Nature Holds the Key to What You Need

Nature isn’t something you “get to” after you finally have a free weekend, the right gear, or the energy for a long hike. Nature is already here, and we’re already part of it. In this mini episode of No Shrinking Violets, I share what my recent book launch stirred up for me and why so many people keep asking the same question: how do we start to access nature when life feels busy, digital, and disconnected?

We talk about a practical, low pressure way to begin that works whether you live in the country or the middle of a city: go to a garden center, put your phone away, and simply notice what you’re drawn to. Color, texture, shape, and even the “vibe” of a plant can become a surprisingly clear signal about what your nervous system wants right now. I also explain why I love using a single plant as a mirror for self care, because when you pay attention to water, light, nutrients, and stress in a plant, you start to see where you’ve been postponing the same basics for yourself.

From there, we zoom out to bigger themes like nature’s rhythms, rest cycles, and the truth that nothing blooms all year. If you’ve been judging your energy dips or pushing through a season that’s asking for recovery, this will land. We also touch on resilience through diversity and small experiments that help you grow, plus a quick local note about exploring Lancaster and what a no Wi-Fi coffee shop can teach us about boundaries and space.

If you enjoy this, subscribe and share it with a friend who needs a gentle reset.

Transcript

Book Launch Gratitude And Highlights

Mary 0:00

Hi, and welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets. So, first, my book launch was Tuesday, and it was so fabulous. I want to thank everybody who came. It new friends, old friends, family, so many people helped make it a special night. I had a discussion with my very good friend, Dr. Christine Nowick. She did an interview. She featured parts of the book and helped me expand on them to help people understand the idea of essential nature. We had a very juicy conversation about the corpse flower, which is an amazing flower and one of the central themes in one of my chapters about how we bloom and what we bring into the world. It was just wonderful. So keep an eye out on my social media because I will be showing you some of the clips from that interview. And I think it's really going to expand some of the ways you think about nature and how it relates to you. Of course, if you want to get my book, the ebook is still 99 cents for now. You can get that on Amazon. I would encourage you to check out the paperbook or the hardback, to be honest, because of the pictures, to be able to have that in paper form and to have the beautiful cover. That to me is, I mean, I'm a book book girl. I do read ebooks, but book books are my thing. So anyway, I want to thank everybody. It's been fabulous. The feedback I'm getting from people on how much it's affecting them and helping them expand their consciousness and ideas about nature and themselves has just been so gratifying. So, and one more thing that I wanted to put a shout out to Ken's Gardens in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They were a wonderful sponsor and also Lancaster Loop and Lancaster Review, two newsletters that highlight all the amazing things happening in this city. So if you're anywhere in central Pennsylvania, I encourage you to sign up for those newsletters and take advantage of many amazing, actually free things in the city for the summer. They're just wonderful clearing houses in a sense to really find out what is happening if you want to take a road trip. Or if you're close by, that's awesome too. But it's just an amazing way to find out what's happening in the area. Okay, so because of my book launch, I've been getting a lot of questions specifically and on other podcasts where I'm a guest about how do we start to access nature? Because I think unfortunately, nature has become something very distant from us. We see it as something separate from us. It is not separate from us. I mean, we are nature. We are just as connected to the world as any plant we see growing in the ground. It's just that we have allowed technology to overtake what we instinctively know about ourselves and about how we're connected. And I think unfortunately, we've also started to become intimidated by nature or we see it as this big grand thing that we can't access. It is big and grand. If you go to, you know, a national park or you go to see these, you know, the amazing redwoods, or anything that is on that enormous scale, it's majestic. But there are trees all around, there are plants all around. You can always access nature. And so I wanted to give you a few ideas about how you can start to be reconnected. And the whole idea is to really use nature as a way to tune into yourself. When you are in nature, if you go, whether you're a hiker or you simply go sit in a park or you sit in your backyard and you listen to the birds, I think that anyone who accesses nature on any scale can recognize that it calms our nervous system, it makes us feel more grounded and more connected to everything around us. And I could give you research studies that prove this, but I think we know how we feel inside, right? We know what makes us feel calm and centered, and nature can do that. And so I think trying to connect to it in ways that work for you. And one of the ways I like to tell people to start, if they whether they are in a city and they feel like there's not enough nature around, or they feel like it's literally a bridge too far to go to a hiking trail at this point, which I understand. Um, find a hiking group to do that with. There are tons of them. You can easily find them now through social media. But one of the most fun ways, I think, to connect to a little bit of nature and also use that to kind of zero in on what you need is to go to a garden center. Perfect time of year to do this. And you can either choose a plant that you would plant outside. And if so, you want to make sure that it's a perennial that will survive in your area, or choose a houseplant. And I just want you to walk through the garden center, put your phone away, and just walk through and simply look at the plants and tune into what you respond to. So I know for me, if I'm looking for garden