The Nature of Grief

I’ve been writing these blog posts, so far, from as neutral and factual a standpoint as I possibly can. I have immersed myself and my children in nature, looking at the world in awe, always remembering the infamous words of my dad about, “no miserable shit!”

Those words have brought me a surprising amount of comfort, but as painful as it is to admit, I am still a daughter who is grieving the very recent loss of her father, and sometimes I can't help but to feel the deep sadness that comes with losing a parent.

Benno and I are extremely lucky that our dad instilled in both of us a great love of, and comfort in, the natural world. From the moment we could toddle, dad would take us walking through ancient woodlands to take plaster of Paris casts of the footprints we found, we would travel this country and beyond to watch rare birds, and we spent incredible holidays off grid in France at a fishing lake, completely surrounded by nature for weeks, and so much more. And I know that all of this has helped us both now immensely, because even on the darkest of days, we have both spent time connecting with nature in our own way.  

Holidays in France were the best!

The resident chef

Whenever I am watching the birds or walking through the woods, I always feel like my dad is with me, and I know that he would derive great pleasure from watching Evelyn empty the moth trap, whilst her little brother watched from a “safe” distance! (He’s not so keen on the moths… yet!)

But aside from all the things that I feel, I also know the actual physical and emotional benefits of being in nature for humans, especially at times when we are experiencing grief and loss. This is because, perhaps unsurprisingly as the daughter of Dylan, I am a qualified eco-therapist, which means that I facilitate people spending time in nature in order to heal, and if you would indulge me for a few minutes, I will explain why we find the natural world so healing and what “nature connectedness” is.

Nature connectedness is more than just time spent outside; it’s about how you spend that time outside developing your relationship with nature. A person who lives in a city and spends 20 minutes a day outside feeding the wildlife and observing the plants growing through the cracks of a wall is more connected to nature than a person who lives in the countryside and goes on long country walks whilst taking business calls on their phone.

Nature connectedness is a measurable, psychological construct, studied by Professor Miles Richardson and his team at the University of Derby. It can vastly improve happiness and wellbeing in humans in a short space of time, and this has knock-on positive effects for nature.

Professor Richardson and his team created five simple pathways to nature connectedness, which are extremely easy to incorporate into everyday life.

The five pathways to nature connectedness are:

Senses: Taking time to tune into nature through the senses

Emotion: How does nature make you feel?

Beauty: Noticing natures beauty

Meaning: Nature brings meaning to our lives

Compassion: Caring for and taking action for nature

The more I studied the art of nature connectedness, the more fascinated I became by this deep, instinctive connection that we have with the natural world around us.

Did you know that listening to birdsong can improve your mood and lessen anxiety, placing your hands on trees lowers cortisol levels in the body, and forest bathing has a positive effect on blood pressure, heart rate and your immune system? These are just a few examples of the huge impact connecting with the natural world has on us.

One of my previous work spaces

Obviously, my dad would have rolled his eyes at this and would have simply said, “we call that going outside, Fanny Anne,” I can hear his voice as I type those words, but I think, whether he believed in the science of nature connectedness or not, he absolutely immersed himself in the natural world, particularly when he was going through hard times, and he certainly felt the benefits of being in nature. It was a place where his soul felt completely at home, and I’m so grateful that he shared his passion for nature with me, because it enables me to feel like I am always connected with him.

Specifically relating to grief, the power of nature is undeniable. Wilshire Wildlife Trust has a page on their website all about nature connectedness and grief and they write:

“For those who are grieving, connectedness in nature can offer many benefits and aid healing:

It can remind us of the continuum of life and that we and our loved one are still part of something greater than ourselves that goes on existing without us.

It provides a place and space to attend to our grief without intrusion from the ongoing demands of work, family and everyday responsibilities.

It can promote mindfulness, allowing the grieving person to anchor themselves in a moment by physically touching, smelling and listening to nature.

It allows us to disconnect from technology and find quiet, solitude and comfort in life rhythms that are natural, soothing and restorative.

It reminds us of the beauty that can be found all around us - even in our grief, it can be comforting to realise that beauty still exists.

The sights and sounds of nature can offer distraction from a cycle of difficult thoughts.”

The healing benefits of nature for people experiencing grief | Wiltshire Wildlife Trust

For me, personally, being in nature reminds me that life goes on; the sun will rise and set, the moon and stars will remain in the sky, the seasons will change, and somehow, in amongst it all, I get to experience the wonder of being alive.

