Rooted and Rising - Coaching Conversations with Anna-Marie
‘There’s a different energy between rooted and rising. It’s that stability of the rootedness. There’s that assuredness, that confidence.
And then there’s that rising of, well, I don’t know. What could emerge? I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know where I’m going and that’s ok. I don’t need to control it or plan. Things will emerge. This a big element around trust’ - Anna-Marie
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Rooted and Rising - Coaching Conversations with Anna-Marie
When life gives you lemons - Life after a spinal injury
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'In 2018, I had a spinal injury. I just stopped making artwork for, about 18 months, I was completely stuck. I couldn't… couldn't do anything. And funnily enough, when lockdown came, I sort of became unlocked. I don't know what it is. I think it was because I felt I wasn't the only one trapped indoors. I wasn't missing anything, because there was nothing to miss anymore’.
Tracey Falcon, Life Coach, Artist Educator and Wheel Chair User
Artist and creative life coach Tracey Falcon joins us from Whitstable, Kent where she lives with her youngest son, dog and a steady stream of refugees. In 2018, her spinal injury prompted an inner search to redefine value within herself and discover ‘who she is’ and ‘what she does’. How she navigated this huge life transition and relationship with grief is a testament to her perseverance and determination. Tracey speaks openly about the challenges she faces as a wheel chair user from accessibility, vulnerability and her enemy otherwise known as mud.
Discover the pun behind her business name ‘Still Life Coaching’ and her strap line based on the concept of ‘lemonading’ that brings an element of playfulness and resilience into her work. Plus, the influence of philosophical enquiry that enters her coaching; ‘what do I think I know?’, ‘why do I think know it, and can I be certain? If not, then what other possibilities could there be?’ From tadpoles to prosthetic tree limbs our conversations are filled with metaphors, perspectives, possibilities…
Bio
As an artist educator working in galleries, museums and even in a forest, also teaching at universities, Tracey creatively worked with vulnerable groups and individuals, igniting curiosity and connecting to places, people, objects and ideas.
A spinal injury in 2018 limited what she can now cope with physically and subsequently had to rethink her career. She learned a great deal through her major life change experience. A disabled, single parent, she is no stranger to a struggle. Drawing on this and her creative project work helping people gain confidence and problem solve, she decided to retrain, first gaining two counselling qualifications and then as a life coach. She has a passion for nature, especially trees and continues to make art.
Instagram - Still Life Coaching
Instagram - Tracey Falcon
Instagam - Treesee Falcon Artwork
Resources
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Blog – Lemons and Lemonade
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Welcome to the Rooted in Rising podcast. I'm your host, Anna Marie, and I'd like to thank you for taking the time to join us today. In these conversations, we will explore stories that trace our roots and what rises within us as coaches and human beings in connection with our natural world. Join our journey to discover your roots and what's rising within you. Where are you in the world today? How are you? I hope you are well. Today I am joined by another Tracy. We've had back-to-back Tracies in this series. Tracy, welcome. And before we press record, we were just talking a little bit about labels and how we introduce ourselves when you're given that opportunity. So yeah, Tracy, how do you choose to introduce yourself today?
SPEAKER_00I like that you've said today because being constrained by labels is um a challenge sometimes when there are so many different parts of us, and different parts of us come to the fore in different situations and different spaces. So I'm Tracy Falcon, hello, and I think today I would like to introduce myself as an artist and a creative life coach.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for that. And indeed, as the seasons pass and as we evolve and age, our identities shift and change, and that's a core part of what I'm seeking to explore through these conversations in Rooted in Rising. So yeah, bringing that fluidity into the room. So where are you in time and space? Where are you rooted again today?
SPEAKER_00I am Whitstable in Kent, um, where I live with my youngest son, my dog, and a steady stream of refugees. It is a dank day, but I kind of like it. There's a there's a a moistness in the air which feels lovely against your skin.
SPEAKER_01I am joining from Somerset, and yeah, spring. Spring is arriving. The plum tree at the bottom of my garden is looking utterly resplendent in the blossom, though I haven't yet seen my first bee of the year, so I'm waiting for that. Where to go, where to go, where to start, where do you feel is an opportune place for our conversation to unfold from?
SPEAKER_00Well, I've listened to several of these, and you tend to ask about where people have come from, where their journey towards coaching started. So I guess we could start in that chronological way, if you'd like to.
