Dùthchas – Belonging to place, land and home

‘In Gaelic, it's called ‘duchas’. It's that connection to place and belonging and heritage and land. And I thought, wow, what a beautiful word, why have I not had that in my own language? There's this actual word to describe this sense of belonging to place’ - JK, Coach & Creator of The Burrow at Little Seed Farm

What does it mean to truly belong to a place, community and yourself? In our conversation, JK reflects on identity, heritage and the journey back to the wildness that lives within us all. From her Gaelic roots and the concept of dùthchas, a profound sense of place and belonging to her childhood spent feral, JK explores how our names, landscapes and life experiences shape who we become.

Together they discuss the pressures of high achievement, burnout amongst mental health leaders and the irony that those caring for others often neglect their own wellbeing and self-care. JK describes how rediscovering walking became a pathway back to joy, guiding her from a life driven by external validation to one rooted in curiosity, stewardship and trust in the more-than-human world.

The conversation explores coaching as an emergent practice, learning from landscapes rather than simply working inthem, and her creation of ‘The Burrow’ at Little Seed Field near Ripon which is a space for reflection, confidentiality and renewal. They also delve into grief, ritual, seasonality and our often-fractured Western relationship with endings, asking what nature can teach us about loss, regeneration and hope.

This episode is an invitation to slow down, listen deeply and remember that sometimes the simplest act of being present with the land is enough to begin coming home.

Bio: 

Jennie-Kate (JK) McQuinn is the founder, coach and facilitator behind Where the Mind Grows, a nature-led coaching organisation helping individuals and teams reconnect with the wild and rediscover their true nature. She delivers trauma-informed, regenerative approaches from woodland in North Yorkshire and other wild spaces across the UK. 

With a background in mental health and employability service leadership across the voluntary, private and public health sectors. JK found her own path back to nature, not simply by being in it, but by learning from it and designing life and work to belong as the natural world. 

She launched her coaching venture in 2017, the same year she lost her father. Over time, she recognised that grief and loss were present in much of her work with people and teams. 

Drawing on ecopsychology, nature reconnection and traditional coaching approaches, JK supports others to navigate life, work and adversity, including bereavement, change and the turbulence of life with compassion & courage. Just like the wild!

Website: www.wherethemindgrows.co.uk

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

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'll 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. Welcome, dear listener. Though it will not be solstice when you are listening. Solstice will have pass. And yet that is when I'm in conversation with JK. And we are having a heat wave. Another heat wave is ravishing across the land, which is a sign of a shift in our climate at this moment in time. And who knows what the future holds. So I hope you're well. Thank you for making the choice to listen into our conversation today, where I am joined by JK McQuinn. And before we press record, we just organically slid into conversations about names, names and roots and identities. So JK. Where who JK?

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Well, that's the big question that we've just started to unravel a little bit, I think, as well. So I'll introduce myself and at least one version of myself in the conversation today. So I'm JK and it stands for Jenny Kate is the wider expansion of that. Um I call myself a nature-led coach these days. So we might unpack and unpick that a little bit, working with my organization, which came to life many a year now, working with and alongside people in the natural world. And that organization is called Where the Mind Grows because I feel that is where my mind has grown most deeply and most connectedly to what feels aligned and purposeful as well. So yeah, I'm looking forward to us delving into a little bit more of conversation and seeing where things meander. But it's very interesting thinking about names. I know when we were talking before and we've both got this hyphenated name, haven't we? And how and where it gets placed in terms of things. And I'll share a little bit later, obviously, about maybe what we were talking about there in terms of how I feel it's connected to my land and place as well. But yeah, I'm based over in Yorkshire. So I live in Leeds in West Yorkshire, and I was very, I want to, I was going to use the word lucky, but actually I was very intentional to be able to find and weave a pathway through to finding someone with some woodland who was happy to lease that to me in order to have a sort of rooted place to deliver my work. And obviously, Anna Marie, you have had the delights of coming over there and sitting and watching and listening to some potentially mating woodpecker, I think we discovered which is unusual. So you brought that like amazing energy home with you as well. But yeah, that's a little bit about me.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Thank you for that. And I would love to dive into how you became a part of the land in a moment. And just circling back to your name, the name, the names that we carry, the names that are given, gifted, bestowed upon us, and how they then shape who we are and how we show up and then maybe change along the way. And we were having the conversation both being double barreled, and whether there is that distinction between how you show up in the professional world, how you show up in the personal world, how maybe internally the narrative that you talk to yourself. So yeah, I would love to know just a little bit more about your name, names.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

