Ep. 68 Rooted enough to stay

Rooted Enough to Stay - a solo episode with Heather

Welcome back to the HEAR HER podcast!

In this opening episode of Season 5, Heather shares where she’s been, why the podcast paused, and what it’s taken to return — rooted, resourced, and ready to stay.

This episode is a reflection on grief, healing, presence, and the medicine of community. It’s an invitation to slow down, listen inward, and remember that we are not meant to do this alone.

Season 5 weaves together conversations with local healers, teachers, and space holders — offering grounded, compassionate support in a loud and chaotic world.

In This Episode, We Explore:

• What it means to pause — and return rooted
• Walking beside loved ones through illness and transition
• Presence as a healing practice
• Why community is essential medicine right now
• Trusting your inner wisdom in uncertain times
• What’s unfolding in Season 5 of the HEAR HER podcast

Ways to Stay Connected & Supported

✨ Join the Email Community
Be the first to know when the HEAR HER Sisterhood doors open, receive a new episode every Friday, and stay close to what’s brewing in the Divinely Sensitive cauldron.
👉 Join the email community - https://artisanal-teacher-5816.ck.page/2212c835d6

✨ Experience In-Person Healing at OverSoul (Charlottesville, VA)
Intuitive energy medicine, Reiki, and private sound baths (up to 3 people).
👉 Book a session with Heather at OverSoul - https://oversoulhealingcenter.janeapp.com/#/staff_member/35

👉 Explore the OverSoul Healing Center  - https://www.oversoulhealingcenter.com

✨ Listen to the Season 5 Trailer
Curious what’s ahead this season? Start here.
👉 Listen to the trailer - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/official-trailer-hear-her-season-5/id1612832301?i=1000745356596

✨ Sound Healing + Crystal Singing Bowls
Read more about how sound healing became part of Heather’s work.
👉 Sound bath blog post - https://www.divinelysensitive.com/blog/2025/8/20/how-i-found-my-way-to-the-crystal-singing-bowls

✨ Intuitive Connections Course
A self-paced course designed to support you in developing, understanding, and trusting your inner wisdom.
👉 [Explore the Intuitive Connections Course] -https://www.divinelysensitive.com/courses-digital-offerings/intuitive-connection

Let’s Stay in Touch

📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/divinelysensitive/

📘 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hearherpodcast

💌 Heather loves hearing from you.
Questions, reflections, or support with booking?
Email anytime at divinelysensitive@gmail.com

A Gentle Ask

If this episode resonated, you’re invited to like, subscribe, or share the podcast — it helps this work find the hearts it’s meant for.

Until next time, may you remember to quiet the chaos, tune inward, and HEAR HER — she speaks your deepest truth.
💖Wrapping you in so much healing love. 💖

