Beth Clayton: When Your Inner Good Girl Tries To Run The Show

You can feel it when your old life still “works” but your body has already started to leave. Beth Clayton joins us to talk about threshold moments, the ones that don’t respond to hustle or optimization because they’re asking for an identity death. We trace Beth’s path from acting to coaching, somatic mentorship, and ceremonialist work, including the tender grief of putting down a beloved dream and the unexpected freedom that can follow a chosen crossing.

We also unpack a pattern so many women live inside without naming it: the good girl as a nervous system protector. Beth shares how “good girl syndrome” isn’t just people pleasing, it can look like overachieving, cool detachment, avoidance, or doing it all alone. We explore how protectors form through conditioning, attachment pain, and patriarchy, and why your mind may feel liberated while your body still braces against truth, power, intimacy, and pleasure.

From somatic work to ritual and end-of-life awareness, we talk about what helps you cross without getting dragged: being witnessed, making space for grief, and learning to relate to protectors with curiosity instead of war. We close with the inner elder, the part of you that can take life seriously while holding it lightly, and how connecting to that wisdom can change what the past even means in your body.

Three Truths from this Episode

1. Every transformation requires a death.

Real transformation isn’t about optimizing yourself—it’s about crossing a threshold. Every new version of you asks you to grieve a version you once loved. Sometimes we choose that crossing. Sometimes the crossing chooses us. Either way, becoming requires letting go.  

2. Your protectors aren’t your enemy.

The parts of you that procrastinate, overachieve, people-please, avoid conflict, or try to stay in control aren’t broken—they’re protecting something. The invitation isn’t to fight them, but to get curious, listen, and allow them to become guides instead of guards.  

3. We aren’t meant to cross thresholds alone.

Whether you’re grieving, becoming a mother, changing careers, ending a relationship, receiving a diagnosis, or simply becoming more yourself, witnessing matters. Many of life’s biggest initiations go unnamed. Healing begins when we allow ourselves to be accompanied through them.  

Journaling Prompts

• What version of myself am I still trying to keep alive, even though I know she’s ready to be released?
• Where in my life am I standing with one foot in my old world and one foot in my new one?
• Which of my “protectors” tends to show up most often—my people pleaser, my overachiever, my perfectionist, my avoider, my lone wolf? What is she trying to protect?
• Where am I waiting to be dragged across a threshold instead of choosing to cross it?
• What grief in my life has never truly been witnessed?
• What part of me is asking to come home?

Practices to Explore This Week

Name your threshold.

Instead of waiting until life forces change upon you, ask yourself:

What threshold am I standing at right now?

Simply naming it often changes how you move through it.  

Have a conversation with your protector.

Instead of trying to silence the part of yourself that’s scared, perfectionistic, controlling, or avoiding…

Ask:

• What are you protecting me from?
• What do you need me to know?
• What would help you feel safe enough to soften?

As Beth reminds us, you don’t fight your protectors—you invite them in.  

Create a ritual of release.

Thresholds deserve ceremony.

Write a letter to the version of yourself you’re releasing.
 Thank her.
 Name what she protected.
 Read it aloud.
 Burn it, bury it, or place it somewhere meaningful as a physical marker that you’re crossing into a new season.

Resources 

• Beth's Website
• Follow Beth on IG: @bethclaytoncoach
• Beth Clayton’s Good Girl Protector Quiz, a free assessment to discover your primary protector archetype and learn how it shapes your relationships, purpose, money, and self-expression.  
• Beth’s work can be found through her website, Instagram, and Substack, where she teaches on the Good Girl, Sacred Rebel, embodiment, and threshold work.  
• Beyond the Veil Retreat (New City, New York): Beth will be leading Crossing Thresholds: Living What Death Teaches, a transformative workshop on using the wisdom of death to navigate life’s many initiations. Through somatic practices, guided reflection, and journaling, participants will explore what they’re ready to release, what is waiting to emerge, and how to move through life’s thresholds with greater courage, clarity, and embodiment.
• Watch Beth's TEDx Talk  on Self Sabotage

“Something truer is coming in—but not without loss.”

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Beth Clayton

Elena Box 0:00

Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to another episode of the Ode to Joy podcast. This is your friend, a letterbox, and I'm so excited to introduce you to my new friend, Beth Clayton. Welcome, Beth.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

Hi.

Elena Box 0:21

Hi, new friend. Hey, hey, she's coming in. So I she's joining us. She's live. And I always like to have our guest let us know where are you joining us from?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

I currently uh living in upstate New York on the unceded territory of the Mohican and Iroquois people, right outside of Albany, New York.

Elena Box 0:47

Beautiful, beautiful. We love, we love. I'm also in New York. I'm on Long Island. So, you know, New York's strong. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And wow, there's so many, so many areas that we're going to be going into this conversation. And I'm so excited to dive in with you. So just to let our listener know a little bit more about you. And there's so much to you. Of course, you contain multitudes like all of the best people. So Beth is a somatic mentor and ceremonialist who guides highly sensitive, deeply feeling women across the threshold from the good girl into the sacred rebel. I mean, yeah, hello. She is a TEDx Broadway speaker and licensed Ishtara body teacher who has spent 15 plus years working at the meeting place of depth psychology and lived ritual, teaching that real transformation isn't optimized, it's crossed, and that the body is a threshold every woman must move through to come home to herself. Huge, huge, huge, huge, huge. And I love you already. I'm like, oh my God.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

I know you. I know, yeah, yeah.

Elena Box 2:04

Yeah. I'm so happy you're here because, and and and so as Beth and I were just chatting before starting to record, she would, we were just talking, you know, and and if you've been listening to the show and you know me, you know I go into all these different voices and characters. And she was like, Are you a performer? And I'm like, Yeah, yeah, I am. And guess what, listener? She is too. You are also an actor.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Once an actor, always an actor. And then never leaves. Doesn't matter what you're doing, because it's like an entire way of perceiving the world. It's a it's a it's a how you fundamentally understand, live in. And so, and what's funny is you didn't do any like the yeah, the I just knew. Like I just could tell. Because I just feel like when you know, you know. When you just know, you know your people in that way. You know, you're like, you're you're one of you're one of my people in that way. Yeah.

