In this solo episode, Betsy comes back to a line she's been circling for months - since being diagnosed with cancer. She records this episode on the other side of a summer of chemotherapy, which she didn't know was coming when she first jotted down notes for this episode.

She bites into Anthony de Mello's line "life is a feast but most people are starving to death."

This isn't a recovery story. It's not "here's what cancer taught me," tied off with a bow. It's Betsy asking the same question mid-feast that she asked in March, post-cancer diagnosis, pre-surgery, pre-chemo: are you feasting, or are you starving in a room full of abundance?

In this episode, Betsy explores:

• What it costs to keep choosing the feast when circumstances get harder instead of easier

• "Starvation consciousness" - the stories that convince us we're in famine when we're not: not enough, behind, wrong country, wrong timing

• Why abundance was never about the conditions. It's about what you let yourself taste

• The direct line between nervous system regulation and whether life feels vivid or flat

• The difference between numbing pain and actually metabolising it

• Why presence doesn't require the threat to be gone, and why that's the uncomfortable part

• What it costs to want things fully when wanting itself feels risky

• Why she refuses to sit here and politely starve

The discomfort practice for this week:

Notice where you're starving in the middle of abundance.

Where are you postponing joy? Where are you numbing instead of tasting? Where are you pretending not to want what you actually want?

And where might life already be offering you something you're afraid to receive?

Just take one bite...

The Discomfort Practice explores the edges where growth, truth and aliveness meet, the places we usually avoid, but where our real lives actually begin.

If this one landed, send it to someone who needs the reminder that life can still be vivid in the middle of not knowing.

How to get more of Betsy:

• Substack, Voice Notes from the Edge: https://substack.com/@thebetsyreed

• Work with Betsy - coaching, Embodied Leadership Lab membership, community circles, and People Like Us dinners across Europe: https://www.embodiedleadershiplab.com and https://www.patreon.com/embodiedleadershiplab

• Subscribe to the podcast and leave a five-star review

This is an unusual episode of The Discomfort Practice. For six years, Betsy has only recorded solos when she's felt in creative flow, with thoughts already framed. This one is different. She's a week late posting, and instead of waiting for the mood to arrive, she's recording from inside it: chemo has gotten hard, a client canceled projects and wiped out her planned summer income and another piece of work fell through yesterday; she's newly and suddenly in menopause - with a nervous system that has lost its usual brakes; it's been 100 degrees in southern Spain for days with a month of heat still ahead; she's bald from chemo and her feet hurt all the time (but she still has to walk her dog); and she's mostly alone with it. And kind of over it. But not yet through it…

This is the edge of her own discomfort practice, and she decided that's exactly what belongs on the podcast. Not a lesson extracted afterward. Not a tidy insight. Just what it sounds like to turn on the mic without knowing when any of this ends, or what it's for. She gets a little weepy, which is not something she would have been brave enough to post even six months ago. But this is Betsy, living life out loud and welcoming others to do the same, whatever state they're in.

In this episode, Betsy explores:

• Why she's recording this solo without waiting to feel "in the mood," and what that shift is teaching her

• What it's actually like to be a week behind on the podcast because life didn't cooperate

• Chemo, sudden surgical menopause, and a nervous system with no brakes left

• Financial crisis, cancelled work, and not having the energy to reinvent her business again

• Deep summer heat in Spain, and losing rest as a coping tool just as she needed it most

• The loneliness of long stretches without real human contact, even while being cared for

• Sitting with the question "what's the lesson in this?" and not forcing an answer

• Being the homework for the Embodied Leadership Lab — living out loud as the method, not just teaching it

• A line from the late poet Andrea Gibson, who wrote from her own chemo chair: measuring a life by width, not length

• Pema Chödrön's words on the "off-center, in-between state" as the actual practice, not an obstacle to it

The Discomfort Practice explores the uncomfortable edges where personal growth, leadership, embodiment and systems change intersect. Follow Betsy for more reflections on reinvention, craft, uncertainty and building a life that feels vividly alive.

How to get more of Betsy:
Subscribe to The Discomfort Practice wherever you listen - and a five-star review always helps

Subscribe to Betsy's Substack to get more of her thoughts, in writing: substack.com/@thebetsyreed

Work with Betsy, through 1:1 coaching and Embodied Leadership Lab membership: www.patreon.com/embodiedleadereshiplab and www.embodiedleadershiplab.com

In this episode of The Discomfort Practice, Betsy is joined by Claire Carpenter - coach, social innovator, entrepreneur, and founder of Scotland's Centre for Social Innovation, The Melting Pot - for a conversation about what it really costs to build something before the world even has language for it.

Claire founded The Melting Pot nearly twenty years ago, long before coworking became mainstream and before "social innovation" became a buzzword. Together, Betsy and Claire explore the loneliness, creativity, exhaustion, identity shifts, and deep purpose of being an early pioneer - particularly in the social impact world.

They talk candidly about burnout, leadership, the hidden emotional cost of sustaining mission-driven work, and the uncomfortable reality that many nonprofit structures may inadvertently prevent the very change they exist to create. This is a conversation about building community, surviving systems that weren't designed for humans, and what happens when the people trying to make the world better forget they are human too.

• What it feels like to create something before people understand why it matters

• The early days of coworking and social innovation in Scotland

• Why pioneering often means spending years swimming against the current

• The emotional and relational cost of building mission-driven work

• Leadership, burnout, and learning to care for yourself while caring for a vision

• How COVID changed Claire's perspective on charities and social impact structures

• The tension between purpose and exploitation in the nonprofit world

• Why having your ideas copied is often a sign you've succeeded

• The shift from building organisations to coaching the humans inside them

• What social innovators need beyond passion and resilience

Final thought: Claire leaves listeners with a challenge she never imagined her younger self would say out loud:

"Don't set up a charity."

Thoughtful, honest, occasionally spicy, and full of hard-earned wisdom, this is a conversation between two women who have spent decades building things at the edges of leadership, culture, and social change.

Claire Carpenter is a coach, social innovator, and entrepreneur with more than thirty years' experience helping people and organisations navigate change. She is the founder and former CEO of The Melting Pot, Scotland's Centre for Social Innovation, and one of Europe's pioneering coworking communities. Today she works with leaders, entrepreneurs, and purpose-driven organisations to help them overcome challenges, lead more sustainably, and create meaningful impact without sacrificing themselves in the process.

Website: www.clairecarpentercoaching.com

Subscribe to the podcast and leave a five-star written review wherever you listen to podcasts - it genuinely helps get The Discomfort Practice out into the world.

Read and subscribe (don't just follow) Betsy's Substack: @thebetsyreed

Work with Betsy - coaching, Embodied Leadership Lab membership, community circles, and People Like Us dinners across Europe: embodiedleadershiplab.com and betsy-reed.com