Betsy Willis: Helping Others Bloom

By Caroline Monday

“Something about when you get an intentional gathering of women together, and it’s a safe environment, people start blooming, people start claiming who they really are,” Numina co-founder, clown and all-around inspirational woman Betsy Willis told me over coffee last week. Willis will tell you that she was not always aware of this fact and I had the privilege of hearing the story of how she came to learn it.

Betsy Willis as her clown alter-ego “Doodad.” Photo submitted

Willis was raised in Alabama, but spent most of her life in Virginia, where she had a husband and a job as a teacher. “I taught for a while before teaching got so crazy. I mean, I substituted in later years and it’s nothing like it was when I first started teaching,” she said. She explained that during her time teaching, teachers had more leeway in the classroom and their students’ parents thought the teacher was the best thing since sliced bread. “All that’s changed,” Willis said.

Willis said teachers are now expected to stick to a strict curriculum and testing is used to gauge the progress of everyone in the classroom, not just the students. “Certainly testing the children isn’t a way to test the teacher,” she said.

In keeping with the expectations for the women of her generation, Willis said she gave up teaching to become a stay at home mom upon the birth of her daughter. During that time she said “I lost confidence in myself. When I wanted to go back to work I didn’t feel I had anything to offer, so it was hard.” She did return to teaching when her daughter was four years old and after that managed some real estate that her family owned.

However, our conversation did not focus on her younger life, so much as the lessons Willis said she learned later in life, when she started living on her own and finding herself. Now, Willis lives in a remote area on Snake Mountain and calls herself a “contemplative crone,” a term she does not regard in the pejorative sense.

Willis said living alone lets her think about herself and put her needs first, after a lifetime of being told to do the opposite. “I need other people, but I also need my time for myself. Because when I was married, I gave myself away,” she said, “When I first moved into a place by myself, I went to the grocery store and didn’t even know what to buy because I didn’t know what I liked.”

Giving women this opportunity to learn about themselves with out society’s hindrances is one of the reasons Willis and the other founders of Numina to start the organization. Numina is nonprofit organization that was founded about 10 years ago and that offers women opportunities to commune and take part in programs that allow them to look deeply within themselves.

Too many women think being a good mother, wife or caretaker means neglecting themselves for the sake of someone else. “We’re given that message from the minute we’re born,” she said. Willis said that when women know about themselves and are devoted to taking care of themselves, they can better give who they are to other people.

One of the ways Willis gives to others is through programs at local women’s jails and prisons. The programs started as workshops about clowning and were facilitated through the Episcopal Church, which Willis said she has belonged to her whole life. The day-long workshops would include costumes and make-up and even a mimed communion in some cases.

Willis said the women loved the workshops, though clowning eventually went out of vogue. Then she had the idea to do writing workshops, which she continues to do in Watauga County. “I read somewhere that everybody has a story and I mentioned this to a friend of mine who is a retired social worker and she said ‘I’m really good at getting people to tell their stories. Would you like me to join you?’”

She said the workshops have been very successful and are attended voluntarily. “If you’re in a concrete block with you women you never chose to be with and you didn’t want to be there and you didn’t like the food, you missed home, anything that comes in is welcome,” she said.

“What we take in is ourselves and what ever we are is a gift, and certainly what they are is a gift to us,” Willis said.

She told me of some of things that have empowered her throughout her life. One of those things was when the Episcopalian Church began ordaining women ministers. She said some of the “old timers” were upset with the change, but she felt empowered.

The other women of Numina have also encouraged her, she said. They pushed her to take on challenges they knew she was capable of, but that she did not have confidence in herself to do, like give presentations in front of a group of women. She said, as the youngest child in her family, she always looked to older people for wisdom, but later in life she found wisdom in younger women and that helped her recognize her own wisdom.

She said she wants young women to realize the importance of knowing themselves before they start giving it away and to understand what they are independently capable of. “I think that no matter how far you think women have come, we’ve still gotten the message that we are second rate,” Willis said. “As horrible as it may sound, we’ve had women who the church has told them they’re awful or their parents (this thing about my father wanted a son and all he got was me).”

Willis does not discourage women from having relationships with men or from getting married. She wants them to think about their options. “In my generation, women were competitive for men. You had to get a husband. Now women don’t have to go through that, they can pick and choose,” she said. Still, “there’s always that grandma or somebody who says, ‘when are you going to get married?’”

“Give yourself time to get to know who you are and what you want to do and where you want to go. Don’t jump into the first thing you ‘should’ do,” WIllisi said. “And I hope young women nowadays are doing just that.”