Meet Betty
For a very long time, I lived a life driven by fears and defenses that protected me from my feelings and from others.
It is only when I started facing the truth and difficulty in my life that I started to open up, bloom, and feel liberated. That’s when I started dancing with life.
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Here is my own journey. It explains how facing the pain in my life has helped me to recover my wholeness, be truly myself, and start living wholeheartedly.
"It is only when we start facing the truth and difficulty in our lives that we start to open, bloom, and feel liberated."
Childhood is a period of expansion, opening, and blooming. But my own blooming was harshly and abruptly interrupted when at the age of 13, my mother died. It felt like my body, heart, and mind froze and became a rock. My whole being closed down and contracted. I started to try and control my life by hiding and protecting myself and others through defense mechanisms. I began numbing my feelings, creating an “armor” around myself to avoid being hurt, avoiding difficult emotions, distancing myself physically and emotionally from others. I was wearing a mask… On the outside, people thought I was handling things well, but on the inside, I was screaming and hoping that someone would notice that I was suffering.
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Becoming a mother myself was what confronted me with my unprocessed trauma and emotions. I couldn’t keep my defenses and my mask up any longer. My heart cracked open, and with it, all the emotions that I had attempted to bury. Feeling things so intensely was both wonderful and scary at the same time. All these years I had tried to avoid feeling difficult emotions, but by doing so, I was denying myself of all the wonder available to me. I had been blocking myself from feeling altogether - both the light and the dark.
Thanks to a coaching program at the company where I used to work, I started connecting with my values and passions. I began to realize who I was. I defined my life mission: enable emotional growth in people so that they can live their lives more fully.
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I decided to turn toward my problems by starting to heal my past wounds to become a better person, a better partner, and a better mother. I engaged in a profound developmental healing period of my life. I quit my job as a manager in a tourism start-up and enrolled in a 1-year coaching program in integral development. Throughout this period, I started engaging in new practices such as yin yoga, mindfulness, and journaling. I started healing, blooming, and recovering my wholeness as well as opening more and more to life, people, love, beauty, marvel, joy, sadness, and loss.
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In June 2021, I was certified as an Integral Development Coach with Thirdspace in partnership with New Ventures West. I also gave birth to our second daughter.
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Trainings and Qualifications
• Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) with Institut Pleine Conscience (2022)
• Professional Coaching Course with Thirdspace / New Ventures West (June 2020 -2021)
• Introduction to Focusing (2021)
• Diploma in applied Psychology (2012)
• Master Degree in Intercultural Communication (2011)
I am
a joyful soul
I connect with people through humor, which I take as a sign that their heart is singing and healing.
a radical learner
I am willing to step ever more into my own development to better support people in their own journeys.
a beauty seeker
Beauty, to me, is like a veil between our inner and outer worlds. I feel inspired, amazed, and in awe of nature.
a deeply intuitive and empathetic person
I connect heart-to-heart with compassion, kindness, and care. This helps others to open up about their truth while feeling safe.
a truth advocate
I am a safe space in which people can open up about their truth, while feeling held and fully accepted.
a growing feminist
I support women, and especially mothers, to dare to speak up, demand equality, and lead so that we can be the best examples to our children.
The whole of Betty was with me. I could feel she was connecting heart-to-heart and asked questions that allowed us to go deeper into my life.