Yeah, my many names. And it's funny we could start with that because some of my friends actually call me Jenny many names as well. Um so I was born Jenny Kate Rowan McCripe before I was married. My dad is Scottish or was Scottish when he was alive, and um, there's always been this sort of whispering of sort of Celtic and Gaelic energy within me that I think really aligns itself to where I feel my connection with nature and my identity to nature is, and I'm fascinated by it, and we can talk a little bit more about that. Um when I set up my business, I set my business up, and it amazes me to say this now, but I set my business launched the same year that my dad passed away. Um actually happened was that how did that all unfold? Um and it was around that time where I chose, I've been known for quite a long time as Jenny or Jen by various friends when I was employed in the charity sector. And it felt like a real time to honour the fact that I'd been given these two beautiful names. It's Jenny with an IE, so it's a link to things like Guinevere in Arthurian legend and some other Celtic spellings that way as well. And yeah, so I went back to hyphenating the name when I got married to my husband. We took the muk from mine and the quinn from his, which is an Irish Gaelic name as well, and we made a new name, McQuinn. So I lost the Muckwright, I lost that kind of dad dad's side of heritage. Um, but I kept it within the Jen EK and it's often been shortened by family when I was younger to JK. Um, and that just felt like a really natural identity to kind of had it. Felt like it was encompassing the wild part of me. It was a bit of an unusual name. Um, I was having to repeat it in when I was introducing myself to people so that they understood it was a shortening of the name it is, but it feels really when we were reflecting before we we came onto the recording, and it feels really connected in way to the Scottish part of me. Now I grew up in Nottinghamshire, I've got a connection with there when I think about my returning to nature, had a long time away from nature, which I'm happy to kind of talk about over our course together. But when I was younger, that was like the wild place that I grew up in, was Nottinghamshire, but I always we'd go to Scotland regularly and I'd always had these kind of connections with this sort of wild, mystical landscape that was sort of unknown and a part of my um dad that I never quite got to sort of get to grips with as well. And sort of Scottish Gaelic part of me, even though I live in England and very proud of the places that I live, it's it really feels like the wilderness that's brought that to my practice in some way, and the the ability to be with nature and see it as part of that. And I came across this amazing phrase, I'll probably absolutely butcher the pronunciation of it, but um in Gaelic it's called duscas or duskas, and it's that connection to place and belonging and heritage and land. And I thought, wow, what a beautiful word. Why have I not had that in my own language? But there's this actual word to describe this sense of belonging to place. And I think in the work that I do with people and teams out in nature and kind of helping people to reconnect with their own internal wild dialogue, whatever that means for them, sometimes it's their names too. Um, but this kind of essence feeling connected back to something, feeling not just grounded in body but in identity somehow as well. And it's made me really curious as I've connected with the sort of JK energy, the Jenny K energy, to just explore things around that part of my heritage, which you know, I never and I didn't really get to ask my dad about those things. So I've I've had to be able to go off and explore them and find pieces of that and integrate that into my own work, but also my own personal life as well. But I think it's so weird that I've never lived in Scotland, and yet I like there's there's almost like a need to be there and be that wilder part of myself as well.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Thank you for that, and how names can shape perceptions, behaviors, personas, connection, and just moving into your nature connection, and thank you for sharing a little bit about your roots and going back generations as well. And it sounds like your career started in the charity sector, and that there has been a time in your life as well where nature was missing. So if you're able to give our listeners a snapshot into your journey and how you have ended up where you are now.

