This tran­script has been edit­ed for clar­i­ty. There may be dif­fer­ences between the audio and this tran­script.

[00:00:00]

[00:00:03] John: We grieve our chang­ing world because we are wit­ness­ing the loss of more than just habi­tats. We are los­ing cul­tures. Lan­guages, and a way of life that has sus­tained First Nations peo­ple for cen­turies, as nat­ur­al land­scapes are altered or destroyed, so too are the tra­di­tions, sto­ries, and wis­dom tied to them.

Indige­nous cul­tures deeply root­ed in a land face a unique kind of grief as sacred spaces van­ish. And lan­guages, ves­sels of iden­ti­ty and knowl­edge are increas­ing­ly endan­gered. This loss reminds us that the health of the earth and the rich­ness of human diver­si­ty is inti­mate­ly con­nect­ed. By hon­or­ing and learn­ing from the First Nation peo­ples, we can sup­port efforts to revi­tal­ize lan­guages and pro­tect sacred lands.

Through indi­vid­ual and col­lec­tive action, reduc­ing our envi­ron­men­tal foot­print, advo­cat­ing for poli­cies that pro­tect the Earth, and sup­port­ing these rights, we can help heal the [00:01:00] wounds of our plan­et, And pre­serve the cul­tur­al and nat­ur­al her­itage we all share.

[00:01:04] Bet­ti: What I need is for the peo­ple who loved my moth­er to come togeth­er out­side, around a fire and scream and cry and wail and move our bod­ies and pound the dirt and just this vision of the way our ances­tors. The way our ances­tors would come togeth­er, the tribe or the vil­lage around the fire and move the trau­ma, move the grief through our bod­ies togeth­er.

[00:01:46] John: Our guest is a shaman­ic heal­er who shares her jour­ney about the pow­er of reclaim­ing lost parts of our­selves while mov­ing through deep despair and the use of com­mu­nal rit­u­als to release grief and trau­ma. Through her [00:02:00] per­son­al expe­ri­ences, she reveals how shaman­ic heal­ing offers hope, pur­pose, and a deep­er con­nec­tion to the divine.

Wel­come back. Thank you for lis­ten­ing to the Urban Grief Shamans, and I’m your host, John Moir.

[00:02:14] Bet­ti: Receiv­ing that soul part back was a foun­da­tion­al piece in help­ing me move away from liv­ing in despair. I had some­thing greater than myself to rely upon.

[00:02:33] John: This is our guest, Bet­ty Root­ed Lion­heart, a com­pas­sion­ate shaman­ic heal­er, spir­i­tu­al empow­er­ment advo­cate, and a fire weaver. Her work is all about help­ing oth­ers recon­nect with their true selves and heal­ing sup­port­ed through com­mu­ni­ty and rit­u­al.

[00:02:49] Bet­ti: let me start with a bit of a sto­ry

to illus­trate. Okay, great. The jour­ney with the grief and despair.

I trace it to about sev­en years old when I [00:03:00] went on a camp­ing trip with my cousin. Her fam­i­ly had a motor home.

We were liv­ing in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia at the time, and, Peri­od­i­cal­ly, they would take myself and my sis­ter on camp­ing trips with them and, some­where in Cal­i­for­nia or the desert South­west. I have a cousin who’s my age and on one of these camp­ing trips, she and I were hang­ing out in the back, top, bot­tom of the desert.

bunk of those old motor homes. Her dad loved to take pic­tures. He had one of those old, this is almost 40 years ago, the big cam­eras with the big lens­es. And so we saw him doing that all the time. And so we were pre­tend­ing to take pic­tures. We had lit­tle jew­el­ry box­es, just yay big. And we had put a stick­er on top and the stick­er was the shut­ter but­ton.

So we would hold these up and we would. Push on the stick­er and that would take a pic­ture and she had a a stack of [00:04:00] cards. They were endan­gered species cards. And so those were the pic­tures that we were tak­ing, right? So we could take a pic­ture and we had this actu­al pho­to­graph, this card that is what we just cre­at­ed.

