For as long as I can remember,
I would sit with trees and plants for assurance that the world was going to be ok. In my garden, in a field, in a forest. I would stand by a stem growing out the side of a wall, or stare at the moss in the bus stop, reminding myself of what was constant, reliable, always there.
Reminding myself there was safety when I felt none.
I went to an ancient, part boarding, grammar school. A character filled larger than life school, which reinforced self-worth wounds but also gifted me consistency, a reasonably kind culture, and a way through. The teachers saw right through the system, they had been teaching there for 40 years, they didn’t teach aspiration so much as they taught systems, capitalism without romance, it was both intimidating and ridiculous to me. There were arts, blow things up style sciences, languages, there were inspirational people and there were bitter people holding power there, and I could see the souls of all of them.
That place kept me busy and focused on the future in times of pure chaos and grief.
I followed on with art and fashion, I moved to East London, I lived in shared houses and shared flats, dancing and climbing, strategising and burning all the candles at all the ends. I worked for high street suppliers and soho tailors, I went to Los Angeles, I went to Bangladesh, I drank $30 cocktails on rooftops and ate with factory workers in half built spaces with no tables. It was a ride, all the people in all the places were incredible in their own right.
I was burnt out and sick at 25.. I almost moved to Bangladesh as factory workers began to break through the gates of Dhaka, and stormed one of the offices I was sent to the month before. I was shown the side that I had been ignorant too, having been assured our supply chain was well cared for. No longer feeling sure of any of those things, I quit.
I was ready to leave fashion; lost, but ready, when I was taken on as a junior designer at Vivienne Westwood, where a true education began. I learnt here what it is to exist in celebration of difference, in conflict, in harmony and in truth. I learnt what it is to be brutally honest with each other, and then to be humble and listen.
I learnt about the power of the clothing we wrap our bodies in, an experience I had been searching for since I first started dressing up and drawing outfits. I learnt about how every element in every product has an impact, that the choices made about those elements have the power to change lives.
I learnt what it is to fight for something you believe in, with Vivienne as our Teacher, Grandmother, Critic, Leader. I began to find myself buried deep below layers of imposter syndrome and disassociation… I grew bigger, I learned how to play, I listened to myself, sometimes I even stayed still for a while. I began to feel restless in my life, in the smallness I had carved out for myself.
I joined Julie's Bicycle for their first UK round of Creative Climate Leadership in 2017, a training to support people to "take action on the climate and ecological crisis in their communities with impact, creativity and resilience." At the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, a gathering for 4 days of cultural leaders, artists, policy makers, researchers and other activists. We talked, we listened, we learnt about each other's communities and challenges, immersed in nature we considered the future and how our paths might help to support a new way.
I left carrying a question that is with me now, how do we support The People, to their own power, agency, capacity and truth.
I was motivated & inspired...not sure yet where to take this fire that was gaining strength.
My Grandma died.
The rug was pulled, any semblance of the small life I torched to dust and felt my heart ache in gratitude and in disbelief, at how much I had done to survive, where I had been brave and where I had repeated lineages of pain and destruction.
I asked for help, I got help, I was lucky, those first sessions with a therapist were so intense and overwhelming, I had told my story, sober, in safety, it was immense.
I left the city, I left enabling and harmful relationships, beliefs, and numbness behind.
Coming back out to the seaside, teaching & working with young people. I trained at Goldsmiths, an incredible place, learning about teaching, about strategy, about change makers and social justice and inequality in education, about holistic and active learning, models that value the beings in the room and the privilege it is to be leading them.
I remember being wished all the luck taking this practice out into schools… I needed it.
Those schools had so much potential for inspiration, indoctrination, evolution and degradation, a micro society with its own governance. Power plays, care, fierce support and disappointment between adults rippled into chuldrens dynamics.
I saw the fire when the children were themselves, still themselves, resisting, questioning, challenging, brilliant.
As we were launched into days of covid, of isolation, of new strange ways of being, I was teaching at a Pupil Referral unit still, online, and holding space online for the adults. I found my way the incredible journey that was The Altar of Woman Apprenticeship, a co-creation of powerful teachers. This training was both a journey through the elements and a call to arms.. to begin living and breathing your truth, your path, with your embodied and intuitive self as a guide.
An invitation that was slow and hard work for someone who had often left their own body as a survival technique, so much so that this default was engraved in the bones.
I learned in this training how these elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Air are homes & portals in which we can be safe, we can work with all things. I learned how to be with and work with these elements to support transformation.
In 2021, I moved into a van & parked up in an Elder orchard in the West of England. For the first time in 20 years, I wasn't in service, I didn't have a boss. I could breathe deeply into what I was doing with my time and my energy… I was back with the trees, and with myself.
It was the end of the Summer, and I spent days with those trees, harvesting berries, pruning dead and broken branches, learning folklore and turning my arms purple making medicine over the fire. It was paradise.
I found two great teachers and enrolled in the next stage of my learning journey, Spiralseed with Graham Burnett, a Vegan Permaculture Design Course… and the School of Intuitive Herbalism with Nathaniel Hughes. More tools, more deepening, more unlearning and accepting!
Intuitive Herbalism Immersion...A week in a yurt on a hill. I met many truths old and new that week, and I was invited (challenged) to consider being here in this human realm as much as I am in the other worlds. That other worlds place was so comforting... the cosmic connection with spirits, ancestors, nature and wild… I was challenged even, to bring myself just as fully into this human connected existence. I have spent years longing for the wild, one half of me out there, while the other hid here.
Now I can dance with these places, bring together the parts of myself to navigate the terrain of consiousness, time and worlds, and I bring those skill into my work with people on their own journey to themselves.
I continue to learn about myself, my illusions and my truths.
Being human in this world is hard, it is beautiful, painful, overwhelming.
We are not built for the systems we have, we are stronger & bigger than them.
This Earth is a fertile and patient place, the Stars and the Sky are too.
That which we move towards in relationship, we protect from destruction,
and we take into our hearts... where things are harder to break.
https://www.schoolofintuitiveherbalism.weedsintheheart.org.uk/
https://www.creativeclimateleadership.com/