SPEAKER_01 9:49

Yeah, of course. Um where do we start? You know, I think that's like snippets of nature disconnection. I was lucky that I grew up in Nottingham until like the age of three, and I moved into the countryside in Nottinghamshire, and it was just like this magic transition of there's lots of natural things in the urban setting, and I was still so young. But I grew up with the freedom and feralness. I was definitely feral, uh points in my childhood. In a time where it was still felt quite safe to play out into the dusk and go into the draw bale fields and slide down the bales and play hide and seek in near becks and do a whole walk through a beck or a stream rather than walk on the road and stuff, like all of that adventure and play was just a natural part of my childhood. And I I think if someone had asked me as a child, I would have said that nature was my friend. And I and I say that now, I and I often get smirks and things from a few people, but I genuin I genuinely mean it. And I think what is really interesting about my own experience, and certainly when I retell it and reshare it with other people, and it's sort of it it resonates with people, is because of elements of my identity, like being encouraged to be a high-performing female in education, getting that kind of validation from career progression in a certain way, that despite having all of my love for adventuring and things, I really focused my career, entered into working in mental health hospitals, and then quickly progressed, developed a whole service within there, and then went on to community mental health and working as the leader in various different charity projects. And one of the things I saw as I progressed through that and got one version of success and one version of happiness. What I also did is left that wild kind of that JK part of myself a little bit behind. So I went from someone who, you know, was camping and walking and cycling and all those different things that took me outside and took me, well, I would say inside to be fair, like back into nature. Some of those things began to get lost from my life. And it was weird because I couldn't quite put the language into what was missing, but I could see that and feel within myself that there was a part that was intrinsically no longer present within me, or kind of ghosted or silenced in some way. And it was quite a painful part to be missing because, you know, now I see it's integral. It's almost like a bit of lifeblood to me in terms of that need for that relationship. And that alongside that, what I was also seeing, you know, as I was doing my own personal development, more curious about the ways that you could see other people and the ways that other people worked and interacted with each other, and seeing loads of caring people in the charity sector and the voluntary sector and health sectors that I worked in doing amazing things, but none of us were really caring for ourselves very well in terms of our mental health, our well-being, prioritizing self-care. And I was seeing a lot of people burning out. I also was responsible for developing services where we recruit people with lived experience of things like mental health, offending, uh, homelessness, addiction. So those people that I work with had this real richness of life experiences, but it also meant that in a high-pressure situation they might thrive, but they also might be at risk to their own recovery needs. Really fascinated in developing work around how do we create healthy workplaces, what is it that's happening to us, and seeing a lot of people like burning out, leaving the profession, seeing how amazing we were within the community in terms of the empathy and the skill set that we brought along. And it was so there's a couple of things really that that sparked it for me. There was a I can't quite remember the time order of things, but a a friend invited me to go walking, and I hadn't been walking for absolutely ages with my friends. You know, we'd done like few light walks, but it was always followed like by getting drunk at the end of it or you know, whatever. So it's the the focus wasn't really on the nature connection, it was more on the sort of social side of things. And we went for a walk, and I can remember that it was like someone had totally un unscrewed a tap on me, and I was would have been in my early 20s maybe at the time, and was like running around and hanging from upside down from trees and splashing people in the woods. I was I was totally out of control with joy. So that kind of sparked some interest and helped me to begin to think a little bit more about my relationship with the natural world. But there was a real pinnacle moment where everything was feeling like