And I did­n’t know before that time what an endan­gered species was. So that was my intro­duc­tion to endan­gered species, and I remem­ber one of those cards, the ocelot, the small wild cat of Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca. I am a cat per­son, I’ve always been a cat per­son, we always had cats grow­ing up, and the fact that beau­ti­ful wild cat might cease to exist.

Real­ly deeply impact­ed me that was my first that was when I woke up to what humans were doing to the plan­et. That was my intro­duc­tion. And from there, I just kept seek­ing it out and liv­ing with despair. So I was [00:05:00] say­ing that, grief, if grief is a deep sad­ness. Despair is a deep sad­ness, but lay­ered onto that is the, how can I live with this?

[00:05:12] John: You’re talk­ing about con­trol, and loss of con­trol, and You’re feel­ing like you can’t do any­thing

[00:05:17] Bet­ti: Maybe because yes, par­tic­u­lar­ly at such a young age, feel­ing like I could­n’t do any­thing about it. Yes, and so my, who I am, the life that I’ve lived has been a con­stant search for how can I do some­thing about it.

How can I make a dif­fer­ence? How can I help stop species from going extinct?

How can I help stop forests from get­ting lev­eled? So that’s prob­a­bly a fair­ly good descrip­tion of who I am and how I got to be who I am.

[00:05:56] John: It was, real­ly a piv­otal moment, was­n’t it? To that [00:06:00] real­iza­tion that, these things hap­pen to wildlife and, wild spaces in our world, in our back­yards that we have no con­trol over. Read­ing your mate­r­i­al, it seemed like it was a huge influ­ence in the direc­tion of your life and that grief evolved as you learn more about the state of the earth. Got from that. So that jour­ney of that first real­iza­tion of this big grief and despair, how did that jour­ney unfold for you?

[00:06:31] Bet­ti: It unfold­ed such that I felt. As an ado­les­cent in high school, I felt very much alone. I did­n’t have any adult men­tors. I did­n’t talk to my friends about how I was feel­ing.

What I did was just read vora­cious­ly and lis­tened to NPR all time, right? Just tak­ing it in. in one of my recent shaman­ic jour­ney. [00:07:00] I was shown that from a very young age and still to this day, I’ve been like an anten­na for the pain of the world.

And I’m of course not the only one. There are oth­er peo­ple like me who are very aware, very sen­si­tive to to what’s hap­pen­ing to the earth, to the cries of the earth, I call it. And there are a lot of peo­ple who either choose to not be aware or numb out or just shunt it aside, And it’s not an easy thing to live with.

[00:07:37] John: The way you describe that is, came across, an inter­est­ing fel­low who was a big influ­ence for me was Fran­cis Weller, and he wrote this book. It’s about grief. It’s called The Wild Edge of Sor­row. And he describes five dif­fer­ent gates that grief enters us. And one of it is the grief of the world. And, I was in a work­shop with him at that time, I was, griev­ing because my father had aban­doned me [00:08:00] there were sev­er­al women in my group their grief was heavy. And it was all about a loss of species I was tak­en aback by their inten­si­ty, no dif­fer­ence between what grief we’re, car­ry­ing, they were just as pow­er­ful as com­ing from an out­side source into them.

As you describe the grief that you car­ry is real­ly, you’re pick­ing up the grief of the world. Or the changes in the world.

[00:08:30] Bet­ti: Yeah I think of it as the grief of the col­lec­tive.

[00:08:34] Bet­ti: We’re both shaman­ic prac­ti­tion­ers, you and I. And I’m won­der­ing if you could bring that part into our con­ver­sa­tion here, we’ll flip back and forth, but I’d just like to know a lit­tle bit more about that, more so for our lis­ten­ers, because they, so many of them aren’t shaman­ic peo­ple, but explor­ing the idea of per­haps liv­ing in a shaman­ic lifestyle, and [00:09:00] cer­tain­ly using shaman­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties to help them through their grief. And so can share with us , how did you get into it? Give us some of your back­ground and the type of shaman­ism that you prac­tice dai­ly.

