Meet Your Guide: Elizabeth "Be" Brown
Introducing Elizabeth “Be” Brown
Be is a heart centered, nurturing and potent ceremonial midwife and wilderness therapy guide. She finds mindful loving presence in Nature and community to be a doorway to Re-Membering true essence and connection with the Divine. Be feels most at home when sitting around a ceremonial fire, holding sacred space for others as they curiously explore their own shadows, gifts, and blessings. She is reminded that the separation of self and nature is an illusion that fuels dis-ease that a return to the cyclical rhythms of the natural world is a coming home to belonging and purpose.
Be is a Mother of three adult sons, a partner to her Beloved, a survivor of her midlife awakening passage, and archetypally a Crone in the making. Be is a lifelong learner who continues her path of personal growth for the purposes of supporting other travelers along the way. In the Fall of 22, Be will embark on a graduate degree in Clinical Mental Health at Western Carolina University.
Be is a certified Holistic Life Coach having trained with Alan Cohen, an Occupational Therapist of 32 years and a Rites of Passage Guide. She believes in the healing power of nature, poetry, movement, rhythm, presence and Spirit to show the way back home into remembering the Truth of who we are. Be has over 18 years of experience supporting others on their healing path toward their own remembering, shining a light on old ways of loving that have been long outgrown, illuminating core beliefs that block one’s access to the truth of their Highest Self.
Be has completed a number of trainings, including the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, the two year Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapy Comprehensive training, as well as the ROPC Ceremonial Guide training. Be especially feels called to the healing process of grief work, elemental rituals and the ways of walking the map of the medicine wheel. She believes in every person’s capacity to let go of the pain of not belonging or the stories of “not good enough” so that the gateway to a life filled with joy and purpose becomes a reality. Be believes every person deserves to be the author of their own story. Her loving presence, authenticity, and curious playful nature brings a palpable supportive energy to all her fellow travelers.
ROPC: How did you wind up connecting with ROPC
Be: As Kedar’s sister, I have been on the fringes of the work for as long as its inception. My direct connection came, as often it does for many, on the heels of my own transformational calling, when the garb of my current life became itchy and restrictive. My life as I knew it no longer felt like it was of my own making. I was no longer living my own life but instead living a life dictated by the needs of others to the point of not really knowing what my direction and purpose was anymore. I could no longer quiet or ignore that voice inside which was screaming at me, “Are you living your purpose? Time is of the essence! Time to sit in the driver’s seat of your own life!” With Spirit as my Co-Pilot, this period became my midlife awakening. At 49, I saw that my despair, loneliness, childhood trauma, personal shadows and family illness directly collided with my thirst for a deeper connection with Spirit. I felt a renewed drive to fully live out the rest of my days with purpose, authenticity and love.
ROPC: What's your favorite part about working with ROPC?
Be: What I love most about working with ROPC is holding sacred space for others on their own healing journey, while helping them to ReMember their place and purpose in this human journey. In supporting others the healing ripples out through the generational lines both ancestrally and to the descendants of both my line and others. I am fed through the process of feeding others because of the fact that we are all connected as One. I also feel deeply blessed that I get to do this amazing work with a number of blood family members with whom I deeply love and respect.
ROPC: Tell us a little bit about your background:
Be: I was born in Savannah Georgia, the youngest of five and the only girl. In the summer I turned three years old, we moved to Charlotte, NC. At that time, our family function shifted dramatically, with my Father away from Monday to Friday every week traveling for work for the next six or so years. My mother was left to tend to three sons and a daughter in a new place on her own for the first time in her life; a particular challenge, as she was accustomed to having help with the household and the children up until then.
During my childhood and teen years, I struggled with my sense of belonging and my sense of worth. I looked for ways to ease my social anxiety or “shyness” and ways to fit in with the in crowd instead of grounding into my own way of being. I spent many of those years feeling unmoored, not good enough, becoming whatever others wanted from me as a way of connecting or the exact opposite once the teen years came on board pushing expectations away with brashness and defiance. Unexpectedly, the family moved when I was thirteen, upsetting my connection to home yet again.
Fast forward through the next 8 years which I found my own pseudo rites of passage teens often do when a healthy passage is not offered in an attempt to prematurely claim independence and adulthood. This path resulted in dropping out of College at 19 and returning to my parent’s home.