Elena Box 2:55

Yeah. I'm a fellow thespian. Thespian. The thespian. And I feel like as we get into talking about your work and and your expertise, I feel, you know, it's interesting because both of us have come into a very similar kind of world of work, and it just flows so easily, especially coming from the standpoint of being an actor, is learning how to completely empty yourself out as a vessel and tune in. Actually, so I'm really curious. I'll just start off with this question is how did you transition? Like, was there a big threshold moment for you where you transitioned? Transit, I don't even know if this is the word that I want to go for, but so good though, and you're right.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

And I don't think I'd ever, I'd never okay, I hadn't named it this way, but keep going, yes.

Elena Box 3:44

Yeah, where

Acting, Attachment Pain, And Being Chosen

Elena Box 3:45

you transitioned from being from, I guess, identifying as an actor to going into this to this world of work. Like, was there a big moment for you, like an aha moment where you realized you were no longer who you were and who you identified as and were becoming this new version of yourself?

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Ooh, ooh, ooh, this question, there's just things racing through my mind on how to explain this through the different lenses. Okay, so I'll just start with. I mean, I just knew very young that I was very, very drawn to the stage. And I think for most of us who are drawn to the stage specifically, as opposed to other types of art, you know what I mean, other types of that are more behind the scenes or whatever, that are very expressed through the body, like the the body arts, as it were, where you're like, your your paintbrush is your body, your paintbrush is your voice, your I think for most of us, we're drawn partially because of like a soul desire that was there from the very beginning that is going to be an orient, an orientation, a force of orientation our entire lives to kind of this is how to live. And then I think there's for me, there's a part of it that was very attractive to me because of my unique wounding that I did not understand at the time, my attachment pain. And so the stage was this place where it was just like this gorgeous heroin hit of exactly what I needed. But I will say also at a steep cost because what wound up happening was, you know, I got better and better and better as we do if you've been training for a long time. And I went to an MFA program, I went to Ruckers and graduated around 2007, was able to get agents and managers and all of those things right out of the gate, and was able to work what I wasn't prepared for as a theater actor. I was never, I never weren't really went into film or made much money. It was all soul dollars, but I was able to work pretty consistently. I didn't understand at the time how addicted I was to my self-worth being so incredibly hooked into the ability to be seen by directors, by casting directors, by audiences, by being chosen. So this it was so perfect for my attachment pain that the being chosen and being special, being chosen and special. And I always think it's funny for my clients who are actors, too, the people I work with. I'm like, you literally chose one of the hardest things in the world to be chosen to do consistently. So why do you think you did that? Did you know what I mean? And then why are why are you making it so epically tragic when you're not able to be chosen all the time? Like, what is this about? Because it's usually about early attachment pain. It usually is. And the addiction to being seen by some sort of witness, right? This this divine witness that is going, you, I'm plucking you out, and you are the special chosen one who gets to be. So I knew none of this at the time, but I was in a relationship and with someone who is also an actor, and he's now my husband. And there was like this friction point where he was ready to move on. I wasn't really like he wanted to start to have a family, he wanted to get married. He was like, How is this gonna work exactly with you as a theater artist, like going away to, and I wasn't ready to quite leave it yet. It felt very, very difficult for me to even conceive of that because it was like would have been a huge identity death at the time, like that I was not prepared for. So talking about thresholds, identity death, and you can't like those things, or else it's actually quite traumatic and will have a bounce back effect. What I did at the time, I think, to start to cross these this threshold without really knowing that's what it was, was I started coaching. And it was something that made sense for me to do at the time, and you might be much younger than me. I have no idea how old you are. But at the time, Institute for Integrative Nutrition, which I would say so many people who are coaches now or who have who are now doing things in the world stemmed from a lot of them stemmed from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition because it was one of the first places that were really training coaches and saying, like, hey, this is like a legit thing that you can train to do and you can make money as, and that and the cred was all around health at the time. And so I went, I became a coach, and I actually started doing quite well because I was working with performers in the city. I was working with a lot of performers who had a ton of body image issues. I started working with body, food, and freedom, and I was also healing myself at the same time. So by taking these courses, I was learning how to feed myself for the first time in my life after disordered eating and dieting my entire life. And I was learning and getting really curious because you know, Elena, like we're we're like behavior scientists. Like part of the reason that we're so interested is because it's at least I'll speak for myself. I'm so fascinated by human behavior. Yes. And so fascinated by truth and what makes something resonate versus not resonate, even if it's almost exactly the same, almost if no one could pick up on the difference except some little internal bullshit meter that like I have cultivated that serves me well as a coach as well. So, like years of training as an actor gave me this truth and bullshit detector in my body that was very finely tuned and served me well in the coaching arena. And it was so new at the time that people were just like, this is a thing. They were very into it. It was not difficult for me to get clients. It took off. But there became a point where these dreams started having friction. Like my dream to move into this next stage of my life and the life I was living at the time, even though was parts of it that I really loved, and there were parts of it that were disempowering, meaning I knew I couldn't grow my career as a performer and grow my career, right, as a coach. And it's not because these two things couldn't live together. It was more because my energy, the capacity of energy I had and time and focus was getting split. And there was a moment where I made the decision in a coaching session with a coach of my own that I was going to put my energy into coaching rather than performing. And it was, it was the thing I was most scared of when I got started coaching, was that I would eventually wind up leaving acting. What I wasn't expecting is that it would be a chosen crossing rather than a forced crossing that it would actually feel empowering. And of course, there's grief there. Right after I made that decision, I was called by a director who I loved working with. I mean, it was like the art I loved doing, which is even worse than like the big project that pays a lot of money and is kind of meh. It was like, you are going to have a soul transcending experience in these rehearsal rooms. You are with the creme de la creme of the actors and directors that you know of, and you're gonna go create something magical fucking together. Like, I just swore, I don't know if that's allowed.