Yeah, I would love to. Oh, let’s see. I’ll answer that. How did I get into it first? And I guess just, to keep pulling on the thread of the sto­ry, I went from study­ing agri­cul­ture to want­i­ng to learn how to grow food with­out poi­son. I went to an organ­ic agri­cul­ture train­ing pro­gram. That’s where I met the father of my chil­dren and came up with this dream of cre­at­ing a farm based Inten­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty that could sur­vive the col­lapse of the sys­tems that we rely on. So we land­ed in New York State on 105 acres to cre­ate this dream. And [00:10:00] those were the worst. Hard­est years of my life, and we weren’t able to make the farm work. We weren’t able to cre­ate the com­mu­ni­ty. And at the begin­ning of 2015, I just, I land­ed in the deep­est, dark­est place. Pit in my life. I hit bot­tom and we had rec­og­nized that we had to give up on the dream of the farm and it was time to fig­ure out how to make a liv­ing how to sup­port our kids how to be able to feed our kids in the world that we live in with­out Liv­ing in that very dif­fer­ent way that I des­per­ate­ly want­ed to live and want­ed to raise my kids You And in a very dif­fer­ent way. And so what end­ed up hap­pen­ing is I stum­bled across a fly­er for a shaman­ic ances­tral work­shop in the local food co op here. And the [00:11:00] rea­son I picked the fly­er up was­n’t any­thing to do with shaman­ism. I did­n’t know what that was. Said that the church of earth heal­ing, that’s what I need­ed to know about. And when I final­ly did call the num­ber on the fly­er, and got a woman on the phone We decid­ed to meet, it turned out she lived in this area, and she was a shaman­ic heal­er, and she had a shaman­ic jour­ney cir­cle, and so I imme­di­ate­ly joined the cir­cle with­in a month of that she was teach­ing her work­shop, in which she teach­es peo­ple the shaman­ic jour­ney. In the space of two days, I learned how to shaman­ic jour­ney and that was just it for me. That was the thing that I’d been search­ing for my whole life, even though I did­n’t know that I had been look­ing, I’d been raised Roman Catholic that real­ly did­n’t fit well with me.

[00:11:58] John: So [00:12:00] what did you do in between that mid­dle part before you went through the door? So you knew that your reli­gious sys­tem that you grew up with is not hold­ing you well. But you had­n’t quite reached into the shaman­ic area. Was there a gray area where you just were lost ?

[00:12:17] Bet­ti: The, the lost­ness in my life had to do with the despair for the earth, not not for lack of, A reli­gion to lean on, though, from where I sit now, cer­tain­ly not hav­ing some­thing spir­i­tu­al to hold onto was part of the despair. I did­n’t know that at the time. I do know that now. I con­tin­ued to have to go to church for, a while, or even if my mom did­n’t require it, peri­od­i­cal­ly, just, to show her that I loved her, right?

It was­n’t just a, it was­n’t just a com­plete break. At a cer­tain point, I real­ized that, oh, I prob­a­bly would lean more pagan, [00:13:00] I prob­a­bly, I knew for sev­er­al years before learn­ing to shaman­ic jour­ney, at least a decade, that I want­ed to hon­or the moon in some way, but I did­n’t, my ener­gy nev­er got put in that direc­tion.

I nev­er sought out much read­ing on it. I nev­er sought out peo­ple to. inves­ti­gate that with I guess prob­a­bly because I was in those years of my life of try­ing to fig­ure out how I was going to make a dif­fer­ence, being in uni­ver­si­ty and then at that farm­ing pro­gram and then falling in love and then hav­ing kids.

There just was­n’t ever a time for me to focus on, you On that,

[00:13:46] Bet­ti: But I do, I guess I’ll share this sto­ry. It’s com­ing up to share that in in 2006, my now ex hus­band and I were liv­ing on a goat dairy in Rio Vista, Cal­i­for­nia. And I decid­ed, okay, I’m gonna, it was a full moon. [00:14:00] I decid­ed I’m going to go out and do some­thing to

moon. So I even tried to dress up in a way that I thought was witchy or, some­thing with flow­ing skirts and I don’t remem­ber what.

And I went out into a field on this goat farm and there was. The moon was up in the sky, there was a cat that lived on this farm that, I had been friend­ly with. I love cats. I already said that. But when I went out to do this moon rit­u­al to just make some­thing up, I had no idea what I was doing.

