RESOURCES

I got called in a strong way 3 weeks before the Womens Vision Fast happening in July of 2024. It had been on my mind for a year or so but I never felt a true call. Then on a Tuesday afternoon I felt a strong urge to connect with SOLB. I went on the webiste and saw that a space had opened in the Fast happening in 3 weeks. Something in me was such a strong yes, in a way I have never felt called to anything before. This was a time in my life where I was transitioning through menopause, had just turned 50, and was completing a year long sabbatical away from my work as a therapist and returning with new ideas and longings for how I wanted to engage in my work moving forward.

I changed my full name! I arrived at the fast as Heather Bradley and had been sitting with the name Zoe Benoit on my altar for about a year and a half. It felt so right to receive that calling on my fast. It felt like a claiming of a new way of being that I was stepping into for this second half of my life. It wasn’t a claiming something I was but a stepping into something I would be apprenticing for many years to come. The name Zoe means life and Benoit means blessed and I was called to live fully in the blessedness of life. To return again and again to my felt sense of aliveness which was so deeply present on my fast. The ceremony woke me up to my full aliveness and joy, to the depth of beauty that is available in the midst of emptiness. It was truly a threshold crossing for me. A completion and marking of the closing of my identity in this first half of my life, my former identity as a therapist and all the ways I engaged in that work and a crossing into the unknown of what was next. It lives in me as such a clear marking of that transition – so when I feel lost or not sure why I changed my name or why I am trying all sorts of new ways of working – I go back to that time and it is so palpable in my body, the smells, the animals, the air, the aliveness I felt and i remember again.

I remember being mirrored by Petra and celebrated for claiming beauty and joy as important. It makes me teary now to remember her as she sang “You are so beautiful to me”. I had lived for so long focused on suffering and tending to wounding and pain and I felt so ready to turn my attention to beauty and joy. It was meaningful to have such profoundly strong and courageous women as Kim and Petra validate the deep importance to live in service of beauty. I also remember on my fast I roared the deep belly roar of a lion that was heard back at the base camp. When I was sharing the story of my time on the land the entire group of women stood and mirrored the deep roar with me. that lives in my belly and memory for ever.

I walk in the world with a new name that reminds me every day to dance in relationship with beauty and joy. A name that reminds me that I claimed truthtelling and fierce love as qualities I live in service to. My name reminds me when I feel myself shrinking or turning away to stand firm in my truth telling. It reminds me to always honor what I committed myself to. It brings me back again and again.

Now I am offering women’s circles for women in midlife that are based in council, land wanders, and bring in elements of Rites of passage. I also find myself in relationship to the land I walk on and inhabit feeling much more relational. I feel the land, the animals, the trees, the plants as all beings who I belong to and who I am always in relationship with.

I am also beginning to offer land based psychospiritual growth work 1:1 that will also pull from the threads of land wanders and using the land as a mirror and a guide.

thank you!

For the wisdom, love, and generosity of the offerings it has deeply impacted my life. It is a big ripple that I still feel…

Zoe Benoît – 2024