very stressed at work and leaders were stressed. My manager was sick with stress. I was trying to get through to another leader who was kind of covering the responsibility for my management as well. And I finally got got through to this person and was on this pulled over at the side of the road because I could see them ringing, hoping that I was being being able to discuss with them an issue that kind of come up with a team that just needed to sound some stuff out. And on the end of that phone was someone in like in a mental health crisis, a leader senior to me. And what that ended up being is just a really just having to care for that person and check that they were okay and kind of bring them down to a place that felt safe for us both. But as I was doing that, I was pulled over at the side of the road, had my beautiful, pre-prepared, healthy lunch that I'd made from two days earlier, festering on the seat. There was packets of sandwiches on the floor where I'd had to like five places at once and just grab like a garage sandwich or whatever. Well, this beautiful kind of vegetarian food was sat festering. And I went to drive off after the call and I was feeling like really uneasy. And while I'd been on the call, this sunlight was kind of hitting the side of my face through the window. And when I turned to the side, I saw a forest. It feels like a real movie movement that I've told this story time and time again, but it's genuinely true, is that I went to drive off and it was almost like I couldn't, it's almost like something was stopping me. And eventually I turned the engine off, got out of the car, and I just walked into the edge of the forest. And there was this lovely clearing, and the light was kind of coming through. And the feeling that I got from it was almost like the whole of the last few years of being separate from nature. It's like nature kind of egging me back. And that was quite a profound moment. I knew in that moment that I wouldn't necessarily be staying in the sector or in the position I was for much longer. It was coinciding with lots of personal development, doing my coaching courses and things. So I made the decision over over time to kind of just start helping people back to the natural world, initially a little bit hesitantly and just working in offices and things. And then eventually I took one individual out into the woodland, said you up for it. And that really changed everything in terms of the perspective of my business. But over that time, that bit that felt, I wouldn't even say was empty, it was probably numb. The bit that felt numb within me was suddenly just like healing itself and replenishing itself, really. And I realized, oh, it was that simple all along. I just had lost my relationship with the natural world. And so it's through that that I've been really curious about that. So, why do we have this intrinsic relationship with the natural world beyond this kind of biofilm effect of just like liking nature and it being nice and it making our body feel good, which is brilliant and great for our well-being? But what is it about that kind of calling inside that so many people that I work with experiences absence or experiences grief or shame within themselves or guilt for wanting it? But actually, when they rekindle that relationship back with the natural world and as part of the natural world, and start to think about the animal or the wild within them. And I don't mean that you're a goose or an eagle inside, maybe you are, but whatever that is, that part was missing that is rekindled and reconnected just from being in relationship with the natural world. And so that's really led me down that path of eco-psychology, regenerative kind of work of how do we become part of the world, how do we create systems and places that are aligned to what life needs, really, and understanding for ourselves in a way that doesn't feel shameful or woo-woo or anything like that, but in a way that's just like a casual language that says you've got a relationship with nature and it's important. That's important to the natural world, but it's also important to your personal identity as yourself as well. So that's it, basically, that's where we are, and now that pathway of then being able to lease woodland and have a space that I can be with people, but also really develop my relationship with that that that space, that ecosystem as well, and and be learning from it, not just in it. And I talked to you when we were there about following the deer track so I could find a way through to another part of the path and stuff. And none of this is learnt from a textbook, it's just being taught to me through rekindling the relationship with the natural world that was missing from my life.