That cat came out. And start­ed attack­ing the skirt that I was wear­ing, and my legs, and I end­ed up hav­ing to retreat into the house to get away from this cat, and I just took that as a omen, a I guess I was­n’t sup­posed to do that, and so I did­n’t. That one lit­tle attempt. Was­n’t fol­lowed by any oth­er attempt.

So that was 2006. I [00:15:00] found my shaman­ic teacher and learned to shaman­ic jour­ney in 2016. so there was that decade of know­ing that I want­ed to hon­or the moon, but. Not doing any­thing about it

[00:15:12] John: How did that path inter­sect with your teacher? How did that come about? Why that par­tic­u­lar per­son?

[00:15:19] Bet­ti: because of the Church of Earth Heal­ing. I had nev­er seen, I had nev­er seen those words put togeth­er. And then when I met her name is Becky Shin­ing Bear­heart. When I met her, she, shared with me that she had also lived with deep pain for the Earth and had lived her life try­ing to make a dif­fer­ence, a spir­i­tu­al And she had lived her life Off the grid, close to the land, grow­ing her own food, grow­ing her own med­i­cines. And so there was just a lot of res­o­nance there. And she lives 20 min­utes away [00:16:00] from me. And this was before every­thing was done on Zoom, right?

[00:16:06] John: Did it feel, was it a very com­fort­able feel­ing being in her space when you first met? Were you shy or did you feel like you came home?

[00:16:14] Bet­ti: I would say I felt like I came home?

Yeah. I am a very shy per­son. But I felt like I had come home. Yeah.

[00:16:24] John: I guess that’s per­haps one of the first shaman­ic teach­ings is,

You have to dream the exis­tence that you want to be in place. have to dream that into being. And, does that res­onate with you that those are the first steps of this dream that you’ve cre­at­ed? This real­i­ty, that you’re build­ing for your­self with your prop­er­ty and you’re just, even the fact that you’re becom­ing a shaman­ic, that you are a shaman­ic teacher.

[00:16:50] Bet­ti: Yes. Yeah. We do need to dream into being the life that we want. But we [00:17:00] can’t just dream, we have to take action and for me I would add to that I have to be con­nect­ed to spir­it and con­nect­ed to myself and liv­ing as aligned with my val­ues. As I can there, there are a lot of my val­ues that I’m not in this moment able to live aligned with mate­ri­al­ly, I live pret­ty mid­dle of the road, Amer­i­can con­sumer life is what has come of my life and that’s not what I want­ed at all. That’s not what I was dream­ing for many years before we land­ed here to try to do some­thing dif­fer­ent­ly. So I’ve had to make peace with that real­i­ty, but my life is very spir­i­tu­al­ly focused. My life revolves around my spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion and I’m able to live with that [00:18:00] right now. Still want to, and I’m still tak­ing the actions to cre­ate some­thing dif­fer­ent. But that does sus­tain me for now.

[00:18:08] John: As you were mov­ing along your shaman­ic path, were there any dif­fi­cul­ties that you came across that, in a way of the teach­ings that you were giv­en, the prac­tices that you were giv­en, per­haps some of the rit­u­als. Was there, any big jolts to your soul, to your sys­tem that you weren’t expect­ing?

[00:18:26] Bet­ti: that were dif­fi­cult, specif­i­cal­ly.

[00:18:28] John: Yeah, that, it took a big effort to reach up into it, so to speak. I’m think­ing of the, when a door opens for us, we always have that oppor­tu­ni­ty to go through it. So it means that there has to be a death before there’s a new begin­ning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, metaphor­i­cal­ly. And, I was just won­der­ing if you’ve, your­self, had, what kind of deaths or many deaths that you might have gone through to become who you are now?

[00:18:51] Bet­ti: That’s an inter­est­ing ques­tion. Oh, so many deaths, so many so many dis­mem­ber­ment [00:19:00] expe­ri­ences. But let me see if I can drop into some­thing more spe­cif­ic or see what sto­ry

Wants to come up. I guess what’s com­ing up is that. I did­n’t, I did not have trou­ble. Or strug­gle with the rit­u­al aspect of it. I actu­al­ly deeply love the rit­u­al aspect of it. It made imme­di­ate sense to me to live in a way of hav­ing, many lit­tle rit­u­als. My ear­li­est rit­u­al was to just dai­ly in the morn­ing, light a can­dle, burn a lit­tle sage to hon­or grand­moth­er moon.