SPEAKER_01We could do. Or we could totally freestyle it and do something completely different. Um, and thank you for taking the time to listen into some of the episodes that my previous guests have shared. So yeah, feel free. Let's go chronological, or feel free to throw a curveboil in there.
SPEAKER_00Um, yeah, some fascinating stories, some fascinating guests I've really been enjoying listening. I said I'm an artist and a life coach, and that sounds greedy, having two aspects to me, but I'm always going to be an artist. I've always been creative. I make visual art, I write, I just make things all the time. And a big inspiration for making things is outdoors and natural materials. So my house is full of things that I find on dog walks, things that appeal to me. My camera role is just outdoors, you know. I just can't stop snapping. And I've had a life as an artist educator rooted in that outdoor experience. I've taught at universities, I've worked with galleries, I've worked with museums and art organizations, and one in particular was an arts organisation based in a forest. Um, it sadly no longer exists because the funding went about 10 years ago. But I spent many years taking vulnerable groups out into the forest to look at the artworks that were positioned there and also to just, you know, undertake some creative um exploration. And I think the root of that for me is about connecting and curiosity. So we were connecting people with the place, with nature, with the forest. We were connecting people with objects in the artworks, and we were connecting people with ideas, but more importantly, we were connecting people with themselves. And there's a little anecdote about a group of um kids, they were from a pupil referral unit, which means they'd all been excluded from mainstream school for some reason or another. And they started off in the normal way of smoking, stubbing out cigarettes on ants, and just being, I don't know, posturing and showing off to each other. And we just let it happen. We just walk by their side slowly and let them be and offer them a sort of sand, sand tin for their cigarette butts and pick up behind them, you know. And then gradually the noise subsides, the jostling subsides, their showing off, calms down, and we reach a pond, and they're very quiet until one spots a tadpole. And the excitement in their voices and the complete change from posturing teenager to excited, playful child was really lovely to see. And we spent an hour there just letting them be, letting them play, letting them reconnect with that more joyful part of themselves, more easy part of themselves. And that's the power of just being, just being outside and allowing people to be. And I love that.
SPEAKER_01And thank you for bringing that snapshot into our conversations. I know that our listeners love to be that little like fly on the wall and to live through other people's experiences, particularly working as coaches in partnership with nature within and for it can be a solo endeavor. Clearly, we're doing teamwork and group work, different dynamics come through, though it's always a treat just to have insight into an experience like that. And yes, I was transported for a moment and having memories of having tadpoles and jars and watching them them grow. So I was struck when you introduced yourself about being greedy, of having two strands to who you are, and then yet there are so many parts within us all, and that's that that's observation, judgment of greedy. What's going on there? And having spent a bit of time looking at your websites of your images, I'd love to just give a bit of space for your creativity to shine through.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah, so for 20 years, I made work, artwork out of newspaper, and I made prosthetic limbs for trees. I made tree trunks and I put them out in sculpture parks, in the outdoor spaces, and watched them weather. And they lasted for years. What eventually used to go was the glue rather than the newspaper. And I loved the cyclical ideas behind that work of information and knowledge coming up through the roots of the trees into these towering, sheltering and nurturing presences that we then chop down and manufacture into paper. And not only do we do that, we then print our own opinions and views and lies and all sorts on it, and turn them into newsprint. And that information is then fed back through society. And I was interested in subverting that and putting all of that information back into the tree form, cramming it back in. So that was really part of the basis. I was also interested in the print process, and there was a lot in there. But in 2018, I had a spinal injury, and the newspaper work was quite heavy. It it involved it was quite tricky to manage, and and I stopped. I just stopped making artwork for about 18 months. I was completely stuck. I couldn't couldn't do anything. And funnily enough, when lockdown came, I sort of became unlocked. I don't know what it is. I think it was because I felt I wasn't the only one trapped indoors. Everybody else, I wasn't missing anything because there was nothing to miss anymore. Everybody was in the same boat as me. So maybe, I don't know, maybe I just felt that a connection once more with everybody else out there in the world. And I started to paint. I started oil painting and I've been doing that ever since. And it's been really therapeutic. But I also had a lot of time to think about what it was I was missing. And I thought