In this intimate solo episode, Betsy records from the threshold: posting unscripted, later than planned and exactly when it needed to be shared.

Recorded in January 2026, after what she calls the personal "meat-grinder" year of 2025, this episode is a love letter to anyone doing something alone: building, healing, choosing integrity, setting boundaries or standing between versions of themselves in a quiet, liminal space.

This is not a pep talk. It's a nervous system-level offering for those moments when life goes quiet and the stories about aloneness get loud.

• Why aloneness is not a failure, but often the felt experience of integrity

• How liminal spaces show up when we stop abandoning ourselves

• The difference between being alone and being unsupported

• Why quiet seasons often arrive right before a new chapter

• How support doesn't always look like people (and what else counts as support)

• Letting go of the macro stories we attach to those moments when we feel alone

Betsy shares a gentle, grounding breath practice she calls "the you don't have to do anything breath", designed to bring you back from spirals of story into the present moment.

You'll be guided to:

• Breathe in for four

• Pause gently

• Breathe out for six

• Repeat 4–6 times

Along with a simple anchoring phrase: "You don't have to do anything right now. You are allowed to pause."

• Focusmate – quiet online coworking sessions with a stranger for gentle accountability and presence - https://app.focusmate.com/

• Audiobooks and podcasts as regulating companions, including books by Brené Brown

• Routine as support: food, movement, breath, tidying, eye contact with yourself

• Co-regulation with animals (especially dogs or cats)

Listeners are invited (no pressure) to notice what support already exists and what could support them:

• One place that calms you

• One voice that steadies you

• One practice that brings you back

• One person (or future version of you) who has survived this before

No forcing. No fixing. Just presence.

Betsy would love to hear what resonated, what didn't, and what you'd like more of.

You can:

• Follow and message her on Instagram @thebetsyreed

• Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a five-star review (it truly helps). Here's Apple and Spotify for easy access.

• Join her on Substack at The Betsy Reed, where she shares Voice Notes from the Edge - some public, some subscriber-only - for those who want a closer seat to her thinking, practices and lived evolution
  thebetsyreed.substack.com

• Work with Betsy
  For coaching, consulting, speaking, embodied leadership sessions, upcoming community circles, and the People Like Us dinners across Europe:
  www.betsy-reed.com

• Check out Embodied Leadership Lab for monthly leadership circles and quarterly planning sessions (starting ahead of Q2 2026):
  www.embodiedleadershiplab.com (it'll take you to Betsy's website)

In this powerful solo episode, Betsy explores what it means to live, lead, and stay human in what philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously called "the time of monsters" - the in-between space where the old world is dying and the new world is still struggling to be born.

Recorded at the close of 2025, this episode is an invitation for anyone standing at a threshold: the end of a year, a relationship, a job, an identity, or an old way of being. Betsy reframes overwhelm, grief, and exhaustion not as personal failure, but as signs of initiation - evidence that you are awake, feeling, and participating in the birth of something new.

This is a reflection, a transmission, and a practice for those navigating collapse with consciousness.

• What "the time of monsters" really means, beyond politics or villains

• Why exhaustion, grief, anger, and sensitivity are appropriate responses right now

• How collapse acts as an initiation into embodied sovereignty

• What embodied leadership actually looks like (and why charisma isn't the point)

• Why boundaries, nervous system regulation, and saying no are revolutionary acts

• How initiations happen in ordinary moments - emails, conversations, rest

• The difference between being "nice" and being kind (especially to yourself)

• Why monsters are often teachers and how they accelerate your path

• How to practice the new world instead of talking about it
  
  

Instead of measuring your life by achievement, try asking:

• Where did I meet monsters (and what did they teach me)?

• What parts of me am I letting die?

• What new world am I quietly embodying through my boundaries, voice, and presence?

• How am I practicing the future I want to live in?

Betsy introduces a version of the "Just Like Me," her favourite compassion practice, a simple but radical way to soften separation, regulate the nervous system and practice leadership through humanity.

Links & Resources

Subscribe to Voice Notes from the Edge on Substack
For deeper access, weekly voice notes, behind-the-scenes sovereignty reflections and a front-row seat to Betsy's inner world:
thebetsyreed.substack.com

Subscribe and follow The Discomfort Practice
Wherever you listen to podcasts. Here's Apple and Spotify for easy access.