What became a bit of a strug­gle a bit fur­ther down the line was just how many rit­u­als I was try­ing to keep up with. It took me a lit­tle while to under­stand that [00:20:00] each time a new rit­u­al was giv­en to me, it was­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly being lay­ered on top of, ten or a hun­dred oth­er rit­u­als. I could begin to let some of the oth­er ones fade out.

To more com­plete­ly step into the new ones. I did­n’t real­ize that right away. So there was a peri­od of time where I was like, how am I sup­posed to keep up with all of these many rit­u­als and still keep up with the day to day?

[00:20:30] John: Were they like step­ping stones or steps as you became more, spir­i­tu­al­ly healed? More inte­grat­ed with spir­it,

[00:20:40] Bet­ti: yes. Yeah. A lot of the rit­u­als that I work with. are part of the inte­gra­tion process for heal­ings that I’ve expe­ri­enced. So for exam­ple, in receiv­ing a soul part back,

I should explain that prob­a­bly just a lit­tle bit, that [00:21:00] in the shaman­ic world­view in moments of trau­ma, and it can be, big trau­ma or small trau­ma, we lose pieces of our soul, a part of our­selves that can’t cope with, we What’s hap­pen­ing leaves, and so we become less and less whole.

I believe prob­a­bly every human on this plan­et has had some soul loss, prob­a­bly sig­nif­i­cant soul loss. We live in a very trau­ma­tiz­ing time. We can, our spir­it guides can find those pieces that have been lost. They can heal them, and they can give them back to us. And then the ener­gy of that healed soul part, we need to active­ly incor­po­rate into our­selves.

And so a lot of the rit­u­als are to help do that incor­po­ra­tion work to help keep that piece of heal­ing in mind. So for exam­ple, often for me, it would be wear­ing a par­tic­u­lar neck­lace. To [00:22:00] remind me of a soul part, and then I’m wear­ing, three neck­laces all the time, or five neck­laces all the time, or, that kind of thing at a cer­tain point. You don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly want to be wear­ing 10 or 20 neck­laces all the time. That’s just one, one lit­tle exam­ple.

Yes. Yeah. And I guess I’d like to share that one of The ear­li­est soul retrievals that that I received from my teacher was a sev­en year old soul part. It was that sev­en year old self that learned about the endan­gered species and felt so deeply for that ocelot. And receiv­ing that soul part back, this would have been in 2016. Was a foun­da­tion­al piece in help­ing me move away from liv­ing in despair. I no longer live in despair once I found this shaman­ic spir­i­tu­al [00:23:00] path, once I had some­thing greater than myself to rely upon, to Go to under­stand how to live my life to begin to under­stand Why am I on this plan­et?

How am I sup­posed to make a dif­fer­ence? That’s what I’ve been look­ing for my whole life So this spir­i­tu­al path led me to that get­ting that soul part back And start­ing to have my own spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion and start­ing to under­stand why I’m here and why I’m here is to be a shaman­ic heal­er and is to con­nect peo­ple with their own direct con­nec­tion to the divine, that all of that has helped me no longer live in that despair.

No longer live in that place of deep grief lay­ered with the, how can I live with this?

And, part of the def­i­n­i­tion of despair is hav­ing a lack of [00:24:00] hope. And so mov­ing away from that lack of hope, mov­ing into a space of hope­ful­ness has made such a huge dif­fer­ence in my life, and it has brought me to this place where actu­al­ly in 2016, I began, I also in 2016 found the work that recon­nects which was devel­oped by Joan­na Macy and her col­leagues Start­ing in 1978, which was the year that I was born, but I was 37 before I dis­cov­ered it.

And once I dis­cov­ered it, I was like, how could I pos­si­bly have not known about this? work that recon­nects is this amaz­ing group process, bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er to share our grief and despair for the earth to be wit­nessed. It’s amaz­ing to be wit­nessed. It’s amaz­ing to wit­ness oth­ers. It’s very trans­for­ma­tion­al, going from feel­ing like I’m alone [00:25:00] in this my whole life to sit­ting in a cir­cle of peo­ple who all feel this way.