Elena Box 11:04

Yeah, it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

And I said yes, and then I sat with it and I was like and I emailed him back. And this is the threshold moment we're talking about, and I said, I gave him a really long explanation that he did not need, you know what I mean? About why I was doing something different with my life, and and then I just sent it and you know, shortly after he's like, Okay, best, like that was it. Like, I yeah, like thanks for the heads up. And I must have cried on the bed, I don't know, for hours because I knew I had just put down a part of myself that I loved and that something truer was coming in, but not without loss. And right after that, things picked up massively. There was big exposure and visibility that happened. I started working with the gym. Suddenly I had hundreds of clients out the door, as opposed to like trickling in here and there because I was being championed by someone who was very well known at the time. And yeah, so that's how it all started.

Elena Box 12:12

Wow, it's amazing. Sticking off from there. Yeah.

unknown 12:17

Yeah.

Elena Box 12:18

Because as you've been

Leaving The Stage Without Regret

Elena Box 12:20

sharing, I'm I'm realizing you're already answering so many of the questions that I have for you.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Yeah.

Elena Box 12:27

And I feel like it makes so much sense, of course, because you've had to go through so many tiny deaths and and these and this big threshold moment in order to move into this, into this new space. And something that I've actually been chewing on. It's so funny because it's like we come, we come back to this again and again and again at every threshold moment. It's it's like, at least for me, it's like I'm learning it all over again. And it's like, oh yeah. All right, yep, yep, okay. We remember now, we've done this before and it's different every time. And yeah, I find I'm learning, I get new tools every time. And still there is a common thread, which is that in order to move through the threshold, you have to go through these tiny deaths, which is something that you talk about too. You have to grieve the older version of yourself. And and it is that that a relationship has to die. Sometimes it's very much relationships with real people in your life, which is absolutely heartbreaking.

unknown 13:29

Yeah.

Elena Box 13:30

And as you said, once you made that decision, and that's the thing too, is that it's it's all about energy as well. It's like, ooh, when you have a foot in two different worlds, which as a shamanic practitioner, it's like, I'm like, yeah, but I can do this, I can be here. I can but it's like when you're when you're in that time of indecision and you haven't fully stepped in, you're giving the universe mixed messages and and what opens up. And that's but that's the terrifying thing, is that you it is a death to actually say, okay, I'm gonna let go and I'm gonna step forward into this next chapter. But it is hard to do.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

So hard. What was that moment for you? I'm so cute. Like, was there a moment like that for you?

Elena Box 14:14

Thank you with the performing asking. Yeah. Yes. So our listener might might be familiar with this story. And if you, if you're not listener, here it is. The long and short of it is I was doing stand-up comedy in the city, having a great time, doing wells. Things were starting to pick up. I was in my early 20s and loved it, loved it, loved it, loved it. And my father was diagnosed with brain cancer. And what happened then was that I was propelled into this world of having a lot of abilities turn on, abilities that I that I hadn't had before. Wow. And it was really this initiation into a conversation with death and with the other side. And I went into this huge time of self-study where all I wanted to do was sit on the floor and meditate and learn because there was so much coming through. It was, you know, when people talk about like, I'm getting a download, it was like overwhelming lava of information coming in. And it was at a time, I think, when people, I mean, you know, it was kind of like I had to completely disengage with everything and and all identities

A Father’s Illness Changes Everything

Elena Box 15:30

that I had had previously, you know, people would, I'd meet people at a party or whatever, you know, and they'd say, Well, well, what do you do? And that was the hardest question to answer because at that time it was literally just, I'm breathing, I'm living, I'm, you know, I can put one foot in front of the other. Like there was no part of me that wanted to identify with the old version of myself. And it wasn't as if I was ashamed or or kind of wanted to close the door on that part of myself, but it was more just like that's not who I am and who I'm aligned with right now. There was no part of me that wanted to get on stage and write jokes and be funny. And it's not to say that there wasn't humor in those moments because there's so much humor in death and dying, but I just had to have this moment where I realized I wanted to go into more deeply into shamanic studies because that's all that made sense.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Yeah.

Elena Box 16:23

And even though I had just produced my own sketch comedy pilot and had put a ton of money and energy into it, and it was ready and you know, ready to be pitched to producers and all these things. And but it was that moment where I had to be honest with myself and and take that leap of faith. I really identify with with the fool, you know, it's just kind of like, okay, yeah, this is what makes the most sense. And so that was what year was that? I'd say it was like about 2015, is when that wow, when that leap happened. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:58

So it's been Ooh, I'm curious. I mean, I don't know, like I know I'm going through a whole cycle from 2015. Yeah, that was the year my son was born. Like I'm completing and beginning a cycle right around now. I wonder if your astrology is the same because I think a lot of us are completing cycles from around that time.

Elena Box 17:16

Oh, that's something delicious that we I'll have to look into as well, because it makes sense. It really makes sense. And so much is coming up again from sort of that time as well. And I'm curious because so, okay, oh, there's so many places I want to go to here. Is that, you know, as you said, you had to mourn this old version of yourself or that the actor version of yourself. But I'm so curious, because it, and I'll speak for myself, is like, I always want to have a finger on that pulse, especially I want to have a finger on that sense of inner artistry and what really lights me up as an artist when I see other artists. That I'm curious, is there any part of you in your life, in your work, where you do still feed and connect with that part of yourself?