SPEAKER_00 18:49

And such important questions there, I believe, about our relationship with the natural world and that deep remembering of our connection that really stripped us away beyond our modern social, cultural, economic narrative that has only really come through in the last few hundred years or so much disconnection. And clearly we can track it back to earlier, earlier times. And this is not to go through pink sunglasses and postulate about a romantic vision of the past. And a part of it is that awareness of the way that we live our lives is so unnatural, is so insane. And listening to you talk about your time within the charity sector and your colleagues working with my clients, seeing that exhaustion, seeing that burnout, and also within coaches as well. And within our work, how much do we hold? And working on ourselves, partnering with nature, resourcing ourselves, being in nature and through giving back as well in reciprocity is tricky. It's complex. And for you on your nature connection journey, at the beginning of our conversation, you mentioned how you're now describing yourself as nature-led and whether you've gone through various iterations around the language. Again, we're back to words, yeah, and the messaging behind that and the nuances of it.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

Yeah. And I don't think I can find the right phrase for what happens in the woods, and that might sound slightly sinister, but I think these containers that of descriptions that we have for ourselves, like coach, facilitator, you know, we've talked about names and things, sometimes make it really tricky because then you're putting yourself into that box. And what I've found and why I say nature-led is because so much of what I've learned about how I've run my business, how I work with clients, or how I don't work with clients, how those clients and people find their own relationship with the natural world doesn't really always come from me. I know I'm I'm there facilitating the space, but so often it's coming from this time of season that it is and how that makes us feel, or how we interact with the landscape, or it's coming from something that appears in the woods, like the other week, inviting. A client out just to step out of the tent that I've got in the woods for some sort of fresh perspective. And as we did so, a deer appeared in front of us, you know. So it kind of took over this facilitation. And for the for the moment we were just silent. The way that we move through the landscape, like where the where people sit, why have we chosen to sit? And I don't mean in a like let's anal get to analysis paralysis and think that everything has meaning, which it doesn't, but what has led us to sit on this fallen tree, or it's drawn your attention to this particular flower in a in a sea of grass and flowers? Like all of that is an interaction between the natural world and ourselves. And that I think that's where I've seen that in a way it takes a little bit of pressure off us as coaches because we're there to just guide and be that curious kind of position that we have as a talent in coaching to ask a question or to notice that someone's paused in a particular place and take appreciation and credit for the fact that that comes with our own experience and qualifications in the professional work that we do. But none of that would be possible without the natural landscape that we're then working and being led by. And because I've worked in offices with coaching clients and done team days in hotels and things and all that sort of that has to be orchestrated in. You have to put something in a room to draw attention or create a particular activity. And what we find is whether it's an individual client or whether it's a collective team that are coming to the woods with me or meet meeting me in nature somewhere is I don't have the full session plan. And I don't mean like, you know, I get to move a few bits of the session around, or I genuinely just put a lot of trust in the fact that some of this at some probably most of the emergence, most of the insight that the client gets is going to come from what happens within the landscape, what nature offers up, what time of season it is, what the level of light is, and what that means to the client in terms of the work that they're working on. And I think that's where I've landed with Nature Led, because I'm led by the natural environment that I'm working in and with as much as the client is. And my role is to help the client to see and recognize that and to add in a few human-based kind of psychological coaching kind of principles in the mix of it. But what has been really beautiful to see, and what in a way is restorative to me personally as a coach is you know, that you talked to before about, you know, we hold heavy stuff, and we've we're often even as coaches, like a little bit overworked sometimes or feeling a bit stretched. I am also in relationship with that natural setting. So I am getting those neuroscientific and biological benefits of restoring, reducing my cortisol level, restoring, you know, reducing endorphins, allowing my focus to attune itself in a different way, allowing any fatigue to maybe dissipate a little bit through the session. So I am getting the benefits of that. I'm not saying it's better or worse going out and coaching, it's just very different when we allow that in for ourselves. And the client is also receiving that, they don't need to know that how to have that happen, it will just naturally happen. And so many people have said, I just feel better just being here. And then all those things that if you write in theory about metaphors in nature, psychology, like all these terms that box people off and make them believe somehow that they wouldn't know how to do it, and it creates that separation again. What's amazing in the woods is they just do it, you know, like, yeah, there might be a few prompts or guides, but people just know how to do it because of that intrinsic connection with the natural world and that unremembered remembering in some way that we have as as being nature. And so, yeah, that's where I landed on nature-led, really. And it's probably the first time I've ever explained it, actually, Anna Marie. So it's nice to actually reflect on it for myself as well. But yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

I'm glad I posed the question. Um you've had that opportunity to articulate your thoughts. And yeah, words. Often it is beyond the words, or words are not enough, or words fail me. And yeah, the English language in itself, how it places us as humans at the centre and others the more than human world. The more than human world and nature. And yeah, just as a side aside, I was at an event over the weekend in Celebration of Solstice, where the founders behind the House of Hackney, Frieda, and Javi as part of their nature connection, and they do some amazing work within the business. They had campaigned to get the definition of nature change, changed because humans were not in the definition. So now a secondary definition includes so even just that in itself, well, if we see ourselves as separate on so many levels that it impacts our connection and our relationship, and ultimately our words are shaping our inner landscape. So it really has again, it's not something that we would normally normally think about. I would love just to give the land where you spend time a bit of space because binding the land in itself and as as coaches, where we're able to work within nature is something to consider. So, how have you ended up in this woodland near Yeah?