So in 2016, I went to as many work­shops as I was able to dri­ve to and stepped into, had a very spir­i­tu­al expe­ri­ence in one of these spaces. Rit­u­als in one of these work­shops, one of these deep grief rit­u­als that was like a bap­tism into now hold­ing, offer­ing this, hold­ing these work­shops myself. So in 2016, I began doing that and I should say, I also received a soul part back to do with my voice.

Which allowed me to step into lead­ing work­shops, because when I was in high school, I have very spe­cif­ic mem­o­ry of stand­ing in front of the class. I don’t know what I was sup­posed to be deliv­er­ing, shak­ing and prac­ti­cal­ly stut­ter­ing. Being in front of a group of peo­ple, not, not my com­fort zone, receiv­ing that sole [00:26:00] part back to do with my voice, total­ly changed that for me.

I very quick­ly, like with­in months of that, was stand­ing in front of small groups of peo­ple, facil­i­tat­ing this very deep process.

[00:26:17] John: it’s a nice segue into the ques­tion about your wail­ing cir­cles. So share your expe­ri­ence and per­haps how, this, the whal­ing cir­cles have helped oth­ers. If you have a few sto­ries that you could share.

[00:26:35] Bet­ti: I do and that I want to start that by shar­ing the sto­ry of my moth­er’s death because the Wail­ing Cir­cle came for me from my moth­er’s death. So in 2022, on May 13th of 2022 I got the phone call. and my mom had a stroke. She was still alive she was [00:27:00] at the hos­pi­tal. The prog­no­sis at that point was that she might sur­vive but be half par­a­lyzed. And so as soon as I got off the phone, of course, I’m a shaman­ic heal­er. I am gonna try to do some­thing to help.

I’m gonna try to heal my mom. So I went into a shaman­ic jour­ney and I went with my spir­it guides to her hos­pi­tal room. I some­times, if the issue I’m deal­ing with is phys­i­cal, I turn into a black bear. And so I did. I turned into a black bear. I stood behind her head, at the head of her bed, at her head, and I put my bare paws on her head. And she imme­di­ate­ly said, take your hands off my head and stand back. [00:28:00] And I’m get­ting a lit­tle bit teary about it right now because it was just so clear. Take your hands off of my head and stand back. She did not want to fix this. And I, of course, I did. I stood back, I, she made it clear that I could be there.

I can be sup­port­ing her. I can be giv­ing her love. But we were not going to fix this. And, that was a Fri­day and she had anoth­er stroke. I think it was into the night on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day morn­ing is when my dad and my sis­ter decid­ed to, take her off of all life sup­port except for just, not forced air, but just pas­sive air at her nose.

And I am so glad that I did. I did that jour­ney because it gave [00:29:00] me so much peace. It let me know that this was what she want­ed. One of my mom’s great­est fears was being half par­a­lyzed, or los­ing her cog­ni­tion, and liv­ing, for decades with­out, Know­ing her loved ones, she had those 2 very spe­cif­ic fears about, aging and her own death process.

She was a go go do, she did not want to have to stick around in the body with, only use of. Half, one arm and one leg. So I know that she was real­ly pleased with how she died. So I end­ed up I live in New York state. My par­ents live in Flori­da. I flew to Flori­da.

I was able to spend the last two days of her life. [00:30:00] with her at her bed­side, lis­ten­ing to the labored breath­ing. I knew the moment the breath­ing changed.

And she was mov­ing into the last few min­utes, the last few breaths. And, but I do want to say that before that I she was in hos­pice and this hos­pice had a beau­ti­ful lit­tle court­yard gar­den. It was real­ly an amaz­ing place. For her, but also her fam­i­ly to be held as she was dying, I did sev­er­al jour­neys try­ing to, do soul retrieval, just try­ing to do heal­ing for her, to help her be that much fur­ther along once she gets to the oth­er side to cross over.

And I’ve been giv­en a death song by my spir­it guide so I would sit at her bed­side. and sing that song. And at a cer­tain point and I want to say too, that this was my first expe­ri­ence of what my spir­it guides [00:31:00] call walk­ing with death. I had known before this that walk­ing with death is part of what I’m being called to do, but I’d nev­er done it before.

