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 flat with caving ceilings and flooded rooms, I worked for high street suppliers and soho tailors, I went to Los Angeles, I went to Bangladesh, I drank $30 cocktails and ate with factory workers on the half built floors with no tables. It was a ride, all the people in all the places were magical. We humans are gorgeous and emotionally complicated creatures. 

I was burnt out and sick at 25.. I almost moved to Bangladesh just 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 in as a junior designer at Vivienne Westwood, where I would finally start my education. I learnt here what it is to be expressive as a human being, 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, and we immersed in nature, to consider the future and how our paths might help to support a new way. As we thought and explored and questioned together we came again and again to the same feelings, that systems designed to keep us busy, keep us divided, keep us distracted and overwhelmed... kept us form meaningful cultural change. I was left with the question of how do we support the people, to their own power, agency, capacity and truth.

I was moved, inspired and taking more steps towards me... not sure yet where to take this fire that was gaining strength.

My Grandma died. 

The carpet was gone from under me, and I was in a universe of darkness, 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 utter terror, I had never been able to speak out loud my story, while sober, and be witnessed in safety. 

I left the city, I left fashion, relationships, beliefs, and numbness behind, and I trained to be a teacher.. 

Coming back out to the seaside, treading steps towards working with young people; so much of my time at Westwood was given to creating space and opportunity for the young blood that arrive scared and humbled at the studio doors, and I wanted to continue that work. I also remembered my grammar school days, and know the ways our systems worked… I wanted to learn from the inside, how they really run these things today, these schools, and see what was good. 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 the schools… I needed it.  

Those schools had so much potential for inspiration, indoctrination, evolution and degradation, and all of it happened there. Power plays, bullying, fierce support and disappointment, between the adults. Emulated in the young. I saw the fire when the children were themselves, still themselves, resisting, questioning, challenging, brilliant. Being a leader in those systems was not for me. I went from schools to alternative curriculum spaces, to pupil referral units, to alternative arts education, I gained more freedom each time, and the young people gained more relief, more agency and more voice.  
 

Slowly I learned this form of caretaking wasn't for me, though deeply engraved in my story, there was something else calling, and these roles caused me suffering as much as they caused me pure joy. 

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 providing a supportive space for the teaching staff. I needed food for my own soul while holding so much, and that small fire needed fuel I could not source solo. I found my way to Xochi Balfour and Adya of One Movement, an Embodiment School dedicated to activating a regenerative culture. I went on the incredible journey that was The Altar of Woman Apprenticeship, a co-creation of these powerful teachers. This training was both a soul 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 in which we can be safe, we can work with all things, we can alchemise and digest our lives, and discover what is possible. I learned how to be with and work with these elements to support transformation, unlocking some of the doors we came up against in my Climate Leadership Training. 

Love, life, grief and community happened for many months then, and we got a dog.

In 2021, my partner and I moved into a van, and for 6 weeks we 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 was still in therapy, in nature, it was a complete privilege to experience. I was searching for a place to learn how to be in service to the land, to be in relationship more sustainably and skillfully with this earth. I signed myself up to two places, Spiralseed with Graham Burnett, a Vegan Permaculture Design Course… and the School of Intuitive Herbalism with Nathaniel Hughes. 
 

Late Autumn, we went back to the sea, and I began working for a community garden. I had a boss again, I was in an organisation, but one for the community, one that was outside, one that was surrounded by my friends, the plants. I was still working too hard to pay bills, freelancing and squeezing in arts commissions and projects, but everything began to slowly weave together, I would take the plants to the young people I mentored, bringing flowers and teas to the places. I made wild inks, I told artists stories, I began to join the dots around me. 
 

Then the Herb School came around, one week's immersion in ceremony, in meeting, with the plants.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into, I had forgotten what it was that drew me to the school from the website… a sense of anarchy, of soul work, or deep dives?  

A week in a yurt on a hill, with other brave souls. I surrendered again and again, I had space for rage, for the depth of my feeling. 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 I felt safe... the cosmic connection with spirits, ancestors, nature and wild… I was challenged even, to bring myself just as fully into this human connected existence. That meant being present, embodied, feeling the experience of being human on earth. No longer conceptualising and meeting expectations, impacting without being open to the full impact.  

I stepped towards that and have been stepping those stones ever since, I find myself now, a student of insight herbalism, the mystery school. 

Being human in this world is hard, it is beautiful, painful, overwhelming.  

I am not built for the systems we have, I am stronger than them.  

I am wounded, I am brave, I am curious, I can play well with the chaos we need to rediscover ourselves in.  

I have spent years longing for the wild, one half of me out there, while the other hid here. These steppingstones I walk now bring me into the fullness of both and allow me to walk with others searching for the same. 
 

The plants and the trees walk with me, they are my soulmates, my allies. They have been with us all the way through our existence. Waiting patiently for us to remember, to re learn, to recreate our connections as we need them now. The plants and the trees know all there is to know of everything, as do we, just below the surface, all of this sits within. 

The more I follow my intuition, the more I alchemise the fear and the hope into experience, into sharing, into active medicine for our times. 

I continue to learn about myself, my abilities, my humanness, my illusions and my power, a power which to those that condition our society would be seen as a threat and crushed by systemic design... I am learning how to work with these fires.

This Earth is a fertile and patient place, the Cosmos 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://spiralseed.co.uk/ 

https://www.creativeclimateleadership.com/ 

https://onemovement.net/