We recently connected with Elizabeth Woods-Darby and have shared our conversation below.
Elizabeth, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
I love this question! (This is also one of my favorite places to explore with my clients!)
Honestly, I believe we are each born with purpose sewn into the fabric of who we are.
I probably have a unique perspective on this though. I grew up quite wild on a rural farmstead in the mountains of western Colorado. I was homeschool/unschooled and my family were back-to-the-land artists, which meant I spent a lot of time by myself, outside.
Being outside alone as a kid might not sound so great, but man, I loved it. Spending that much time in the wilds, getting to really feel like I was a part of things, following deer trails, winding my way through the trees, my hands on their bark, it left this quiet, stunning spiritualism inside me, which is something I reach for a lot, grounding myself into my place in the family of things (as the mighty Mary Oliver would say).
The other thing that my childhood gave me was space to sit with myself and time to really learn my own impulses for inspiration and ideas. I got to spend time learning what that feels like in my body, which as I look back at it now, with my adult eyes, that gift is something I pull on almost everyday; knowing how to get back to the pool of my own knowing, my own grounded purpose, and then to be able to build my daily life from there. I feel so fortunate to have been given the space for this gift in my life.
In my early twenties, I was living in New York City, attending acting school and honestly, lonely as hell. The advice that was given was to show up to auditions and shows with the glitteriest, most alive parts of myself shimmering and on display, because someone might see it and pluck me out of the masses and give me a job. [Very La La Land, but hey.] But the thing about being glittery and beautiful and alive is you need to have something filling your soul up, so that you can overflow.
That year we had a particularly bleak winter, I was working three jobs, I was single after a pretty brutal heartbreak and, while I was living with 5 lovely roommates, I often came home to a dark and cold apartment. I was challenged to find pockets of quiet in nature living in New York; a way to connect back to my big self and the universe of things that had always lifted me up and loved me back to life before.
It was around then that my brother recommended a book to me that changed my life.
It’s called Calling in The One, by Katherine Woodward-Thomas. It’s a seven week course, with daily meditations and journal prompts to dig deeply into your own psyche to recognize and unblock the unconscious beliefs that have been holding you back, specifically around love. Imagine like a closet remodel and makeover but for your relationship habits and heart.
Towards the end of the book, one of the chapters is dedicated to unearthing your purpose. I remember the day I did that chapter, I was on an airplane, in the window seat, flying home to Colorado for a visit. After the meditation, my pencil outlined the simplicity of just “to love and be loved”.
I was both surprised, and not at all surprised by what it had all boiled down to. There was an element of “duh, of course.” The career that had brought me to New York, acting, being on a stage or in front of a camera was lifting up a story, was loving it, amplifying it with the warmth of my body and heart. Working with my fellow actors, playing off of the audience, their applause, their shining faces, that connection, just a rebound of that same love.
It was the same deep place in me that lit up when I thought about making a home with a beloved partner, adopting a rescue pup and planting a garden, being pregnant and creating a family. Meals fresh out of the oven and steaming in the quiet of a life so well loved.
It was the same feeling I’d had singing to the trees and my goats in the orchard when I was a little girl, the tall gold grass brushing my bare legs like a blessing. Loving and being loved in this family of the world.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I am a somatic coach, a speaker, a poet & multimedia artist, retreat leader and a mama.
I work at the crossroads of creation and inner work. (Creation= art, stories, poetry, big ideas, dreams; helping midwife the invisible inspiration inside you out into the world + inner work).
I founded my own somatic coaching practice, called Victory in the Roots, after graduating from a somatic practitioner training program in Boulder through the Evolutionary Power Institute.
Using profound somatic tools, my goal is to get you back in touch with your body. Our bodies hold and carry SO much wisdom, once we have tools to be able to listen and not feel like we’ll be completely overwhelmed, that’s where the real partnership and connected joy can happen. A friend of a friend calls this couples therapy, but for you and your body, which I kind of love.
I am also launching a new class in January with my dear friend and psychotherapist Zoe Vlastos. The course is called Calling In Real Love and it’s based around the work of the book I mentioned previously Calling In The One.
I feel so passionately that love makes the world a better place and that everyone deserves to have the kind of partnership they really yearn for. I also love that this course isn’t about matchmaking or a kind of band-aid fix for a broken heart, this course is a supportive deep dive into understanding and releasing our old and sometimes unconscious patterns around the love we’re willing to accept and the partnerships we’ve called in, in the past.