And it’s fair­ly pro­found to have done it with my own moth­er. At a cer­tain point in this process of me try­ing to, pull out all of my shaman­ic skills and make a dif­fer­ence, I real­ized this isn’t about me. This is her process, and it’s not for me. It does­n’t harm any­thing for me to be doing these things, but it’s not about that.

It’s about me being present with her and hold­ing space and just. Walk­ing with her death. And that was a big learn­ing that I’m real­ly grate­ful to going to say it’s pow­er­ful teach­ing to have that real­iza­tion that Yes. just step out of the way, away.

Yes. And [00:32:00] because I’m a shaman­ic heal­er, because I have a rela­tion­ship with the spir­it world, with my spir­it guides, because I’ve thought for many years very dif­fer­ent­ly about death, this cul­ture, and when I say this cul­ture, I’m a white Amer­i­can and we have a very unhealthy. Con­cept rela­tion­ship with death. We want to pre­tend that it does­n’t exist. We don’t have to me. We don’t have ade­quate rit­u­als to deal with death. Not for those that remain liv­ing. Not for those who’ve died. My mom had a Catholic memo­r­i­al mass, which is what she need­ed. But it’s not what I need­ed. My dad, and my sis­ter, and my broth­er, were all real­ly shocked and real­ly Real­ly despair­ing, I would say, like real­ly in that place of no hope and how do I live with this? And I was­n’t. [00:33:00] I’d been expect­ing some­thing to hap­pen to one of my par­ents for quite a while.

And I’m just so steeped in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and what I would like to do. death and a rit­u­al around death to look like. So I was able to be a sol­id pil­lar for my fam­i­ly in their grief and in their despair. We were in this Catholic memo­r­i­al mass, which is what my mom need­ed and not what I need­ed, I was sit­ting there, just real­ly think­ing like this. It’s so not what I need. What I need is for the peo­ple who loved my moth­er to come togeth­er out­side around a fire and scream and cry and wail and move our bod­ies and pound the dirt and just this vision of The way our ances­tors did it, the way [00:34:00] our ances­tors would come togeth­er, the tribe or the vil­lage, around the fire, and move the trau­ma, move the grief through our bod­ies togeth­er. That, that’s where the Wail­ing Cir­cle comes from, for me. And so I knew that, that vision had been giv­en to me so that I would cre­ate it and I had been I men­tioned, start­ing in 2016 with the work that recon­nects, facil­i­tat­ing those work­shops through that process, I met a woman who attend­ed 2 of my work­shops who then part­nered with me to cre­ate What we’ve been call­ing the despair and dis­cov­ery cir­cle that’s been ongo­ing since the begin­ning of 2019, and that had a core group of peo­ple.

When I came [00:35:00] home from Flori­da in 2022 after my mom’s death. I spoke to my friend who held the Despair and Dis­cov­ery Cir­cle with me and shared this vision I had for some­thing that was slight­ly sim­i­lar, but way more deep and pro­found. And so she and one oth­er woman from the Despair Cir­cle and I came togeth­er around a fire.

And. That was the first try, right? We had a very small cir­cle and expe­ri­ence of it, of course we weren’t able to tap into cre­at­ing that vision, but it was a start. And then there was a sec­ond iter­a­tion with a friend of mine. Who’s a shaman­ic heal­er who also works with trau­ma and She and I were, we were going to hold it togeth­er.

Vul­ture came in [00:36:00] very strong­ly as a spir­it guide for me, specif­i­cal­ly for the Wail­ing Cir­cle. And so very short­ly after Vul­ture came in as a guide, I found dri­ving down the road a fresh­ly killed but unmarred Vul­ture and I picked it up. That was a gift from the spir­its.

I brought it home. I saved the wings and the tail and some feath­ers and so at that sec­ond, Wail­ing Cir­cle, the the vul­ture wings, the vul­ture tail, I had also saved a lit­tle bit of the scalp and neck feath­ers. They were hold­ing the four direc­tions, the, the head and the neck in the north, the tail in the south, and the wings in the east and the west.