SPEAKER_01 27:47

It's a pretty magical story, really. So I taught you for like the first ever client I took out into nature, it was a a bit of a a total wing. Like I'd I'd risk-assessed and walked the land and things, and I was already started studying nature-connected stuff. But that really helps me to understand what maybe features I was at, I could be at my best in terms of coaching in a landscape. And it's evolved since then. But um, I started talking about the fact that I wanted to own a woodland, and in a very what I now call a very colonial way, I said, in 10 years of my business, I'm going to own my own woodland. And that was the goal, and it was on my vision board and all these kind of things. And so that was a bit of a focus. And I'd read all sorts of everything from down to quantum physics to manifestation of how you might create these visions for yourself as well. So some of the things we began doing, and we being me and my now husband Sean, is we started looking at woodlands for sale, and we cut we started going and visiting those woodlands and standing in them and thinking, is this woodland kind of right for me? Is it not? Because I knew that I wanted trees, it would be lovely if it had water running through it, and it would be lovely if it had some view or connection to a wider view as well. And sort of over the course of a year, maybe longer, I was introduced to various different people who had land that I could rent for a day from them. So I was getting like this look at all the people. At the same time, I was finding and risk assessing from a practical point of view, but also going and walking particular walks in nature spaces in Yorkshire. So I still do walk and talks in North and West Yorkshire. So finding different landscapes that might also kind of resonate with clients, different clients' connections to the landscape as well. And along the way, I was introduced very randomly to someone who had a woodland and we were going to kind of launch together and work with them. At the same time, a woodland became for sale near, quite near to the house. I could have walked with it. And very near to the offices that I had at that time, which I no longer have. And so I'd gone into this woods with a friend and she'd taken a picture and I'd said, This is going to be my woodland and all this kind of manifesting sort of stuff. The next day it was not for sale anymore. So I was like, This is not going to be my woodland. And then about six months later, I was introduced to someone totally randomly through a connection. And when I got on the phone, just quite to shorten the story, but when I got on the phone, the man I was speaking to on the end of the phone was the person that had bought that woodland. And so that first woodland, he allowed me to pay him £50 a month to use it. And I had a few clients there, but just wasn't quite white right, but I knew it was getting me closer to things as well. So I gave that one up. There was a couple of other opportunities to I thought I was going to be able to buy woodlands and they would fall through and various different real weaving of things. And then I came across this site. I was looking for a team day and came across a site that I needed some access to nature. And when I got talking with Joanne, who's the owner there at Little Seed Field, and we were discussing some opportunities to do some team days and rent their space out. And I noticed that at the bottom of their site was this woodland, and it's a glamping site as well. People would walk to this ride stop by the woods and then they'd turn around. It was like they didn't know that they could go there. So I have always thought, just ask. I can handle the rejection, but I can't handle the not knowing. So that's been a principle through life. And so I just emailed her and said, What do you think about leasing your woodlands to someone? And by the way, when I say someone, I actually mean me. And that started the conversation. And so in 2023, I think it was, I lease the woodland for the first time. I lease it from March till winter as long as I can into winter, and then I rest for a few months. So nature gets its space back. I give it some breathing space and I get some breathing space, and then I return again at the start of March each year, and have been doing ever since. You've seen obviously I've got the burrow, which is a tent in the woods now, potted around. There's a few various different structures that I put up in there temporarily, but for most of it, I actually try and keep it to its own, its own kind of wild space, I guess, as well. So it was incremental intentional connections and the belief and trust that I would just find the right place. I recognized that for some of the client work that I do, although it's coaching, it's deeply therapeutic, and that it wouldn't be appropriate all the time for certain people to meet in public wild spaces. And so to have the idea that there was a sort of a nesting space for us to just meet that was pretty much private, you know, and allowed that confidentiality for some clients. And it's given me a really rooted space and helped me, as I talked about before, to really deepen that connection with the natural world and to notice the seasonal changes and to learn new things about what's happening in nature and observe that through the different seasons and things as well. And it feels really connected, like those few months when I'm not not there, that little bit of space sits within me and with inside me again. I know it's only temporary, I know that I can go back there, but like I can get a connection back with that separation again as well. So it it's been through that collaboration, being through that fear of just asking and being okay if it was a no and not being too fixed on how I got it. Because I think if I'd just been like, I am going to buy a woodland and it's got to be this way, I might still be waiting financially for that outcome now, in terms of how my business is set up. And it was actually one of my supervisors who sat in a like a CPD day, reflective day one day, telling some of these stories. And he was like, Okay, JK, so people just keep giving you woodland, when are you going to notice this? And it really jarred me out of oh, you've got to colonize, you've got to own, you know, you've got to have land that you own. And it it sits so strongly with my values around supporting other local businesses, being part of a community. You know, I would have been quite isolated had I had a woodland of my own. And I'm not saying that's the wrong thing to do for people maybe listening to this who might have land of their own that they have, but certainly for me, it gave me that connection to a community, the value of being able to support and partnership with local spaces, and they are also committed to rewilding the land as well. So, you know, there was a there's a cross-value there about the fact that they've bought much of a fourth generation farm, uh dairy farm, you know, the core of their business, back into rewilding and getting things like all sorts of different dragonflies and stoats and birds of prey that are coming to that space and part of our session now because of that as well.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