Transcript

0:05

Hello, my lovely listeners and welcome back to season five of the Hear Her podcast. It's so wonderful to be here with you. Truly. Mm. It feels really good. To be back on the mic. If you've been listening for a while, you know it's been a minute, and you know this space has always been about intuition, presence about truth, about slowing down enough to hear what's quietly, asking for our awareness beneath all that noise. And if you're new, welcome, welcome, welcome. I am so glad you found your way here. Like I was saying, it's been a minute and it's been a long time since I've released an episode. I think we ended, yes, with season four, which was all about the energy of release and letting go. If you missed any of those episodes, this is your invitation to go listen, weaving the energy of release into my daily life continues to be incredible medicine for me, for my loved ones, and for my clients. So we wrapped season four back in 2023, and at the time I had every intention of diving right into season five. I thought I would take a short pause, catch my breath, and come right back as I had for four seasons. Turns out intuition, my guides. My spiral healing journey universe. Life very clearly had other plans, looking back now, I can see that I wasn't meant to return until I was truly rooted enough to stay rooted. Mm. That's my word for this year. It's, it's a word I've been working with, an energy that I have been working with for a long, long time. It just, it feels like an anchor that I will be very grateful for in 2026 over the last few years. I walked alongside two of my dearest friends as they battled cancer, Dave and Kristen, and it's really hard to put into words what an honor that was. Dave fought cancer for 16 years. 16 years of courage, resilience, and a will to live. That honestly felt miraculous. We were lucky enough to travel with Dave and his family to Paris. It was a bucket list trip, and watching him navigate this cobblestone city It was truly, it was. It was miraculous. Miraculous. About a week before he passed, my family spent a few days with him at his house, with his family. We're very close. He and my husband went to college together and his wife and I were in college together. All best friends, and we met after college and all that time. Just before Christmas, it was so tender. It was so tender and a time that I am so immensely grateful for. I can remember standing at the foot of his bed one day while he was napping, and my intention was to intuitively share healing, right? To call upon his guardians, his angels and ancestors, to guide him and protect him. Through his journey, and as I continued to weave the magic and the energy around him, I swear I felt the veil thin. I could feel how close he was to transition, how gently he was being held. I felt the unmistakable presence of both of our mothers, just beyond the threshold, arms open, ready to walk with him. He passed. About a week later on Christmas Eve, he was my dear friend for over two decades, half of my life on this earthly plane, and now he is my friend and spirit, Kristen Kristin's journey. Ooh, Kristen's journey taught me so much more than I feel that I've had the space to process really. Right? Like, ugh. I still feel like I'm working through what I witnessed and what I held space for. She battled for four long, painful years, and her positive energy and resilient spirit were beyond comprehension. She used to text me with what we would call the bat signal. I lived right around the corner, so I was able to, you know, in a pinch just run over there and help out. And she would text in all capital letters, Reiki please. She suffered from terrible edema. Her legs would swell with pain after hospital visits. Intuition led me to the sacred pools one day while I was sharing healing with Chris. It was such a profound and potent place energetically. One I'd never visited before, finding my way there with Chris, and we would visit those sacred pools together. All the time. I would sit on the floor in front of her chair. We would journey. Trusting the inner realms that I work with through shamanic practice, energetically drawing out what her body could no longer release, offering peace where there was pain. She would say to me, I love you, Heather Dressel. She always would call me by my full name. I love you, Heather Dressel. And then she would tell me that my reiki, my weaving and my healing were one of the only things that really brought her relief. Working with Chris over that time, I mean a woman so rooted in her intuition and so grounded in her knowing, really, really boosted my confidence as a healer. It was a safe space for me to practice. So a deep bow of gratitude to Chris for helping me unlock the sacred pools in my inner realms and trusting me in that space with her. Practicing with Kristen all those years, it really did. It truly helped me develop my intuitive gifts. The most beautiful thing though, the most beautiful thing I learned from this experience, while I was simultaneously learning this in all areas of my life, yet it was death that really drove it home. Quiet presence, right? That sometimes. Love doesn't need words. Most of us seem to feel really uncomfortable around terminally ill people. I get it. I used to be right. We're not sure how to act, what to say, how to make them feel comfortable, how to make them feel better, how to fix whatever you can fix and then I walked beside my mother and my dear friends showing up imperfectly, but showing up and they taught me that sometimes it's a handheld in a quiet room and the willingness to stay. With that quiet walking beside them reminded me of something. We're not really taught in this culture. We don't have to fix everyone, especially people that are dying. They want us to see them where they are, to love them, where they are, to meet them where they are. They want us to be present. That kind of presence changes you now at the same time I was navigating my own layers of grief. In 2021, my husband and I lost two dear friends, losing my mother years earlier, moving through my own cancer journey and. I was also in a very intense season of parenting. My nervous system was stretched thin. My mama bear instincts, my triggers were on high alert. I was brought to my knees more than once, literally in the garden, crying and praying for my child. Needless to say, I was going through it. And while all of that was happening, I was still doing the daily momming adulting and trying to create and run a business. This is what happens, right? We go through something extremely traumatic, but at the same time or, and at the same time, we're living through our daily life and it's a lot. There's so much to process, so much for me that I hadn't had the space to really feel. And as cheesy as it always sounds when I say it, it's so true. If we are not allowing our feelings, we are blocking our healing. So something had to give. My capacity was maxed out, and the podcast was the first thing to raise her hand. What I thought would be a few months away, turned into a year, and then two during that time. I realized that I couldn't think my way through this season, the podcast or the season of life that I was in, and I will start by saying I'm a huge advocate for talk therapy. I did it for years and years, and it really supported me deeply. But then I began to realize, hmm, well actually it was pretty quickly in the last session of talk