.

And I'm also wanting to bring in, well, there's the whole, we share the whole queerness journey. So post divorce decision, I started identifying as bisexual in June of 2023. And that is when I met this amazing woman who is now my partner. We've been together for over two years. So there's that and my kids have.

you know, walked alongside me on that journey. you fortunately, there are other ⁓ households that have, you know, two dads or two moms, like my son has a really close friend that has two moms. And so and even well before ⁓ realizing that I was queer, the conversation with my kids from an early age was always that like, it's okay for you to be in love with a girl or a boy. I mean, we hadn't

We're still talking in binaries, ⁓ but that was always there for them. And so I'm modeling that that really is OK. ⁓ I'm wanting to bring in that work that reconnects that despair work that I do, because I've just started a queer despair and resilience circle.

⁓ which is a once a month, two and a half hour online opportunity for queer people to come together and just really be raw and real and feel and express. And the idea behind this work is that keeping the emotions inside of us is unhealthy and feeling and expressing and releasing it, particularly in that space of being witnessed and witnessing others is really, really transformative.

And what I'm wanting to get to though is this experience with my kids. So I've been working, I think, yeah, for over a year with rage. ⁓ This goddess Lilith came in to really help me access my rage. And I was given this, I call it a raging Betti practice. And so when I feel all the yuck and it's

Chelsea Myers (52:36)
Hmm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (52:53)
Anger and rage, like it's hard for me to go to those feelings because that, again, as I am, you know, woman identified, like that is so trained out of us. ⁓ So it's like when I feel the yuck, I might not recognize it yet as anger or rage, but when I feel that like slightly depressive or the like...

Chelsea Myers (53:05)
Mm-hmm.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (53:16)
I just don't even want to get out of bed to do all the things that I need to do today. If I allow myself to rage, which what that looks like is I get my bolster out or it can be a stack of pillows or folded blankets and I kneel on a pillow on the floor and I will just pound on that bolster and yell and scream and say all the yucky things that want to come out of me. And it just so shifts the energy.

And initially though, I wouldn't feel comfortable doing that if there was anyone else in the house. You know, I didn't want my kids to hear me through the walls or so I would take that bolster and go out in the driveway into the car, shut the doors. It's pretty soundproof. And then there was this one time just a few months ago where I was like, you know what? I need to model this for my kids, not hide it from them.

And so I took the bolster upstairs. I called them away from whatever they were doing, probably looking at screens, which I'm not thrilled about, which I'm just going to sneak in here that once my ex moves out, there is not going to be a television in this house, though they will still have their phones. But we're also going to limit that and we're going to communicate with each other and have food together and, you know, interact in ways that I just haven't been able to like establish.

Chelsea Myers (54:19)
Hahaha

Betti Rooted Lionheart (54:41)
given the shared household. ⁓ So pulling them away from whatever they were doing to come be in the living room with me, I explained to them what I was gonna do and why, and I did it, and I raged, I, you know, I was also talking about things about how scared I am about what's happening in this country and in this world, and they witnessed me.

And then afterwards it opened it up for them to share that they're afraid too, and that they're having these feelings too. I mean, these are conversations that I try to have with them. ⁓ But my youngest is a pretty much a shoulder shrug kind of guy. And you you don't want to press that too much. And ⁓ my older is just really involved with sports and his girlfriend and whatnot. And so this just really brought in that.

It's okay to be afraid. It's okay to have these feelings and we're talking about it right now. And it just felt so good. Like I wish I could have those moments with them so much more often than I do in reality. And after that conversation, my older son pulled me into this like 10 minute hug. I didn't time it of course, but it was like probably a 10 minute hug. And it was so incredible. It was so incredible.

Chelsea Myers (56:02)
Mmm.

Yeah, I'm envisioning that. And the vulnerability is something that I don't think we allow ourselves as parents and especially as mothers to feel, to experience. And that's so powerful. That's so powerful. And like you said, modeling in whatever form it looks like for you, it looks like getting the bolster and just letting it all out. And for someone else, it may be just

crying, or it may be journaling or playing music or whatever it is, but modeling that for our kids and letting them know we're human. We're feeling these things and it's okay if you're feeling these things too. We can feel them together.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (56:57)
And I'd love to sneak in there because what I'm really seeing right now, knowing that most of your listeners have young kids, not the 13 and the 17, but if you have a young kid that's having a tantrum, like what if you pulled out the pile of pillows and sit next to them and you have a tantrum right alongside? And that's like showing them that that's okay and that you can do it too. And you might actually be feeling all those feelings.

hard to have a kid that's having a tantrum that we can't make stop have a tantrum. And maybe we don't need to make them stop. Maybe we need to tantrum with them and then we both move all the energy out of our bodies.