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Yes. And I feel like that's a big part of the homecoming that I've been in recently. And I just want to name from thank you so much for sharing all of that. I'm just like kind of astounded by, I know we use this word initiation, and my work, I'm almost getting sick of hearing it. There's certain words we use so much, we're like, okay. Yes, yes. Okay, this one's out of use. Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like, or it's like when it would become so commonplace that everyone's using it. I'm like, okay, I need to find a new one. We need a new one. Let's get on the Thoroth. Oh my God, I love you. Okay. So what I'm just seeing, like in my own experience, there have been these threshold moments that very much felt like I could see them coming and I had choice involved. And I was like, oh, and the one I just described to you was like, I could see that coming from a while away. I knew it was approaching. I knew I couldn't keep going the way I was forever. But there was like time and spaciousness to have these slow releases, right? That are like, okay, I can release from my agents now. And now I can release from this. And now I have to have this email that's a little bit more confronting, but I'm gonna stick with my guns and I'm gonna say, and I know I'm having an identity crossing in that moment. But what you're describing is like it, it's like a fundamental before and after they find us. We don't choose the crossing, the crossing happens. And then oftentimes we're in a reality reeling for a while, for positive or negative. That might be a pleasant experience, it might not be a pleasant experience. With there's like ego death involved in those moments, and the ego as we know it cannot withstand that threshold. The idea we have about ourselves, the idea we have about life, everything is so fundamentally turned upside down. None of the ways that we have coped before work in those moments. I call this the dark woods, other people call this the dark night of the soul. And it's incredibly fertile. But while we're in it, it is very overwhelming. So I'm just really bowing to you and like what a testament to what your capacity might be and has been up until that point, that that kind of initiation or information was finding you in that opening, that you were an open vessel for what was coming through, because that takes so much surrender, especially if you did not have context around, yeah. And and as you're talking about what the shamanic work you do, I'm like, oh, I want to just listen. Tell me all about it for the next, tell me all about it for the next however long we have together. Because I've been so drawn to that world too. And when you were, it's so new to me. But when I've been in my Dark Woods moments of the last couple of years, I've found myself when I've read books around shamanism and when I've been introduced, and like my whole body lights up with like a this is a thing. And as I was reading about it, you know way

Theater As Temple And Ritual Space

SPEAKER_01 21:20

better than I do, but I'm just gonna share my understanding of this idea of it's almost as if shamanism, from what I'm reading about it, was the kind of early way the we worked with trauma, or that people would work with trauma. So when difficult things happened, the self that splintered off in those moments and couldn't withstand what was happening is gathered and found and loved and returned back into wholeness, which is the work that I do as a body, you know, a somatic, and we're doing so much with trauma, but with somatic rewiring in the body. So it's all just so interesting to see how the things we understand more from a trauma perspective now had already been, they were attended to through indigenous lineages for many thousands of years uh before this Western understanding kind of took it and put it in very okay.

Elena Box 22:18

So anyway, I'm just yes, no, and you're naming it so beautifully, like yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

Continue. Well, and I think the question that you asked has a lot to do with that. And I'd be so curious for you too, how it's been playing out. Because I do think for when I left acting, for example, there was a self I had to leave behind.

unknown 22:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

There was a self I had to leave behind for a while because it was almost like the grief was too big. I could, it's almost like I was in a relationship with her where we had to have space from one another.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

That old self, you know, like I I couldn't even see shows. Like even now, I have trouble watching really good TV. Like I have friends who are who are have have have quote unquote made it, yeah, right. And who are at the top of their game. And I still have not watched the shows that they are on because the ache, the like ghost ship of that life is still so close to my skin that it's just so tender that I'm like, I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. So just naming that, I had to take space for my performer self for a long time. And in my mind, I always thought, well, you know what? If you ever want to bring her back in, you can just decide to pick up acting again. It doesn't have to be such a big drama. You can just get some headshots redone, take a few classes to get the wheels greased, and like you know exactly what you're doing, you can get back on a stage. And I know that's available to me if that's what my what I'm legitimately desiring. But what I have found is for a while I had to leave her behind. And even though I was still I still was, we were still paired because I mean she was definitely on stage with me as I was doing my TEDx. Oh, yeah. You know, she was definitely involved in how I speak, how I taught, how I command a room, how I hold a room. You know, the skills I learned as a performer were very translatable almost to a T, like 99% of them to coaching, to holding space. And also there's an element of artistry, though, that was not included intentionally. And I think the ceremonial work allowed that creative part of me to be woven back into how I artfully create these immersive experiences and how I use everything I understood about theater to create an environment that can allow something true to come forward in a way that it might not without that kind of very specific containment and framing. So lately she's finding her way back in through even things like this. You know what I mean? Like even a podcast or speaking, but also like I'm starting to sing again as a tool in ceremony. I'm starting to use my voice as a way to connect with my ancestors. Like there is a lot that's starting to happen. And it's like we don't know while it's sort of the way I think about it is like every theater performance, every theater performer who's really, really good at what they do is probably also a ceremonialist. Oh, it's probably a ceremonialist. Heck yeah. And who would absolutely translate their skills to being a healing ally? And in another life, they would never have been a performer. Yes. That in another life, that would not have even been something that occurred to them because it wouldn't have even been a thing, but they would have still used all of these parts of themselves in their life. No part of that would go untended to. Even if they were a comic, like me, they wouldn't be necessarily in like Madison Square Garden, but they would be using that part of themselves, that archetypal frequency as a part of the wholeness and their community. So yeah, as I'm saying this, I'm I'm seeing you're like, yes, I've had this lot too.

Elena Box 26:17

Yes, it's just yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. It's it's exactly that. It's as performers, we are conduits really for spirit. And I've always felt the theater is a temple. And for years and years, that was my place of worship. And anytime I have the opportunity to go and sit in a theater, and it and it doesn't really matter what theater it is, but it is like church. It really is church. And I took my husband to see his first uh Broadway show. We went to so to go see O Mary, which if you haven't seen it, it's I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard all about it. Highly recommend. And we were up in the nosebleeds of nosebleeds, which as a performer, I'm sure you can also test. I've always really understood and sort of tested a performer's merit by whether they can reach me at the nosebleeds. And my God, you know, they they really did, but not only that, we were in maybe the second to the last row. And so we're up there and we're in this beautiful theater. I can't remember which one it is in in New York, but these old theaters which are just absolutely gorgeous and steeped in it's like being in a church or a temple because when you enter a place of worship that has had prayer and and and so and you know, songs and all these things kind of like steeped into it for for thousands of years sometimes, you know, you go to these ancient churches, you feel it. And even before the lights went down and the curtain went up, I started crying and getting emotional. He was like, he was like, You really love this. And I was like, I do, I do. And there's something that is so it's like ineffable because it is, it's it's a connection. It's it's not just getting up on stage and going around tasks, here we go. It's it's being a conduit, and it is the same thing that we do in in in ceremonies and and in these in these experiences, is it's conjuring up and calling in spirit to create a sacred container to allow people to not allow, because people are going to feel no matter what, but to give people an avenue to connect to something within themselves that that might be difficult or challenging for them to access otherwise, or or have an experience where where they see themselves also in in what's happening. And they go, yes, I understand that. And oh my goodness, you've given me a new lens to look at this through, and and you've given me a solve for my heart that I needed, that maybe I didn't even know I needed. And so I think there there absolutely is this this cross-section. And as you said, it's it's something that for myself as well. For for a very long time, I had to put on a shelf, really. Yeah. And be in that fertile soil, be in the woods, be in the actual woods during what I what I call the dark night of the soul. But my goodness, there was a lot of time in the woods, and to actually almost bury myself underground and just be there and not put any pressure on myself to to weave that part back in. I always knew that she would be there whenever and if I was ever ready to call her back in. And as you said, she's been with me in in everything that I do. People be like, why are you so good at and at teaching, you know, vocal work and and and body and movement and all this? I'm like, it's I literally have a degree in this.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