plants, I'm gonna gravitate towards the plants that have the cool tones. So purple is my thing. Um pink, you know, the the really quintessential flower colors. I can tell you my husband would gravitate towards red and orange. So it's a little challenging to create a garden palette when we're trying to accommodate both of us, but it's fun. So, but I would say for you, walk through a garden center and whether you're in the house plants or you're in the garden plants, look at what you respond to and just choose a plant to buy. And if you are like my college students, when I would do events with them, they would name their plants, which I love. And you know, just let it sort of be your little plant friend. And as you observe that plant, when the the times maybe that you know it needs water, or when you can maybe recognize, oh, it's not getting enough light, or it's getting too much light, or too much water. We can have too much of a good thing. But as you observe that plant and you you caretake that plant, think about how you do that for yourself. I think often, you know, if if we feel like, oh, I haven't, I didn't drink enough water today, how often do you hear you yourself or someone else say that? Well, what happens if we don't give a plant enough to drink? It can die. But we sort of think, oh, well, I'll get a drink in a couple hours when I have time. Or I know I didn't really get the nutrients I need today, but I'll deal with that tomorrow. And we put that off for ourselves. Or if a plant is a flowering plant, it's not gonna flower all year. A lot of you might know what a Christmas cactus looks like. It really only flowers at certain times of the year, but we don't think about it being lazy when it's not sending flowers out the whole year. So use that to recognize your own cycle of rest and how you put those gifts of yourself, which I think of your blossoms or your flowers, those are your gifts. We all have a sort of pattern of how we put something into the world. And so, for instance, when you are writing a book, it feels like on my plant, on my person as I was doing this, the flowers were, they were buds and they were very tight closed. But the longer I wrote and the closer I got to the end, those flowers then opened. And so now I need to keep them open for a little bit so that I can sort of really launch my book out into the world and get it in front of a lot of people's eyes. But then my flowers will close and I will rest until the next book comes along or the next project comes along. So honoring your own cycle of putting your gifts into the world. So it's it's really about focusing on what is that plant needing? What are you noticing about it and starting to notice that about yourself? Where is your energy? When do you flag? I know for me, about 3 to 4 p.m. is when my energy just dips. I'm a morning person, and not everyone is a morning person. But I think starting to focus in on where is your energy? So all the parts of you and how they relate to the way a plant grows. And of course, you can get so much more detail from my book because that's how the chapters are outlined. But I think to access nature in little ways to start is the way to start to connect back to you because it's gonna calm you, it's gonna help you see that we really have a lot in common with how nature has rhythms, it has a community, it helps each other when it's a healthy ecosystem. The other thing about nature, a healthy system, is diversity. Nature is not a monoculture. And while we may feel comfortable around our own sort of people, you know, people that have a lot of things in common with us, I think that's natural. That is not how we grow and become resilient. Just like nature, we grow and become resilient through the idea of diversity and connecting to something different, take a different route to work. Um, I know for me, if you listen to this show, you know that I'm exploring my city and I can quickly talk about I finally went to passenger coffee and a little bit different because I was all set to sort of settle in and get a few drinks through coffee drinks as the day went or the morning went and a little snack, but they do not have free Wi-Fi. So it's just a different way of thinking. And I think that's the other thing of appreciating there is some very small little pockets of wonderfulness in the city, but in order to have people move through their space, they don't want you to park there. And I have seen people take up tables for a very long time and nurse one drink through, and that's really not fair to the merchant. So I understand there are other places that when I need to go work, I will go there. But passenger is wonderful, delicious chai, because you know I love my dirty chai. The other thing is they give you, if you're going to be um drinking in or dining in, they'll give you a glass of sparkling water, which I love that because I love sparkling water. So it's a nice little touch. They're very warm, they're very friendly. It's a tiny place in Lancaster, but the coffee is delicious. The servers are warm, lovely, wonderful place to try. Okay, so boy, I sort of folded that in, didn't I, with my um explore new areas. So anyway, so that is my thought for today, just to try to help you think about how you can be more connected to nature. And it does not have to be, oh, I'm gonna go take a seven-mile hike. It can be I'm gonna go to my garden center, or I'm gonna just sit in the park today, or I'm gonna sit in my backyard. I'm not gonna be on my phone. I'm going to sit and listen to what I hear around me. I'm gonna feel the breeze, and maybe take a book, something that is not um a screen. And why not take nature knows? So that's my thought for today because nature has really, really been on my mind. It is so beautiful right now, my own garden. I'm gonna start to post some pictures on socials of my new plants that I've put in and how they're doing. Um, one that is really not doing well, it's really struggling, and I'm gonna, you know, show you why. And again, I can make lots of analogies to what that might mean for us. How we can, when we struggle, how we might be able to conceptualize that through thinking about why this plant in my garden is struggling. So that's a little teaser. I will get to that on another day. But those are my thoughts for today. So until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.