if there was one thing, if I could only do one thing now, what would it be? What do I miss the most? And I decided that that was trees. And so my oldest son crowdfunded an off-road wheelchair for me and got me back into the forest where it was wonderful. And I'll come back to that in a minute. But I started taking photographs of trees of my view, my new view from my wheelchair, and turning these into collages that I called the unlocked series. And I made 20 collages of spines, bodies, very symbolic aspects of my journey from my new body back into the forest. And I'm working at the moment with an academic from Durham University on a I'm part of a co-production group, but she and I have sort of branched off, and we're writing an article for the um Medical Humanities Institute magazine called Polyphony. And I hope she won't mind, but if I read you a little bit of um the article, which it really which is my part, and relates to that journey back into the forest and making art. Here goes. Surrounded by woodland, also strewn across my kitchen table where I look relatively normal, the borrowed finds being stroked and held, welcomed throughout my house, garden, and into my art making. I used to feel such a part of the forest. We were kin, we were one. Now parts of me are so scattered amongst the trees that I can't gather myself to move through the undergrowth. I don't know who I am in the forest anymore. A super oldest son crowd funding effort with unpayable back generosity charited me an off road chariot. I could reconnect with the trees, freedom, chains in equal parts. I wept when I first reentered the leafy rooms when I had felt so at home. It was good to be back and greet once more those barky friends I thought I'd lost forever. Over here, over here, and over there. I wept for those friends that I could no longer reach as their xylem and flame heart pumped with mine in the denser parts of the forest and my memory. I knew we were connected beneath, through that mycelial circuitry connecting all and bubbling up with psychedelic blooms hallowing at their cousins, pumping through my bloodstream in thrice daily doses. My connection is infinite. The bud, blossom, fruit and rest pattern of the forest now hits me daily rather than stretched over a year. I'm warped in time and also in the physical space I occupy, the physical spaces I enter and the physical space that I am. Space, time warp, I've truly entered a new realm. From being tall and seeing at height, I've shrunk to crotch level, the child straining to see through legs, the oak versus the shrub, trying to keep up with the adults who, as you look up, are busy making decisions about you without even making eye contact, afraid of your thorns, the opposite of the out of body experience. The chair represents the dual existence of being ignored, detached from the main event, whilst hypervisibility feels like a neon arrow pointing at you. Damn those bright berries. The view from my wheelchair has literally given me new eyes on the world. Sorry, oh sorry, excuse me, sorry, could I just sorry with that apologetic smile on my face as they sing song their smiley replies of Oh aren't you brave, aren't you clever? Who's looking after you? And more? Just smile. Make a quick back about your inabilities. If you own the joke, it can't hurt, can it? London plain trees shed their bark when they've accumulated too much pollution. Beautiful.
SPEAKER_01Beautiful. Just taking a moment to let that land and the richness of the metaphors within it all. Thank you for thank you for sharing your words.
SPEAKER_00Trees do that. They're fab for metaphors, aren't they? Forests, trees, oceans, nature. I mean, we are connected to it to our language all the time, aren't we? And language is so important. So important and engaging.
SPEAKER_01And and often it's bringing that into the consciousness and then giving the space to expand upon it that it can really, really shift consciousness and whether you are individual, kinesthetic, how it then percolates through into embodied knowing as well. Absolutely. So curious as to where the piece is going to be and the work that you're doing with Durham University.
SPEAKER_00So the piece is part of a conversation with an academic and it's about physical movement. Sorry, did you did my dog bark interrupt then? I'll let him in in a minute. It's about physical movement from an intersectional lens. So it's about the different identities we have in different places. It's part of a big project called Moving Social Work, and it's about informing social workers to help people with disabilities from all sorts of background access physical activity. So I'm part of a co-production group with that, which is partnered with Disability Rights UK. And I was research assistant on that project for a while too. But aside from that, one of the academics there has asked me through my artwork if we could create this article. And the the words that I've read and the article do respond to three of those collages that I mentioned earlier. And it's going to be in the online magazine for the Medical Humanities Institute called Polyphony. And I don't know. I think our deadline is tomorrow for the article, so it'll come out fairly soon, but I haven't got a date yet.
SPEAKER_01Well, I am sure that it will touch all those that are in relationship with the words. So thank you. I'm just taking a dog moment. Is there anything you need to do with your four-legged friends? I just could let him in and then he'll stop.