And when we went around the cir­cle of shar­ing a sec­ond time, one of the women, want­ed to try hold­ing the vul­ture wings. And she did. She stood up and she danced and it just [00:37:00] unlocked some­thing real­ly amaz­ing for me and for her, and I think for oth­ers in the cir­cle. And so that woman, I reached out to her.

She’s a heal­er of a dif­fer­ent kind. And we togeth­er held the third iter­a­tion of the whal­ing cir­cle. And and the third time. Was at the, there’s a med­i­cine wheel on the land here at braid­ed root waters, heal­ing sanc­tu­ary and we held it at the fire in the cen­ter of the med­i­cine wheel. And when she and I think 2 of the 5 par­tic­i­pants were gath­ered there. Just wait­ing, sit­ting with some silence, wait­ing for the rest of the peo­ple to arrive. A swarm of hum­ming bee I was going to say hum­ming birds, no, a swarm of bees. We start­ed hear­ing this hum­ming, it was behind me. This swarm of bees came and just [00:38:00] skirt­ed us and from the north and then left to the east.

And that was such a pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence. The co facil­i­ta­tor was in tears. For me Hon­ey­bee was the first spir­it guide that I met myself in a shaman­ic jour­ney. And the med­i­cine of Hon­ey­bee for me is I man­i­fest. Nour­ish­ment for myself and oth­ers in com­mu­ni­ty. That was just such a mes­sage from Spir­it that this Wail­ing Cir­cle is nour­ish­ment for myself and my com­mu­ni­ty. And I want to share also the Vul­ture Med­i­cine, see if I can recall that. The Vul­ture Med­i­cine spe­cif­ic to the Wail­ing Cir­cle is com­ing togeth­er in a cir­cle [00:39:00] to uncov­er the truth and renew life.

By pick­ing the flesh from the bones, that’s what we’re doing in a wail­ing cir­cle. And the wail­ing cir­cle is, it’s very dif­fer­ent than the despair cir­cle. In the despair cir­cle, we pass a talk­ing stick. Each per­son takes a turn shar­ing and being wit­nessed. And there is deep heal­ing and trans­for­ma­tion in that in the whal­ing cir­cle, we’re all deeply into our process.

At the same time, it’s that vision that I shared of com­ing togeth­er around the fire and all of us all at the same time, scream­ing, cry­ing, wail­ing, mov­ing our bod­ies, pound­ing the earth we’re all, we’re [00:40:00] hold­ing each oth­er in this greater con­tain­er, but we’re all expe­ri­enc­ing the emo­tion and allow­ing it to move through us.

it was a group of four women.

So it was small, but we all went real­ly deeply into that place of real­ly let­ting the emo­tion, let­ting the trau­ma out. Of our bod­ies through our voic­es and at a cer­tain point after I had moved the trau­ma that I was going to be mov­ing that, that want­ed to move through and out of me that time, I was just.

Using my voice, rais­ing it and low­er­ing it, using my voice to help oth­ers access their voic­es, and real­ly have this pro­found real­iza­tion that, oh my god­dess, this is what my voice is for. This is my voice. Is what my voice is for doing this, for using my [00:41:00] voice to open the voic­es of oth­ers to unlock the grief and the despair and the trau­ma and help them let it out of their bod­ies.

[00:41:10] John: Thank you for join­ing us in this deeply mov­ing con­ver­sa­tion with Bet­ty Root­ed Lion­heart. Through her pow­er­ful sto­ries and expe­ri­ences, we’ve touched on the impor­tance of hon­or­ing grief, embrac­ing com­mu­nal heal­ing, and the pro­found impact of recon­nect­ing with our spir­i­tu­al selves. As Bet­ty shared, our voic­es and rit­u­als can be tools to release deep pain and trau­ma, whether per­son­al or col­lec­tive.

And we invite you to reflect on how grief may live with­in you, and how sacred spaces, whether around a fire, In rit­u­al, or with­in com­mu­ni­ty, can help move that ener­gy through and out of your body. Thank you for being part of this impor­tant dia­logue today. Stay tuned for more episodes where we con­tin­ue to explore heal­ing, trans­for­ma­tion, and the [00:42:00] pow­er of shared human expe­ri­ences.

So take care, and until next time, keep find­ing ways to hon­or your path and your grief.