So it's like, yeah, that's the first crazy too. When people like are dismissive about like having a degree in it, I'm like, it's one of the best degrees. I'm so grateful. It was the most useful. And yeah, it didn't translate to a job immediately. It wasn't about that. It fundamentally trained and opened me to an entirely different way of perceiving. And I so agree that that same presence I would bring to a scene where you have to be in such spontaneous truth or everything starts to fall flat. So, yes, you have this architecture, but then you have to find a way to live so truthfully and organically within this preordained like scene that exists as if it's never happened to you before, and access these different notes within yourself. The practicing of that so consistently made it so that when I'm holding retreats, people are like, How do you do this? How do you know what thread to pull? How do you know when the energy is shifting? How do you know when we've gone from something being true and deep to something shifting into people's protectors? Like, how can you tell? And I'm like, oh, that's all acting. Like that's I learned that many, many decades ago. And actually, I can't read I can't teach you how to do that because I was trained for three years. I was forged in the fire of that, and then 10 years of training as a performer. And no amount of me teaching you how to coach, and no amount of me like you just witnessing like you can't do it the way I can because I'm trained as a performer.

Elena Box 31:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

And go train as a performer, go do some improv, go train, you know. Yeah. Because there is something so, and I'm not saying, of course, people can bring their own beauty to it. And I'm not saying, you know, performers are the only ones who could hold space magically and all of that. It's just there are certain skills with it that are so transferable as the ones tracking what is happening in a space.

Elena Box 31:27

100%.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Um, and then when you were talking about the theater, I was like, I could go, I mean, I could go on for hours and and I won't right now, but like we just need to talk about it because there's so many dots I'm connecting around what theater artists and performers can be a part of in this next part of what we are moving into collectively. Yep. Yeah.

Elena Box 31:51

Oh, and that's that's uh that's an episode for later on the season, perhaps. No, I know. We'll have to have one later. We could really like woo-hoo, nerd out. But 100% here we are. We're doing we're doing the good work. And so, yeah, God, I just want to go down so many avenues that you've just mentioned, but I'm gonna try to stay in the lane. And so, what I would love to shift our conversation to is because we've been talking a lot about sort of like the behind the scenes deep, deep work that that led you to where you are. I want to talk about the good girl. And you you mentioned the protector, and I want to talk about the good girl protector. And tell us a little bit about the good girl and the protector, and then why do these protectors develop and what are they actually trying to protect?

The Good Girl Protector Explained

SPEAKER_01 32:40

So um, I'll start off by saying that my background for many, many years was in coaching. And so I was able to track a lot of without even knowing I was tracking. I also have ADHD. So my brain was pulling all of these threads, which I didn't know until I had children, was pulling all of these threads from different experiences. And I think one of the gifts of having ADHD is there's this like really crazy library in my mind that I can't tell you like what's happening later today. But what I can do is I can't, or organize my calendar well. But what I can do is I can remember something from 13 years ago in vivid detail that's exactly mirroring this moment that we are in right now. And how do I describe that to a T and connect all of these constellational dots in a way that turns it into a story? That's one of my superpowers. So the way I talk about this with the good girl is for many years I was tracking behavior without even realizing I was tracking behavior in this library in my mind. And even though my work developed over time, which everybody's does when they're a soulpreneur or creative entrepreneur, you start in one thing and then it's constantly evolving into the things that you're drawn to and that you're learning, and you're really the vessel through which everything is alchemizing and understanding. The journey is always the offering, is what I say, not like what we're teaching, but our journey and our lived experience. But what started happening over time is I saw these patterns, right? And I started doing even a lot of work around saboteur work and shadow work and all of these things as a coach. But then I discovered in my own kind of dark night of the soul moment, I discovered embodiment work and sacred feminine work and ceremony. And when I started doing this embodiment work, which is my, you know, training is in a method called Ishtara, which is about not only releasing certain emotion, but rewiring the stories that live in our body. And I started this process and this just anchored everything in times 10 that I understood intellectually. I started to learn about these different protectors and how they showed up in the nervous system and why and under what circumstances they would likely come up, what kind of pasts people had typically who had certain types of protectors. And combined with my having tracked behavior for a decade before ever getting involved in that, and also being introduced to all of these communities with sacred feminine work, which were all about dismantling internalized patriarchy and the return of the feminine to our understanding of spirituality and the earth. Suddenly, all of this started to make sense. And I was able to see through my own lens and my own journey, how everything could really be boiled down to how the good girl lived in my unique system and how that was connected to generational trauma of the women before me. And men, of course, men are very traumatized by patriarchy, but specifically for me as a woman, you know, having been in the womb of another woman, having been an egg in the in my grandmother, you know, as we all were, it is wild to see how much of it is not just ours, but connected to the generations before us. So I was able to kind of connect these dots on how women's different types of good girl showed up. And the reason I call it the good girl is because it's how patriarchy shows up in the body of a woman with these unique conscriptions, like the type of family of origin that she grew up in, where she grew up, her level of privilege, you know, like how all of these things kind of bake together into how she shows up in the world to get her needs met in an environment that was never designed for her to thrive. And how, and it also has all this shadow enlightenment because it's like there's so much resilience. If we look at this lineage, the good girl is this, God, it's this consciousness that I really do bow to because it's so adaptive in how it's kept us alive and how it's brought us here. It's so sophisticated. It's so multi-layered, sophisticated, has our back in every possible way, but it's not concerned with our authenticity. And this is something that it's not concerned with our power, it's not concerned, it's concerned with our safety and our surviving. And really, we do have, as women right now, much more access than even the generation I had before us or the generation before that. I think of my grandmother and what she endured in her lifetime. It's so massively different from what I experienced, the comfort level I have, the freedom I have, the ability to live in my pleasure, the ability from her going to someone who was uneducated, grew up on a farm, went through multiple wars, was, you know, in abusive relationships, had no autonomy of her own. To me, the granddaughter getting an MFA and acting, do you know what I mean? Like ridiculous to pursue my dream. Yes, yeah, brings me pleasure and aliveness. So like, and there was just one generation between that. And that was my mom. Yeah, you know?