Work with Betsy
For coaching, consulting, speaking, embodied leadership sessions, upcoming community circles, and the People Like Us dinners across Europe:
www.betsy-reed.com

Check out the brand spanking new Embodied Leadership Lab for monthly leadership circles and quarterly planning sessions (starting ahead of Q2 2026):
www.embodiedleadershiplab.com (it'll take you to Betsy's website)

• Subscribe, rate, and leave a written review: it genuinely helps

• Share it with someone navigating their own edge

• Join Betsy on Substack for deeper, more intimate exploration

This is a good one from the archives - back in January 2023, when memories of the COVID-19 pandemic (and the trauma) was still fresh. Betsy interviewed Pilar Garrido, who was Minister for Economic Development in Costa Rica during the pandemic and went to work every day determined to 'lead from love.'

This is posted toward the end of 2025, a year in which many of us have witnessed leadership and counter reactions that come from fear or ego, not love. It's a particularly poignant, beautiful episode to remind us that it IS possible to lead from love, and that each of us can choose to lead - whatever our sphere of influence - from love.
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A recap of the original episode:
In this episode of the Discomfort Practice, Betsy talks with political scientist and economist Pilar Garrido. They chat about her experience leading a sustainable economic development policy in Costa Rica for a green and inclusive economy, as well as designing projects to create public benefit.

Pilar has long been a key figure, using her previous role as a Government Minister to steer Costa Rica's ambition to be one of the five countries piloting the Sustainable Development Goals. SDG's were launched by the United Nations in 2015. Their aim is to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030, all people enjoy peace and prosperity.

So, buckle yourself in for this episode and be inspired by a politician who governs with both heart and strength. She has served as Chief of Staff, Deputy Minister, Minister of Planning and Policy, Technical Secretary of the Sustainable Development Goals in Costa Rica and as Costa Rica's co-ordinator of the Economic cabinet.

Pilar has since moved on to become Director of Development Cooperation for the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), based in Paris; it's a role that allows her to bring her style of leadership-with-heart to her work on a global level.

Key Points Discussed:

• The discomfort Pilar experienced whilst becoming a politician and minister at a young age, especially during the Pandemic, as she describes as being like on the front line (5:20)
• Choosing to work from a place of love (08:20)
• Making difficult choices and creating policies to protect people during the Pandemic (12:20)
• Pilar's journey from political scientist to advisor to politician (14:50)
• Costa Rica's initiatives to put humanity and sustainability first, before economics (23:40)
• How to have a big impact in politics: where your job is not forever (27:00)
• Part of Pilar's legacy: diversifying an economy that has previously heavily relied just on tourism, so that it is healthy and robust (31:00)
• The IDG framework (that Costa Rica are one of the first countries to pilot), which aims towards eradicating hunger, poverty, sustainability and ensuring human rights. The IDG's (Inner Development Goals) consists of five dimensions: Being (relationship to self); Thinking (using your brain); Relating (and caring about others in the world); Collaborating (social skills and society) and Acting (driving change) (36:40)
• How everyone can do something small, that will collectively make a big impact (46:00)
• Pilar's optimism for the future (51:10)
  
  

  If you want to get a front-row seat to Betsy's innermost thoughts as she evolves into a more embodied, sovereign human - her messiness, her breakthroughs, and her real-time reflections - subscribe to her Substack, Voice Notes from the Edge.

  It's where she shares the unfiltered pieces of her journey she can't share anywhere else.

  Links & Resources

  Subscribe to Voice Notes from the Edge on Substack
  For deeper access, weekly voice notes, behind-the-scenes sovereignty reflections, and a front-row seat to Betsy's inner world:
  thebetsyreed.substack.com

  Subscribe and follow The Discomfort Practice
  Wherever you listen to podcasts. Here's Apple and Spotify for easy access.

  Work with Betsy
  For coaching, consulting, speaking, embodied leadership sessions, upcoming community circles, and the People Like Us dinners across Europe:
  www.betsy-reed.com

  If you enjoyed this episode

  • Subscribe, rate, and leave a written review: it genuinely helps

  • Share it with someone navigating their own edge

  • Join Betsy inside Voice Notes from the Edge on Substack for deeper, more intimate exploration