And the land and where we are able to be with our clients is something that needs to be considered. And I think that your story is a really interesting way of coming into relationship with the land, and I'm curious for our listeners as to what land are they connecting to and what has led them there, or what are they aspiring to create. I'm a little bit of conscious of time. I really wanted to bring grief into our conversation. We very briefly touched on it in some of the emotions that you mentioned in the conversation earlier. And I know that when we connected a couple of months ago in preparation for this conversation, you had been at a nature event. Yes. And so, yeah, observations around grief and nature and what you're moving towards in this as well because it's been a bit of a journey for you. Totally, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

And I think so the way I describe it, quite honestly, is that I've been in resistance a little bit unconsciously to this, to bringing grief into the space of coaching in nature, but it just hasn't gone away. And that actually, although I'm very open about the you know, the story of my my dad passing away and my connect how that's bought some entwines some of the stuff to do with uh connection to land and place and heritage and things. What has consistently been happening within coaching, certainly within my coaching space and my experience of it, is that people are coming for things like anxiety or overload or career change or with teams, they're looking at conflict or burnout. And behind all of those stories is some story of grief. And it's not what people lead with necessarily because they don't think, oh, I need a gre a coach for grief, but it's an integral part of that, and it's been really interesting to think about how much more that is present now that I'm purely really. I have a few clients online, but most of my coaching and facilitating isn't is within the natural world, and how much more that space permits that conversation or allows us to go there. And I'm so interested by it now in my own journey of how nature has supported grief and helps us to navigate it. That I'm writing a book about it be out later this year. But what's been really interesting around it is things like the seasons and like looking at grief through the seasonal lens and like where are we in terms of our seasons of grief, looking simply at the life cycle of the natural world and the acceptance into that and understanding of this cyclical nature, being able to hold rituals in a lot of ways, whether that's with fire, whether that's with water, links to some of that continuing bonds model of grief in terms of how we form new relationships with the person or the part of our life that has passed in some way, has been really integral to the work that we do with and alongside nature. And even the other day, I'd met up with someone and we actually passed a diet, a bird that was dying, and we kind of paused and were like, Can we help it? What what can we do? And it sparked a really deep conversation about grief and loss. And I've seen that when you're explaining to someone why maybe a branch has fallen off a tree or what's happening when a tree has fallen, and then the epicormic growth comes to in that tree's last attempt to find life again, and to see whether it can sustain it with like maybe just one root still in the ground after it's fallen, and bringing with that as well that grief of that missing part of themselves when they reconnect with nature, the part that I talked about before. The real grief for me to not have that part present in my life, to not have that relationship. And that's really rang true for a lot of people, and that weaves so beautifully into the grief that we actually are all collectively feeling for the planet, whether we are fully into the world of climate change and climate crisis, or whether we're just maybe observing some of the social issues that are really horrifically permeating our life now and we're exposed to, it's opening up conversations and reflections on grief that I perceive in the Western world we we haven't necessarily had a healthy relationship with grief. And there are so many examples of cultures around the world, from wailing practices to stopping speaking the name and honouring silence. Even in the animal kingdom, we've got elephants that gather around the young and swing their umks in uh kind of collaboration together of grief, or we've got magpies that will bring twigs or things if they see a dead magpie. So there's examples of grief and grieving that are so much more embraced than the way that potentially some of us within a UK Western world have been permitted to have. And it's been really interesting to see how within all the you know, life, career coaching, facilitating teams, doing culture work with teams, the grief just keeps resonating through that. So kind of really challenged myself on it. Not because I was, not because I was frightened or hesitant of it, but I think I was the reason I say resistance because I was like asking myself, is this the right place for it? And then the message has come up time and time again. The cycle keeps repeating itself, and people keep honouring, you know, the grief of having to care for a parent who's got dementia, or the grief because lovely managers left and their culture is in flux, and they're all grieving that old version of a culture that felt really psychologically safe. But it really, you know, spans lots of different stories and layers, and there's so much metaphor and kind of learning from you know, the biomimicry of nature that can offer that relief and release for grief and help us to understand that it's unique to all of us. Like no one will have ever grieved like you have great grieved in a particular Greek. That it's just totally unique. We can learn from things and we can adapt, but that is totally unique, so we can't predict exactly what it's going to look like. And nature's kind of own evolution and adaptation to constantly changing environments, I think just really get really holds people. So I'm putting my hand up, I'm like talking about it more now. You know, I'm doing doing sessions at work conferences, I'm writing books about it because it just feels like a really important narrative for now.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

