A month to rewild your life
Follow these journal prompts to find your way to the natural world, and back again.
Hi there,
On my daily walks, I now follow the blossom. I notice new buds emerging on tree branches long bare. I witness colour returning to the world.
I know that I’m awakening to the world around me as the season turns. I feel the urge to be outside and soak up the light again. To leave behind the house in the early evening and turn away from nights of hiding inside. I start to reconnect with a world newly revived, and in turn with myself, long-wintering.
This month we’ll be exploring our connection with the natural world, and how what’s happening out there can reflect what’s happening in us. We’ll also be seeing if what we need right now can be met by the world beyond us.
What sits between us and the natural world?
But here’s the thing: nature isn’t one thing, and it’s not always the easy ask. Though we’re been collectively waking up to the importance of our green and blue spaces in our lives, a connection long broken is taking some time to be repaired.
Speaking to a Nature Coach last week I explained that my relationship with nature was “tentative”: I grew up in the suburbs of Manchester and being outside meant rain and mud. Fields felt very uncool next to the music scene that was blossoming in the city right then.
Now I know that being in my garden returns me to myself and that growing flowers brings a joy my cynical mind no longer rolls its eyes at. But going on a hike alone, being out on the trails, still feels beyond my capacity.
The Nature Remedy
Why is nature something to strive for then if our feelings about it can be so conflicted (maybe they aren’t and that’s ok too)? We’re learning that we need nature on a fundamental level. Being in nature has many benefits to our wellbeing: it can soothe us, help us destress, and connect us with the prosocial emotion of awe.
Nature can be a mechanism by which we spend more time together (those Sunday hikes with friends or a walk in the park with our kids). It can help us feel a sense of achievement, as we pull up beetroot planted a couple of months back and offer to the table a bowl of home-grown tomatoes.
It can teach us about failure (as our snap peas shrivel or we lose our way), about stretching (as we walk just that little bit farther to complete the hike or get ourselves into cold water to try that swim), and about the stories we tell ourselves (as we believed that we couldn’t when we could, that we needed someone’s permission when we just needed the Alltrails app).
Use these Journal Prompts to explore how you experience Nature, to build confidence around your practices, and to bring more curiosity to how it shows up in your life. You’ll also see how and if your Nature is connected to your mental and emotional wellbeing: you may just discover the remedy you need for your tired, spring-awakening, soul.
Here are Your month of Journal Prompts for Everyday Life.
Just a note on how to use these:
Nature can help us destress, but so can journaling. Getting words down on the page – putting our thoughts outside ourselves and releasing emotions held inside – also helps reduce the stress hormone cortisol.
For double wellbeing points, take these journal prompts out into Nature and respond to them while sitting on a park bench or a picnic blanket under your favourite tree.
And as always here’s your invitation to come write with me… details below for how you can use these prompts for building greater self-awareness or writing a new Substack piece.
See you out there.
Co-Writing
This month’s Co-Journaling meet-up for members of The Wellery will be on April 17th at noon.
If you’re not a member of The Wellery you can join by upgrading. You’ll also get access to pop-up office hours where you can bring anything that came up for you from these questions. A coffee a month basically gets you a year of support through your everyday life.
Also, members get these prompts in list form so you choose your way through them.
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