Chelsea Myers (57:30)
Yeah.

I am a, again, I don't tend to like give advice or things like that, but like I'm a firm believer in behavior as a form of communication. And if you can get those feelings out in a safe way together, instead of being like, okay, this needs to stop now. Like you got to stop. If you're safe, if you're at home, if you're in your living room or your bedroom and you can tantrum together and then.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (57:51)
Yes.

Chelsea Myers (58:05)
Like you and your son hold each other afterwards. Like what a beautiful example that is of our feelings are meant to be felt and it's okay to feel them. I think so much of what you described in explaining

though this moment in particular with your kids now as teens, it does apply across the board to anyone ⁓ with little littles or with kids who are all grown up and out of the nest. Like really at the root of everything, it feels like throughout your life, you've just been looking for that permission and the strength to feel

and be seen.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (58:55)
Yes.

Chelsea Myers (58:56)
I see you. I see you and I hear you.

And it sounds like your children do too, which I think I'm like, I'm so thankful for because we need, we need that. We need our kids to know that it's okay to be heard, to be seen and to be validated, taken seriously. ⁓ So yeah, I just, ugh.

This is one of those times where I could go on for hours. I could probably go on for days. There's so much I'd love to learn, but I am forcing myself to take a breath and take a beat. I'm starting this new practice. used to end on one of two questions and I'm switching things up. And yeah, this is the millennial in me, I guess. ⁓

My new thing is for the next mom or parent, mom, dad, parent, who I'm, you have no idea who they are, who I'm going to meet with next. You don't know who they are. You don't know what their story is. You don't know anything about them. But I'm going to ask you to leave them a message. Kind of like, you know what I mean? Like back in the old days when they had the answering machines and we had to actually like,

House phone dial people and leave a message so they'd call us back. I'm gonna ask you to leave a message for that next parent. If whatever you want them to know, whether it be about you, whether it be for them, whatever message you want them to hear, what do you think that would be?

Betti Rooted Lionheart (1:00:41)
Hmm.

What's coming to the surface for me with that is I think what I would want everyone on the planet to know, including this next person that you're gonna interview, is that ⁓ we all have the capacity to have our own direct connection to the divine. Like we really don't have to be mediated by the...

typically male figures that are put between us and whoever our creator, God, goddess is. And...

and all of our all of our emotions are valid. Yeah I think those two things.

Chelsea Myers (1:01:31)
Yeah,

I love that. I think that's beautiful. And I love it because it is going to speak to whether it speaks to my next guest, it's or not it's going to speak to somebody. And yeah, I just find that I have been finding that it's asking us to give a little more intention into kind of what we want the world to know.

So I appreciate you bearing with me through that because that's brand new. I've just started doing it. I appreciate you taking the time on a day where big things are happening to spend some time with me to share so authentically. I know there's so much more to the story. And like I said, open invitation, you're always welcome If my listeners

want to learn more about you, where can they find you?

Betti Rooted Lionheart (1:02:27)
The best place is my website, ⁓ sacraltransformations.com, S-A-C-R-A-L, and transformations with an S. ⁓ I'm not much of a social media person yet. I'm trying to work on that, but it doesn't come natural. So yeah, the website and the Queer Despair Circle information is there. I do one-on-one shamanic healing sessions, and I teach people to shamanic journey, which is that piece about really having our direct

own direct connection to the divine.

Chelsea Myers (1:03:00)
Love it. It will be linked in your show notes. So listeners, I know we don't always check the show notes, check the show notes. And yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for what you're doing. You are embodying strength and setting such an amazing example for your children. So thanks for joining me.

Betti Rooted Lionheart (1:03:20)
You're welcome, Chelsea, and thank you for everything that you do.

Chelsea Myers (1:03:24)
Thank you so much.