SPEAKER_00Okay. Yeah. Let him in. Let's take a moment. Right. He's in the doors. But he's very polite. So he didn't. But he's here now. What's he called? He's called Harris. He's a rescue. I've had him for oh, just about four months now. He's four years old. He's um a coca spaniel and he's really good. We're getting on well. It's quite a challenge for a dog to learn to walk with a wheelchair. My other dog sort of came through the injury with me and was nursing me, but this one, sort of being four years old and suddenly faced with a wheelchair is quite uninteresting and scary thing not to get run over, but he's doing well. He's doing well.
SPEAKER_01Oh bless him. I can see a little, a little black nose on the edge of the screen. Oh, there he is. Gorgeous. Hello, Harris. And my little fur friend is curled up on his basket, Brynn, the scruffy grey Bedlington Lurcher Cross. So yeah, I wish Harris the best of luck mastering how to be with you in your wheelchair.
SPEAKER_00Oh, he's got it, he's got it. And they're great because they make you go outdoors, don't they? And particularly for me. It's so easy not to, um, because it's such a faff going out. But yeah, it's great having to. It's it's really good. Good for the dog, good for me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And part of the reason I was curious about being in conversation with you was the spinal injury that you did experience and how that has changed your life on so many levels. And curious if there's anything else that you feel drawn to share about that.
SPEAKER_00It's a shock when something like that happens to you. And I don't think well, I can only speak for myself, but I can't see a time when I will stop grieving for being able to walk, you know. But it's also a privilege in a way, because it really makes you stop and reassess and think. And not many of us get that opportunity or give ourselves that opportunity in life to properly pause for a long time, you know. It does take a while to go through a a huge life change and have that thinking time and process. And obviously, I've had some therapy within that to help me through. Yeah, it kind of makes you, as I said earlier with the trees, it makes you assess what is important to you and what parts of the life that you had before are still possible, and what is new and possibilities that you didn't know existed before because you hadn't looked at the world through the lens of a wheelchair user with a spinal injury, you know. It's um as we said earlier, we're different people in different spaces at different times, in different bodily conditions, you know, it all changes things. So, in that respect, I've done a lot of thinking, I've done a lot of retraining. I struggled with value at the beginning. I thought, well, what is my value now? What what do I bring? I was a single parent with two children. My youngest was only 13. He is neurodiverse, he has his own health conditions, and so I had uh an urgent caring role to get back to really quickly. There wasn't anybody else. So I think that gave me a huge amount of focus to try and work out how to do things. Not that I couldn't do things, but how am I gonna how am I gonna get back to being a mother? Because that's really important, um, particularly for my youngest son. My oldest was just about to move out at that time. And that was tough. It was really tough, and it's affected my youngest son really badly. But we're getting there, you know, it takes a long time for him as well. I think the grief isn't just within yourself, it's for those around you as well. But back to value, yeah. I was questioning what value I had to the world, and lockdown was uh eighteen months or so after my injury, and maybe that's A significant amount of time. I don't know, but that's the time when I started making work again. But it's also a time that I did some training and started volunteering for the crisis helpline. It's a text line called Give Us a Shout. And that helped me, and I hope it helped some other people. I felt like I was giving something back. I felt that I wasn't sort of leeching from the NHS and everybody else, which it was a two-way street rather than just me being looked after and helped. Yeah, and I did that for a while. And I started taking in refugees because, as I said, my oldest son had moved out, and with his permission, I thought we have a spare room, there are people in need. So I volunteered for an organization called Refugees at Home who give temporary accommodation to homeless refugees once they've achieved refugee status, once they're out of the asylum system. It's really tough for them to integrate. And so I have people from all over the world staying in my little tiny spare room and hopefully give them a bit of a breather from the tough, tough times that they've had before they get into the next tough, tough time that they can have. And from both of those experiences tie in with me working with vulnerable groups as an artist educator in my past. And so that I I'm thinking about it now, just sort of off the cuff, is there's a thread, isn't there? There's a thread of of continuity. It wasn't all about loss, it wasn't all about finding new things. These things connected with what I was doing before. So yeah, there were essential parts of me that were able to continue through the yeah, through the change. It wasn't all change.