I got a job as a caregiver to a young woman just a few years older than I who had been hit by a car while walking drunkenly alongside a busy highway. I learned the meaning of the phrase, “there but for the Grace of God go I”. During this time, I also was introduced to an Occupational therapist that visited her in her home which lit me up with purpose. I set out to return to College to become an OT. Once I was anchored to that purpose, my sense of belonging and reason for living felt anchored as well, although my challenges with my own worth and belonging ran in the undercurrents of my psyche.
After graduating College, I returned home to Wilmington and married 16 months later. We were married for six years before the parenting journey began in 1996 with the birth of our first son. Two more sons arrived in 2000 and 2003. Looking into the eyes of my newborn sons, I found true purpose, love and connection like no other. Feeling the responsibility for another human being made me grow up in ways nothing else had ever done.
Seventeen years later, I found myself in a lonely, emotionally and physically disconnected marriage, as well as struggling with my children’s own journey into adulthood. I was waking up to the reality that life needed to change because the generational toll was steep. Thus my Midlife awakening and my calling to this work became alive for me at a time when my life felt like a snow globe that I had picked up and shaken because I could not live in the discomfort of denial any longer. That was eight years ago.
ROPC: Describe to us your role at ROPC:
Be: My role at ROPC is as a heart tender and space holder. I have been on staff for Vision Quest Ceremony, Grief Ceremony, The Road Ahead and Reclaiming your Wild Heart weekend, and the Seasons of Womanhood Program. I feel deeply called to holding space and facilitating passage through shadow work, grief work, women’s work, archetypal exploration and the reframing of the core beliefs implanted during childhood.
ROPC: Tell us about one of your initiatory Vision Quest experiences:
Be: During my first vision Quest Experience, at death lodge, which is a shadow work ceremony done in preparation for the solo fast days. I found my body expressing and releasing a depth of grief and rage that I have carried all my life; an origin I did not entirely understand.
My conscious mind and gatekeepers showed up with judgment and shame for the way emotions were moving through and out of my body. Throughout the experience I was held within a space of support by the facilitators and community of the container as well as the Divine love of Great Spirit, who goes by many names.
I rode the waves of emotional and energetic release to eventually find myself feeling emptied of Ancestral and Karmic grief, and filled with an access to peace and joy that I had not felt within my reach for a very long time. From that moment, I kept coming back to this work both personally - for ancestral and personal reparations - and to support others in their healing of ancient or lifetime wounds, to access their own Joy, and find their way back home to their own purpose and passion.
ROPC: Tell us about other endeavors you are focused on:
Be: I am on staff for the Seasons of Womanhood Program which is led by an amazing circle of women; Kallie Brown, Tree Thomas, Kat Houghton, and myself. It is an honor to be a part of this circle and community. I love assisting women in an archetypal exploration of blessings and healing as we all dance around this wheel of time in this human experience as the souls that we are. I am staffing one of the current ROPC Guide Training programs alongside Kallie, Kedar, and Lynn. I am also returning to school this Fall of 2022 to pursue a Masters in Clinical Mental Health to further support my journey of assisting others on the road to self healing and connection to support from both the seen and unseen worlds.
ROPC: Who is the perfect fit for the Road Ahead.... programs you are facilitating?
Be: Any person who is feeling disconnected from the Natural world; its rhythms, cycles and messages is a perfect candidate for the Road Ahead program. Anyone finding themselves wondering whether they are living the life they are meant to be living would find great value in this program as well.
Others that would be a great fit are those that feel the calling for a deeper connection to nature, Spirit and community, and those that may feel curious about a Vision quest but feel uncertain of an 11 day commitment.
The Road Ahead and Awakening the Wild weekend is designed to reawaken one’s awareness of their connection with Nature, Spirit and Soul. If you are feeling disconnected from your true self by this frenetic world of modernity, this weekend immersion is a step in the direction of healing and a sense of belonging to the Oneness of all Life.
What is the gift that you were embodied to share?
Be: My own journey that led me to remember my worth and my place on this earth is the medicine I carry to awaken in others the same understanding that you are deeply loved and supported by worlds seen and unseen. Another gift is a generous and big heart that allows me to offer a compassionate, loving presence for others as they explore the change from a perceived separation from their soul’s truth to that of support and wholeness that is available with each breath.