unknown 37:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

So the reason I say this is I have so much respect. And also this consciousness shows up in every woman I've ever known. Even the ones that I have looked up to, even the ones I have learned from, I can see where it's showing up in them. It's definitely still in my system. And then I think of okay, well, what liberates what? So if this is a survival mechanism, this anatomy, it's nervous system, it's psyche, it's conditioning in the mind. I find the conditioning in the mind is the easiest thing to break. The conditioning in the body is what's trickier because people can think they are liberated feminists, and their body is very much in an architecture that is protecting them from their truth, their authenticity, their power, their embodiment, their permission to be who they actually are. And a lot of women don't even know that. They think they are the personality that has been formed out of the environments that they've lived in. So, so much of this work is about liberating through the body and the mind the authentic self underneath. And it's not about becoming someone who is not conditioned, it's about access to the part of us that predated that conditioning.

Elena Box 39:13

Yeah, I don't remember what the question was, but well, I was curious about the protector aspect of for the good girl. And yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Well, and one thing I'll say is many people tend to associate the good girl with like a fawning, shrinking, right? You know, and to me, that's one very specific manifestation. But that to me is the the good girl also shows up as a massive overachiever who's carrying everything. The good girl also shows up as someone who's incredibly avoidant. The good girl also shows up as someone who's above it all, who can't be touched, who's not vulnerable. I call this the cool girl who, and I had I have one. Um, she shows up as the loner. I mean, she shows up as the one who's trying to do it all alone and doesn't trust other women. And I see that one a lot, even especially in healing allies and coaches and leaders is the loner and the way that they're experiencing intimacy is through I hold you, and so I'm not actually vulnerable to you. Oh, yeah. So they're like connecting with women, but they're not actually totally vulnerable to them because they're always have the power and balance. And it's one that I've started to shift a lot within myself because it's also rife for projection. It creates more pain around projection and pedestaling and hierarchy. It winds up creating the very thing that we're trying to break away from. So to me, she's she comes in the ones that I've seen are 12 different archetypes of how she shows up. And I have my top three, and everyone has their sort of top three that are gonna be the most like, oh, right. And that combination shows up in money. It shows up in our relationship with money, with time, with other people, with our purpose, with our relationship with our body, how connected we are to our own spirituality, or and what I mean by that is not do I have a spiritual practice? It's how much authority, spiritual authority, do I have in my own body, my own connection to something? How much access do I have to something real and true within myself? Not like how good am I at performing it.

SPEAKER_02 41:33

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

Wow.

Elena Box 41:37

So much of what you just shared, I am just so excited to learn more about and to dive in too. I mean, I've I've done a little bit of this. I mean, I feel like it's all connected anyway, but I feel like I have done a little bit of this. I mean, it's reminding me a lot of like Youngian work and and archetypes. And so I just want to call call this in and call, call it out and call it in. Something that I forgot to mention at the beginning of our conversation, Beth, is that you are joining us at Beyond the Veil, which is in a couple of weeks, July 25th through 26th. All the details are in the show notes. And you are gonna be teaching a workshop on Sunday, which we do want to talk more about before we finish our conversation. But just as we're talking about the good girl, something that you're gonna be offering is with Corona, who is our lead facilitator for Beyond the Veil, is the good girl and the edge of the unknown. And it's sort of like a merging of your work around living awake and Corona's work around dying awake. And so can you talk a little bit about

Working With Protectors At Thresholds

Elena Box 42:40

this particular offering? And if someone's listening to this and they're like, oh my God, yes, let's get me in, what can they expect? And if somebody's hearing this conversation and it's long past when this opportunity has happened, what's something, maybe some practical tools that they might be able to weave into their own lives? If this is something that's totally new to our listener and they want to learn more, like how, what are some practices and and tools that they can bring in to their own experience and practice?

SPEAKER_01 43:10

So I'll start with thank you so much for asking all of that. Let me and I'll start with um with the question around I think the the good girl and the edge of the unknown. One of the things that I think is important to name the the dots I've been connecting over time as to why. So there's this connection with the good girl protectors and where we stall and loop at thresholds in our own life, where we are being called forward, or where like we can't keep going the way that we were, and yet we are not crossing the threshold intentionally. We're waiting to be dragged across. Being dragged across always hurts more. It's always more painful, and there's a lot more suffering involved, a lot more cleanup that tends to have to happen afterwards. So there's a real gift in being able to be able to recognize a threshold moment, be able to see what's happening, be able to pinpoint yourself and where you are, and also being able to work directly with your protectors that never go away. So the important thing to understand about protectors, and I really got this from a medicine journey with corona, by the way. Yeah. Was the more they will win if you try to fight them. You do not fight a demon. You do not fight, and demons are not demons, they're just protectors. You don't fight a demon. If you try to fight them, you will be fighting them for eternity and you will completely exhaust yourself. And you will never move on to the next phase of understanding or awareness or consciousness. That you have to get playful with them. You have to sit down and listen. You have to treat them like the children they actually are and really start to call them back home to help them feel seen and known. Speaking of like the shamanism, they are parts that have, they are protecting parts that have been discarded, that have fractured off. And they are fierce. They're like primal in the sense that they're very animalistic and primal. And so at the root of them, you cannot fight them. You invite them in. So these threshold crossings mean that we're working directly with them and promoting them to what I call guardians and guides, which is what they're actually there to be for us in the crossing of these thresholds. So one of the things I've I've been able to see, there's a lot of fragility, and I don't mean this in a way that's judging women. I think it's very conditioned into us this helplessness and fragility because we've been so disconnected from the magic and the sacred nature of endings and grief and death. Many of us had never even witnessed someone die. I I didn't until I was an adult or been around a dead body or really been in the process without it being hidden from me and told to like simmer down because it's upsetting other people.