SPEAKER_01I I am just astonished. You are an absolutely incredible woman with so much resilience and selflessness. And I'm just yeah, incredibly privileged to be having this conversation with you today, and for our listeners, what is coming through for you? What do you notice? How are you feeling within this moment listening to these these insights, these stories? And yes, the threads, um, the threads of connection and curiosity come through in different ways. Who you are, the essence of you, is still at the heart of it, and you have adapted as hard as it may be and will be, and I really honour how you carry that grief and will do, and how it has impacted those around you as well, that ripple effect, and yet you still the determination and the perseverance is phenomenal. And at some point you made the decision to move into the coaching space. So, what what was the shift there?
SPEAKER_00The shift was a conversation with my counsellor who was encouraging me to go down a counseling path. And so I did a couple of courses, counseling courses, and there was something that didn't quite quite work out for me, and I think it was that thread of something that I was pulling from before the injury, that that thread of working with people through curiosity, through connection to place, ideas, objects, that was more closely aligned with coaching, I think. And I just felt closer to what I could offer from in deep inside that deep root of connection and curiosity, those two words again. I worked for a while with a lovely lady called Aisha from the Conversation Agency. She's a philosopher, and um this was at an art gallery, and we made, we devised and created education programs for those vulnerable groups, and I've got written down in front of me somewhere. So she used a method of philosophical inquiry, and she was an expert in fostering teamwork and encouraging people to disagree without losing respect for another's viewpoint. And it describes her website, it describes the fundamentals of this questioning as what do I think I know? Why do I think I know it? And can I be certain? If not, then what other possibilities could there be? And I think I was already coaching. I think through my creative art education, as I studied for coaching, I realized that I'd probably been doing it for a long time. Um, with people like Aisha and through the university where I was working with students, obviously, trying to get them to achieve with those vulnerable groups, getting them to reconnect with each other, getting them to ignite curiosity. The more I got into studying coaching, the more I realized it's actually what I do and have been doing, even with the refugees, you know, and with your own kids, there's an element of that. But professionally, I had really been essentially coaching.
SPEAKER_01And that realization has now led to the creation of your coaching business. And I'd love to know a little bit around the name of it. I'm not surprised about the name of it. I'd love you to share with artists, and then also the lemons metaphor. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I um I was thinking of all sorts of names, and I do like a pun, I like language, I like words, and I thought as an artist, still life, but also there's a pun in there, still life coaching. We can be still and have life coaching, still life as a painting. It's still life coaching. I don't know, you can read it in so many ways, but it appealed to me. Um, and the strapline is for when life gives you lemons. And I created that, I think, in the December, and then in February, an article came out by an academic, and it was called lemonading. And really surprised me the serendipitous nature of the lemon metaphor again. And the study of lemonading revealed that playfulness and resilience are intimately connected through what we call lemonading, the ability to imagine and generate positive experience even in difficult circumstances. It's found that highly playful people actively altered challenging situations, found creative substitutes for what was lost, viewed obstacles as opportunities for growth, and maintained a sense of control over their responses. How fabulous for somebody who uses creativity and play in their coaching.
SPEAKER_01I love it. The universe is just beyond our conscious minds. Like the serendipitous moments that flow through are just such a delight to discover.
SPEAKER_00Really was. And it was just there, just two months after I I don't know, obviously, they were doing the research. Maybe on some level it filtered through to me. Who knows? But yeah, how wonderful is that?
SPEAKER_01The the great collective unconsciousness of the world and what is shifting, connecting through us on different levels. Like there's just so much that we don't know. And I love these little like signs and symbols from the universe. I almost feel for me it's like a little nudge. It's like, yeah, you're on the right track. Yep, keep going. Bit of affirmation. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00But we notice, not everybody notices, and I think part of the job of a coach is to create that spark of curiosity. So we notice things like that. We're open to receiving those little messages from the universe or wherever they come from.
SPEAKER_01And I've I'd not heard of the term lemonading before. That's a new one. I'm gonna bank that one and bring it out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, on my website there's a little blog. Um, I've just written a little blog about it and it's got links to where the the study was published, so you can find out more there.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. Thank you for that. I clearly didn't scroll further enough to find that, and I will make sure that it is linked in the show notes for this episode. So thank you for that. So, your coaching business, how how is it?
SPEAKER_00It's fairly new. I have clients, I see them mostly in my house. I would like to see people outdoors, but for me, a walking coaching situation is difficult because of height differences, wind, and me twisting around and whatever. So I'm actually in conversation with somebody who has a woodland, and hopefully I will be able to rent some space where I can set up a place to be like those tadpole boys, you know, and spend some time in woodland with clients and do some proper outdoor coaching there. But as yet, that's not in place. However, do we need to be outdoors to be connected to nature? My house is full of it, you know.