And thank you for bringing it to our conversation today. And it it does, it feels slightly counterculture, particularly within the English construct of well recognizing emotions as a starting point, and whether there's a generational element to that as well. So I wish you luck in distilling your knowledge, your journey into a book format with all the words.

SPEAKER_01 42:26

All the words. Less words now, please.

SPEAKER_00 42:32

So what have we not touched on that you feel is needed?

SPEAKER_01 42:41

I think the thing that's coming up for me is finding your relationship back with nature is quite simple. It's more simple than we actually believe it to be. But giving ourselves permission to find it back is the complex bit. And I think that's that tension point for people, you know, whether it's the story that people are telling themselves about lack of time or that they feel guilty or they don't know what they would do when they were there, that's often the barrier, it's often the tension that I see in clients, you know, that it's the complexity of before we get there that that holds us, keeps us separate. But what, and sometimes I think it's magic, but I know there's obviously like some practical things for it. But actually, most of the people that I've witnessed over the years, even those that, you know, had one guy put his hand up and say, I'm from a city, I've only just moved to Yorkshire. What do I need to do today? And a team, this is in a team away day, like I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing in nature. And he was the one climbing the trees and building the dens and stuff by the end of it. Once you'd given him permission of just trust yourself, figure it out, you'll find a relationship. So I think it's that our relationship towards and in like together with nature is actually simpler than what we believe it to be, and we don't believe it's going to work in the way. Would work. We don't believe it's going to have all of these benefits when life feels so potentially heavy or complex. But the things we're telling ourselves about is the complex bit. So this is why I almost just say just go to nature. The rest will figure itself out. I know there's lots more complexity in it than that. Just sitting in nature is not the only thing you might need to do for your mental health or well-being or your business direction. But I think it plays a huge part in figuring out our own identity. So I think that's that kind of the only thing I would say.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Really? Thank you for that. Yeah, bringing it back to ourselves and our relationship with nature. And I do feel that is so important. Sometimes as coaches, we can very much it's client-centred. And that's the whole narrative around coaching. It is, it is all about where is the client going to go. And that in itself is a construct as modern coaching that we could have another conversation around. And bringing it back rather than oh, okay, coach client nature, having that deep rather than oh, it's another tool, it's another technique, it's another methodology of me with nature doing something to somebody else, actually bringing it back to us. So, JK, where can our listeners find you? Well, the simple answer to that is in a woods in Ripper.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

Probably where I spent more far too much time as well. But no, if you wanted to find me, then where the mind grows is my organization. Um, and I have a weekly email where I reflect with people on everything to do with gathering community, nurtured workplaces, the route itself as well. So if you like kind of read, write information or reflection on nature, that's a good place. But also on socials at where the mind grows. Well, Jenny Kate McQuinn on uh LinkedIn um as well.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

Thank you for that. And I was really struck um, you know, within your website, how it is, it's very much that rooted identity of self, then teams, then community. So the way that you've got that nested approach working across all levels within the ecosystem or all parts of the ecosystem.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

And it's really nature designed, it's observing, okay. So the tree starts with its inner self, then it's got its teammates and its little ecosystem, and then there's a whole community beyond that. That whole design of my business came from understanding and reflecting on how does an healthy ecosystem work.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Thank you for that. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your words of all types. And thank you. And my many names. Many names. And thank you, dear listener, for your time today. As ever, please do share what has caught your attention and please do reach out to JK as well to continue the conversation. I'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.