unknown 46:06

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:07

Like you don't, you don't need to grieve more than the one who who it's it's the closest to. And if you do that, then like you're trying to get attention. So I just learned to button up grief. And I think there's a certain fragility in women because we have not learned, well, with all humans, but I'm focusing on women here. We have not learned to be with these moments and and and move through them with attunement, with accompaniment. And so it really occurred to me when I met Corona, and I've always been fascinated with the work that you do and that Corona's doing. And also I'm like, okay, and still feels like, and that takes a lot of capacity. And but what I have been able to see from knowing Corona is an end-of-life doula and being introduced to different end-of-life doulas is just like I bow. Number one, I bow. And number two, like God, how sacred that you guys exist and that you're doing this work. And I could also see how beneficial the work that you do at end of life is at any kind of threshold in someone's life. This intentional releasing from the past and orienting to the future. Because I think if we don't do that work, the threshold work, a part of us is always orienting to the past still. And that's why we don't get the results we want. You know, it's the way we're constantly going, why am I still stalling? And it's because you're still or a part of you is still out there searching. They're like roaming the halls, going, Where am I? You know, and they need to be brought back in. And they can't go forward with you unless you really bring them back in at this time, which there's a reason that they're the rituals are the way they are. There's a reason they are done in all of these different cultures, the way that they are done that really honors the profundity of them and also allows a human soul to move forward without losing parts of themselves, trauma, without traumatizing them. So that's what we're exploring in this workshop with Corona. And I also think it's what I'm going to be doing the work with in Beyond the Veil, which I'm, I'm it's a two-day experience, as you know, and I'm sure you've been sharing with people because you're deeply involved in it as well. In I'm on the rebirth day. So I'm talking about thresholds in life and how we can bring the intelligence from the experience around death awareness into these thresholds of our lives. And that's really also what I'm exploring with Corona next week on July 9th. For any women who are interested in joining, I call this the unmasking session because it's always unmasking a part of the good girl's consciousness and what and helping us understand like the wildness and connect with the wildness and the truth underneath her. And we're going to be talking about what Corona has learned as an end-of-life doula and what I've learned as a threshold guide and how to intentionally cross in ways that actually save us so much time and don't keep parts of us looping in the past.

Elena Box 49:09

It's

Grief, Witnessing, And Rites Of Passage

Elena Box 49:10

huge work. And I think something you touched on is it these things don't just happen when there's some sort of like catastrophic, like glaringly obvious threshold moment, like someone passing, or you know, even these, even these thresholds in in life, when you become a mother, when you get married, or you know, anything like this, which is also there's so much cause to celebrate during during those times as well, which is, but they are also threshold moments, is there are so many of these moments in our lives that, as you said, it's kind of like if you don't acknowledge it, give it space, give yourself tools to move through it, maybe be witnessed through it, it's gonna come and bite you in the in the ass later on because you haven't actually given it space. And and the truth is, and something that I touched on in the beginning is like every time you go through it, there's a reason because you have to gain new tools. And so it doesn't mean that just because you've gone through something like this before, that you're like, all right, we're just gonna breeze on through. Like it's still sitting with it, it's still holding it. And that requires tending and that requires really tools. And and like I said, giving yourself the time and space to really learn who who that version of you is that you are becoming and stepping into.

SPEAKER_01 50:28

Yeah. And oftentimes it's it takes like the dark woods to the like, I thought, oh, this is the dark woods to the meadow, like in this like archetypal map that I've kind of I'm understanding a lot more of the feminine journey. I think of the dark night of the woods, and then eventually you do leave the woods and you're in a new phase of rebirth, but it's very new and it's very tender, and you don't have your shell yet, and you don't have your home yet. And yes, there's sunshine, but you're also like, where am I in space? I don't know who I am. It's and I'm sure this mirrors. I'm sure this mirrors, like it, there's all of these, like seasons, all of it. And like seasons, I don't think thresholds are like a moment. I think they're more like a crossing from one season into the other season. And there's or a dawn to dusk, dusk to dawn. There's so many shades of the sky. And I think what you were naming around witnessing is being is so important. And it's something that there's so many tiny initiations and tiny deaths that we're experiencing as women that go unnamed. Like huge heartbreaks that just don't make sense in a conventional way that people would even honor it. Things like mess mastectomies or surgeries that people are having illnesses they're going through that no one really quite knows how to attune to, like how to really be helping a friend after the passing of a parent or a loved one, not just like the event itself, but like how do I show up? Like witnessing and not being alone in it is so huge. And most of us go through these initiations largely alone because we don't know that we're allowed to ask for support and witnessing or where to find it. In like the dark woods moments that I've been in, that's how I found Corona. Because number one, I knew I needed to be witnessed in something. And I knew that the ceremony I was doing with the plant medicine was going to teach me things, but I also knew it was opening, like it was a ceremony I was creating to put something down and open to something new. And around six months after that, I joined a program where I knew there would be new women who did not know me, did not know the past me, that could witness me and who I was becoming in a ceremony as well. And both of those things shifted the trajectory and the timeline on which I could make the changes that I knew needed to happen this year because I had been seen in it. I had been acknowledged, I'd gone through rites with eyes open, clear on what they were doing for me. And we're missing so much of that. And you do that work and I do that work, and I just don't even think women know it's something they need or that it's available to them.