SPEAKER_01And I'm so glad that you posed that question after referring a moment ago to proper outdoor coaching and verted commas, and what what is that? And again, we've circled back to labels and how yes, they can be useful to convoy messaging to a point, and then at what point are they restrictive as well? So, yeah, I'm curious as to your relationship with nature and how that then influences your coaching philosophy and practice.
SPEAKER_00So, nature is indoors and outdoors for me. I am lucky enough to have a garden, which I love. I am uh a squirrel in terms of collecting and finding things as I go out with my dog. I make art from natural materials and about natural materials. So my home is kind of full of things, and I think I said to you the other day, the the table that my laptop sits on right now is a it's a slice of wood that I found, and I've just stuck some legs on it, and that's sort of what's I'm and I right here, sitting here, I can see two bits of bark covering up plug sockets, um, some logs, you know, all sorts of things sitting around. And light coming in through windows, casting shadows through the trees on the walls, noticing sounds from outsides, noticing the birds. It's about noticing again, isn't it? But it's here all around us, even if we are indoors. How it impacts my coaching practice. That's a tough one because I feel that being connected to nature for me is inherently part of me. I don't see it as a conscious effort that I make. As I said, it's in my house, it's in my writing, it's in my artwork, it's part of my soul, if you like, it's part of my makeup. So I don't see it as a separate thing that I bring to my coaching practice, it's just there, if that doesn't sound too woo-woo.
SPEAKER_01Oh, we can embrace a bit of woo-woo. Yeah, the more I explore the concepts of outdoor and nature-connected coaching over my evolution as a coach, it strips back and simplifies. Ultimately, I am nature, we are nature, and we've forgotten and become so disconnected and disassociated. And for me, there's a big part of this around remembering and awakening to it and being conscious and mindful. And yeah, again, it's it's the words. It's I sometimes finding the right words to convey what I really feel just sometimes doesn't kind of quite do it justice almost.
SPEAKER_00That's where art and creativity come in. Expressing yourself any less valid.
SPEAKER_01Um you have a section, I said art on my arse.
SPEAKER_00That's what I had to find when I became a wheelchair user from sort of these hefty old newspaper sculptures that I was making. I had to work out what could I do? What could I do sitting down? So I developed this art on my arse. Painting was one of them. And using the photos that I've I passionately photograph trees all the time. And I told you about the collages that I made. They were made from um photographs of trees, and I then simplified those and started making mandelas out of photographs of trees, and I love that spiritual connectedness about the the purpose of a mandela connecting everything together, and also it being literally a photograph of a tree that I've mirrored and repeated and cut up and made this different designs out of, and you can see those. I've got a um Instagram account called Tracy Falcon. Skews the pun again, rather than Tracy Falcon. So, yeah, and that's just hundreds and hundreds of mandalas and and mirrorings of trees, and the possibilities are endless, and it makes me think of a fly and how their vision is so different than ours. And when they look at a tree, what do they see? And when I create these mandalas, am I creating something that another creature can see that I can't? Am I just uncovering a different viewpoint?
SPEAKER_01Oh, again, we're back to metaphors and perspectives and possibilities, which again just transposing that into the coaching realm is such a way to support our clients and ourselves as well, the element of self-coaching, you know, always so accessibility, accessibility to nature as a wheelchair user within England. What has your experience been with that? And I appreciate your your eldest son crowdfunded for an off-road wheelchair to a point.
SPEAKER_00And how else has it been? It's incredibly difficult if we stick with the off-road wheelchair and where I take that. It's fantastic. I love it, and I'm dreading the day when it needs to be replaced, which is coming up actually. Um, but it's yeah, it does enable me to access the woodland. What it doesn't enable me to do is go through dense forest, and I have to say that that was my preferred walking route before the injury was to get off the beaten path and and sort of follow those little animal trails and things. So I'm limited and feel very exposed by having to stick to those big parts, but also privileged that I can still access those. Mud is my enemy. Um, a slight incline with mud means that no go, absolutely not. I will just slip and skid. So this time of year, with all the rain that we've been having, does limit where I can go. I am a bit of a risk taker, so I'll give things a go. And that's probably how I've found out where I can go and where I can't go. And I have been stuck more than once. I've had passing cyclists push me out of ditches. Um, and I've just had to phone people some a couple of times. That's because am I brave or am I stupid when I push myself? I don't know. But um, I try, I I try to push the limits of where I can go, and I guess only by knowing the limits do you know what's possible and what's available, and you can make judgments. So limited, but I can still do it, and I am very, very grateful for that and the chair. And keep on trying.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's been a lot of mud, a lot of muds, and I hope with the arrival of spring you will be able to venture out further afield over the coming months. So accessibility within England to nature is yeah, whether it is from actually the right to roam, or whether it is from a physical, or whether it is a mental and emotional, like the risk, the restrictions that are placed with within us to be out. And then it circles back to that we are nature as well. So it is this how we occupy both. They're not mutually exclusive by any means. So with that in mind, what are your hopes for the future?