therapy that I had when my therapist told me I was snowballing myself and her, and she was right. Oh. That I could tell my story till I was blue in the face. Uh, you know, I was intellectualizing my pain. The stories were there. I could tell them again and again, and I did. But the trauma was still living in my body, so I went deeper. I turned towards somatic healing, grief, massage, and embodied release practices. I took my own medicine. I slowed down. I cried. I journeyed. I journaled. I gave myself healing and reiki. I received healing from others. I stayed committed to my shamanic training. I leveled up in reiki. I explored sound healing. I allowed the seasons and cycles to continue teaching me welcoming Great Mother as my mirror again and again as the wheel of the year turned. That time alone, especially in Luna Garden, was the medicine I needed. We moved here in 2017, right in the middle of my cancer journey, uh, just after losing my mom. So, I wasn't really in community yet. I was healing quietly in my new home, unpacking, getting my kids settled in their new schools and. Just as I began to emerge, COVID hit Everything moved online and grief layered upon grief, layered upon grief, layered upon grief. And eventually something shifted. I knew I couldn't stay on my turtle shell forever, even though it was comfortable and safe in there. Eventually I felt the call to weave myself back into community, not because I was finished healing, not by a long shot, but because I was rooted enough to engage without losing myself. And that is when the vision for this season. Of the podcast became more clear and in the midst of all of this, I joined the nurturing team of practitioners at Over Soul Healing Center in Charlottesville this past spring, which is so exciting. I absolutely love it there. If you're local and you haven't visited, come see us. It is such a beautiful space. Really stepping into that space for the first time felt like a threshold, and on that first day, we walked into the Angel Light Healing Room, and I saw. Rainbow colored crystal singing bowls and just gasped with delight. And what unfolded from there felt less like learning and more like remembering. If you wanna hear the full story of how I found the bowls, or rather how the bowls found me, I'll drop a link to a blog post in the show notes below. But what really matters here is this, the pause. This sacred pause that I took away from the podcast, it allowed me to cultivate work that is deeply aligned, embodied, rooted, and alive. That remembering has now become part of the work I offer at over Seoul, where I share Reiki, intuitive energy medicine and private sound baths for up to three people. So intimate, nurturing, nourishing. These sessions are designed to support deep rest regulation, energetic release, and so much more. I also work with clients long term supporting them as they learn to decode their intuitive language and trust their inner wisdom. So if you're local to the Charlottesville area or passing through, you are Worly invited to come experience this beautiful work at Oversoul. If you're looking for massage or other types of body work, the practitioners at oversold are truly magnificent. So I'm gonna share a link below so you can explore the Healing Center and book a session if that feels good for you. So as I began speaking with local healers, coaches, teachers, and space holders for this podcast, I was reminded of something so incredibly powerful. We are not meant to do this alone. We're not in a world that feels increasingly loud, chaotic, and disorienting, where we're often asked not to trust our own ears, eyes, and inner knowing. Community is medicine, and season five is all about weaving ourselves back into community. These conversations are with women who live in my community and they work both locally and online. My hope is that listening to this season inspires you to seek out the lightworkers where you live if you're not local, to find the safer spaces to be witnessed, held, and supported through this chaos. Which brings me to something so close to my heart. In fact, it is the heart of my business, the hear her sisterhood. Is a nourishing, nurturing space for intuitive sensitive women who are longing to slow down, reconnect with themselves, and feel less alone. It's a place to come home to yourself again and again through guided journeys, live gatherings. Simple yet potent, intuitive practices, resources, sacred community, and so much more. Right now, this kind of space feels really important. Actually. It feels essential in a world that pulls us towards numbness, distraction, isolation, and disconnection from our own senses. The sisterhood supports women in rooting back into what they feel, what they believe, and what they know to be true. Through seasonal rhythms, shared practices, soulful conversations, following the moon, archetypal healing. This is a space to be witnessed, to be heard and to be held where you are, where sensitivity is honored as a strength and where you contend your inner world while staying engaged with life and community, it's a quieter, safer space. It is not on Facebook. There are no ads. There is no distraction, no constant noise where you're invited to move at your own pace. Truly, there is no behind. You are invited to trust your inner knowing and serve from a place of overflow rather than depletion. I have been manifesting the ability to leave Facebook for a long time, and I cannot wait to welcome you into this beautiful little app that is the sisterhood's new home. The doors to the Hear her sister hitter opening in early March, just before the spring equinox, which will be our first live gathering, and I will drop a link in the show notes to join my email community. You'll receive a gift when you sign up, and you'll be the first to know when doors open to the Sisterhood. Plus, every Friday you'll receive a link to the newest podcast episode along with whatever is brewing in the divinely sensitive cauldron. This season of the podcast is an invitation to listen within, to remember who you are at your core, to root into your intuition, to reconnect with community in ways that feel nourishing, not draining. Below this episode, you'll find the Season five trailer where I share a little bit more about the themes and voices you'll be hearing, grief, energy, healing, sacred feminine, nonviolent communication, embodiment, intuition, relational fields, what it means to stay human and rooted in these times and so much more. It has been so. Wonderful to be here with you. I know your time is precious and I am so grateful that you chose to spend it with me. And truly, I love hearing from you. I adore hearing from you, so if you've got questions, if you need help bugging an appointment, if you can't find an appointment that fits your schedule, if you wanna know more about the sisterhood, if you wanna create, a personalized offering with me, or just share something about your own intuitive journey, you are always, always welcome to email me at divinely sensitive@gmail.com. And lastly, if this episode resonated, it would mean so much to me if you would like, subscribe and share this podcast. And if you have a moment to leave a review, it really helps the podcast. Find the hearts of the listeners it's meant for. Until next time, wrapping you in so much healing love. May you always remember to quiet the chaos tune inward and hear her. She speaks. Your deepest truth. Okay.