Elena Box 53:14

And that's why we do what we do, listener. Oh my gosh. We're we're coming to the end of our conversation, and of course, I have a million more questions. Yeah. I the last one, and and it's it's not even on my list of questions, but the way that I'm sort of wrapping it up in in my mind and in my heart is word that you mentioned, or or phrase rather, before we started recording. And this is something that I'm super like, it's juicy in my mind and something that I'm always trying to keep kind of like at the forefront, which is tuning into your inner elder, the inner elder, yeah, and the importance, and I'll speak about this sort of my from my perspective of why do we do all of this work? Why is this important? To me, it's so that I have my mind on my inner elder and who I'm becoming. So

The Inner Elder And Holding Life Lightly

Elena Box 54:20

that when fingers crossed, please, I would love to be an elder, if I get that opportunity that I can really embody and inhabit the role of the wise woman elder. And so that I can also hold space for the younger generations to show this is how we, this is how it's been done. This is how we do it, so I can hold the younger women so that we can really, and that's the thing is there's a reason why so many of us are coming back to these practices. It's not, we're not inventing the wheel. This has been done for millennia. And in our culture now, in the United States, in in New York, on Long Island, at least, I'll speak for my little bubble here now. It's forgotten. And we don't have a way of doing these things. At least we know you and I. We, we, we, we've kind of clued into it. Okay, this is this is how we kind of can move through this, but we're all kind of taking clues as to how we're putting this together. And still there are so many who are being left behind who don't know how to move through these huge threshold moments. And and then what what ends up happening is that we they come into their elderhood and they're kind of confused. You know, I've had clients of mine going, yes, you know, and they're kind of like, well, I know I'm I know I'm in a 75-year-old's body, but uh something's not connecting here. I feel like I'm 20 years old. And listen, I I I hope to be able to be like a lively whipper snapper kind of, you know, 80-something year old, like, and let's go to the dance hall, you know, who knows? Yeah, but it but it is in uh and also in that sense in in being. Let's go to the dance hall. Why not? Come on, kid. Let's stop dance hall. Isn't that what a kids are calling it these days? Yeah, you know, but but but also being able to sit in that seat of elderhood. Yeah. So I'm oh goodness, I've I've given you so much of sort of like my perspective, but I suppose for you, what feels potent for you in terms of like how you bring this into the perspective of the inner elder.

SPEAKER_01 56:28

Yeah, I think the first thing that's coming up as you say that is just like the current sort of information that is both ancient and also being confirmed more and more through science that time is an illusion and it's a function of our, like our brain is creating time, that time is not actually something that exists in the way we think about it. I I believe we have access to all of ourselves at once. We have access to the full potential of who we could become. That connecting with like the highest alignment of our desire of who we could become and surrender to the mystery also can change the past of what we have experienced in the past in a way that actually affects like this idea that we're starting to understand that the future can rewrite the past. I understand that through the lens of the body. Like the future, like connecting to future self can and meeting the needs of previous self can rewire what has happened to us in the past and how we perceived it. To me, there is something about connecting to the inner elder at the end of life. And the, I guess the way we would put it is what I'm starting to understand through having watched loved ones that have passed, and also from the work that you do, is that there is this process that people go through as they're getting older and know there is a timeline of releasing from these worldly ways of thinking about things. There is sort of an altered state of consciousness that they move into. There's all these tiny deaths that they get to release from with people I love that are going through portals like that. They're having to release from certain ego identifications, things that they thought were super urgent or important or now they're no longer, they can't be. There's something about connecting to the self that is no longer as concerned with what my current self or past selves are so mired in. And that lightness, the lightness of that, that helps me take the present moment both more seriously and less seriously, to take life very seriously, but to hold it lightly and to surrender more, knowing there will be a time where I'm gonna be asked to do that anyway, and that there is a lightness in that way of being that is sacred. I want to be able to pass that along, everything I've learned along to my daughter, so she can live a more beautiful life than even I have lived. Not because she has more things, but because she understands her her body has an understanding and a template for reverence and magic and mystery and how held she is in all of it. Because to me, freedom is not about certainty, it is about the trust in how held we are in the mystery of it all. I guess that's what I would say. The the work I've done with wise women, for example, is some of the most light-filled, luminescent, not heavy at all, actually, but also profound responsibility at the same time. And that both of those things live together is really an incredible joining of seeming opposites. Yeah, I guess that's what I got.

Elena Box 1:00:03

Mm-hmm. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. And thank you, thank you, thank you. We could talk forever. And we will. We'll be simple.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:12

And we will.

Elena Box 1:00:13

We're gonna hang out soon. So we're gonna hang out. We're gonna be IRL. And if, listener, you want to join us and be IRL with us, please come join us at the Beyond the Veil Immersive Retreat. It is in, I could I keep wanting to say it's Nyak, but it's New City, New York, just outside of New York City. I know. And all of the details will be in the show notes. Beth, please let our listener know where they can find you and there is there anything else you'd like to share with our

Retreat Invite, Quiz, And Where To Find Beth

Elena Box 1:00:40

listener before we go.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:41

Yeah, I mean, the two main places to find me would be on Instagram and Substack, because those are the places I hang out. Um, on Facebook, it's just or LinkedIn. It's you're not gonna find me there really much. So there, but in terms of my website is Beth Claytoncoaching.com. And I also always direct people if they're interested in this good girl protector work and sacred rebel work, is there's a quiz that I spent a year developing, which is highly thorough. It takes about 10 minutes to do. It's very thorough that gives you your top protector and then gives you an indication of what the two others are and a little bit of information about them as well. And this can be really, really informative. It's a lot of information, but it will, you will feel fully seen in by this. If if it is just it's an art, not a science, winds up being your top protector. So I encourage you to go there. And that's kind of how you enter into my world and understand a little bit more about the offerings that I currently have is through that quiz.

Elena Box 1:01:37

Wow. I'm excited to do it myself. I have it ready to go on my tabs. And so the flyers on. Okay, good. We'll see. I'll let you know. So, listener, please go check out all the resources will be in the show notes. And I know you're probably feeling the same way I am right now, listener, that you want to go and dive into best work because I mean, who wouldn't after this conversation? Oh my God.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:03

So I'm gonna dive into your work too. I'm so excited to explore you more in all the ways. And that's just noodle.

Elena Box 1:02:09

Yeah, a noodle. Yeah. All right, my friend. It's been such an honor. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you. I'm so honored. Thank you so much. Okay, dear listener, thank you for joining us. And this has been another episode of the Ode to Joy podcast.