SPEAKER_00My hopes for the future in terms of accessibility, that it is improved massively and you know, for all. There's just one tiny thing on accessibility. There's a huge vulnerability in being outdoors and getting stuck. And I'm a bit of a risk taker, but not everybody is. And I was on a train once and a man came up to me and said, Can I ask you what what make that wheelchair is? So I told him, and he said, um, because my wife has got a wheelchair, and she says she can't get on the train. And I just thought for a minute and said, Well, it is possible, but be kind to her. She might just be afraid, you know, because you do feel very vulnerable outside. I remember the first time I went um on a little trip with some friends of mine, and we stayed out and built a fire at night, and I suddenly thought, well, if something happened, they could all run away, and I couldn't. And that just the first time I felt that hit home hard, that we are vulnerable if we rely on other people for our mobility. Hopes for the future are that in spite of my fear of marketing, that my coaching business can miraculously um take off. And I do get to share some outdoor time, some curiosity, and help people connect with themselves a little more.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for circling back to that realization that you had and being open to share that. For me, it's that real there's so much that is taken for granted within the way that I move through my day within my body at this moment in time, and just a moment of gratitude to recognize that, and how long will that be for? Who knows? And again, aging and seeing my parents age and the fragility within them, and my mum had a fall earlier this week, and just that being connected to our physicalities and conscious of it. So that's just really thank you for bringing that, and we all have our own experiences of that. So listening, listening in, what is what is coming up for you within yourself, within those that you know and those that you love. Yeah, how we are within this world, within this lifetime is ever evolving. And I wish you the best of luck with your marketing for your coaching business. I know that a number of listeners are coaches who work for themselves, and that transition into the coaching space, whether it's alongside something else or whether it's off the back of a Former career, it still is a shift and a change, and there is that putting yourself out there and making the connection with your future clients so that they know about you, so that they can find you. And I hope, in a part, that having this conversation today, this could give an insight to your future clients as to who you are as well.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity. And it's been really interesting talking to you. Lots has come up for me that I will go away and reflect on.
SPEAKER_01What have we not touched on or would welcome a little bit more space before we wrap up?
SPEAKER_00Time. When we're talking about vulnerability, talking about being in nature, talking about giving ourselves time because time stops or time changes, or we change in time. My injury happened in, you know, seconds. So from one minute to the next, my life was completely changed. So make the most of time, I think is what I'm saying. Oh indeed. Thank you. Where can our listeners find you? They can find me on stilllifecoaching.com. They can find me on tracyfulken. I can't remember off the top of my head if it's.com or .co.uk. I think it's.co.uk.uk, yeah.uk. There for a moment. On Instagram, Tracy Fulcon, Tracy Fulcon, and Still Life Coaching. Three accounts. Maybe I can condense those. I'm on Facebook. I don't really use Facebook very much. I'm on LinkedIn again. I don't use LinkedIn very much, but I should. Ah, the LinkedIn should.
SPEAKER_01Obligation there. Business professionalism. Oh. Oh, thank you. Any final words for us today? Look. Just look. Look around. Thank you, Tracy. It has been an absolute pleasure to spend time with you today and gain a snapshot into your world. And I wish you the very best for what emerges in the future.
SPEAKER_00Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_01I'm always curious to discover what's resonated for you, or maybe what didn't quite align. Feel free to let me know. I'd be extremely grateful if you're able to comment, like or share, as it helps to spread the word. And looking to the future and staying connected, follow me on your favorite podcast platform. And finally, a big heartfelt thanks for being a part of this podcast Passion Project.