I also just really believe in this course as I’ve experienced it first hand.
Like I mentioned, I did the course while I was living in New York City. Shortly after finishing it, I had a conversation about hot chocolate with a tall, handsome, fellow blues dancer, named Benjamin, and… now we’re married.
All jokes aside, our partnership is just so good. Of course we’re still human, but at the end of the day (with a tired toddler and a sink full of dirty dishes and nearly nine years together) I still feel so alive, so grateful, looking at him. I love that we still dance together in the kitchen and stay up way too late laughing in the dark (strangely it’s usually about puns or farts or cheese) and that we still ask the big questions that keep our hands close to that purpose burning in each of our cores. I am continually astounded by all the ways he loves me, the way he gives me room to keep growing into all the new parts of myself.
It’s like we’ve built our love a treehouse and as the tree grows so do the rooms we live in and our view of the sky. I really can’t imagine this life, this love, with anyone else.
I definitely credit this course for helping me get my heart ready for it, for calling it in, so I could actually hold on to it when he walked into my life.
Of course, my ideal partnership probably isn’t yours and good lord, what a gift. What I want is to help fan the flames of what you really want and unearth your powerful and knowing and tender heart along the way.
The course is a nine week intensive, with seven weeks of daily readings, journal prompts and meditations. We’ll be building upon the book’s curriculum with powerful somatic support tools, accountability, community and the weekly support of a psychotherapist and somatic couch.
We’re offering this course virtually, because I feel passionate that linear space should not limit your ability to have excellent support, specifically around finding love. Class size is limited to foster an intimate community. Check out the link for my website at the bottom of this article to find out more.
Zoe and I also co-lead retreats for women in beautiful places. We have a five day four night ReWilding retreat coming up here in Colorado in May. Check out my website for details.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. Deep knowledge of your own self and of what you really want.
We always start out with just ourselves. It’s our own minds and ideas. Our own hearts and passion that we get up with in the morning and go to bed with at night What’s your self talk? What’s your belief in yourself? How much joy are you allowing yourself to feel? How worthy do you feel of standing in the room you want to be in? How do you know what you want? How do you know when you’ve reached it?
Think deeply and let yourself feel. Create your work life and your life life around people and places and work that sparks who you really are, so you’re not shaving off pieces of yourself in exchange for permission, or money or survivability. Which brings me to:
2. Find a community that your whole self (including your body!) feels good to be part of and invest in it.
Who we spend our lives around matters. Find people who you feel warm and easy with. People who inspire you and lift you up, and find ways to do the same in return. A phone call, a check in, a pan of banana bread, these things help us humanize our lives, who we work with, because we are all wired for that kind, alive connection.
3. The ability to play with what life throws your way, including all those curve balls.
In August my friend Zoe and I ran our first retreat together. We’d packed our cars and left our houses and were doing the last minute grocery run when Zoe got an email from the rental company we’d rented the retreat house from. Two hours before check-in they were canceling our reservation due to an orange mold in the water. I remember hearing Zoe’s voice telling me this and the feeling in my body… of laughter..
This was serious, but also… hilarious. We had six women, most of whom had flown into Colorado just for our retreat. And we didn’t have a house to gather in anymore.
Zoe and I laughed about it for a good two minutes and then got to work. We found a different house in a completely different area of Colorado and booked it. Then we called each of the participants to make sure they had the new address. It ended up being kind of perfect, the house we ended up with had a big wrap around porch and a hot tub and it was deeply discounted because of the late booking, so we ended up being able to invest more into our retreat business at the end of the day, than we would have. We could have freaked out about it and spent the whole day stressing, but instead we laughed, let ourselves freak out a little and then looked for how this might be even more perfect.
Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?
My ideal clients are people who are ready, who are willing for their lives to feel more alive and filled with purpose and deep joy and satisfaction. I work with people of all ages and social backgrounds.
The main thing is that you feel your life could be more beautiful than it is now and you’re willing to step into the ring to try some things and find out.
I can’t wait to meet you.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.victoryintheroots.com/
http://www.elizabethwoodsdarby.com/ - Instagram: @barefeetbiglife
Image Credits
Teya Cranson,