I am grateful that I get to wake up every day and spend time with my children, that I can pick and eat food that we have grown, that I can listen to the dawn chorus each day, and that I got to spend 45 years and 317 days with my dad, even if we didn’t spend as much time together as maybe we could have. He was and is always with me.

I know that I am not the only one who turns to the natural world when I want to feel close to my dad, I’ve had so many messages and photos from people saying that they have just seen a certain bird or walked around a certain nature reserve and seen something that reminded them of my dad. I’m so happy that so many people remember him that way.

If you are grieving the loss of a loved one, I really hope that this blog has helped you a little bit. Even if you can’t go on a wild adventure, simply feeding the birds, looking at plants and animals, or sitting outside for 20 minutes will help you connect with nature, and hopefully help you to feel a little bit better.

Thank you for indulging me, normal blog service will resume shortly, I just thought I would share this in case it helps somebody.

Sarah. X 

 

 

 

A nice surprise at Gazen Salts

 

Yesterday marked a momentous day for myself and my family, as it was my youngest son’s last day at Primary School. As you can imagine, it was emotional, but there is also now a sense of relief that we have made it to the end of one of the busiest terms of the year! We are definitely all ready for a break.

To keep myself and my other children occupied as we awaited the end of term school service, we went for a little wander around a local nature reserve in Sandwich, called Gazen Salts. We stopped off at the Co-op to buy some duck food and made our way along The Butts and towards “Gallows Field” (yes it does have as grizzly a history as its name suggests), and along the path into the nature reserve.

 As I think we have now established, I don’t have the same depth of knowledge of the natural world that my dad had, I’m sure he would have seen and heard more than me, but I do my best when I am out to connect with the natural world as much as possible, and this day was no exception.

 

Hungry ducks at Gazen Salts

We wandered down to the wildlife pond to feed the ducks who live there and spent some time watching the hungry birds and a friendly brown rat that kept appearing from the undergrowth! He didn’t seem that bothered by our presence, and he posed nicely for some photos.

 

Fearless!

Evelyn led the way around the nature reserve, and we stopped to listen to the birds and look at the insects that surrounded us in this beautiful environment. We did look for the resident beavers, but we couldn’t find any, however we did hear and/or see all these birds:

 

·        Green Woodpecker

·        Mistle thrush

·        Chiffchaff

·        Blackbird

·        Great tit

·        Long tailed tit

·        Bullfinch

·        Jackdaw

·        Collared- Dove

·        Wood pigeon

·        Magpie

·        Robin

·        Blackcap

As this was only a fleeting visit, we were only there for around 45 minutes, but on the way out, Evelyn took us into a wildflower meadow at the reserve, and as we walked around, we found a mat that had been put down for reptiles to hide under.

Being braver than me, Evelyn lifted the mat whilst I held the camera, only to find two large slow worms laying beneath it. That was a nice surprise and it made our day! I took a couple of photos on my phone and then we carefully replaced the mat and left them in peace, before heading home for some lunch. It was a good end to our spontaneous visit.

Slow worms at Gazen Salts

 

Tales of the Unexpected

Elephant Hawk Moth

As Summer is now in full swing, and Benno has been doing some excellent writing about his fishing adventures, I thought that it was only fair that I upheld my end of the bargain too and did some writing, so I'm going to tell you about what has happened this week with the moth trap.

When dad died, he wanted his moth books, moth trap and all that goes with it to go to Evelyn, my daughter. I found a note for her in his study on top of a pile of moth and butterfly books, and it ruined me for the whole day! 

He used to write a lot of little notes, that must be where I get it from!

We had some opportunity to use the trap earlier in the year and we caught a few moths, but nothing too spectacular, then life became pretty busy and extremely hot, and the moth trap remained in the shed for a while.

So, this week, when Evelyn asked to try again with the moth trap, I thought it was a very good idea. I had done some general reading about moths, and it seems that July is peak season for lots of them, and so on Friday evening Evelyn carefully stacked the egg boxes inside, set up the trap, turned on the bulb and went off to bed.

Sorting the moth trap before bedtime.

At 5am on Saturday morning (I know dad would do it at 3am, but he didn’t need sleep like I do!) I found myself in the garden, turning off the trap and covering it over to stop the birds from getting in and the moths from getting out. I could see that there was definitely an elephant hawk moth in there, with its beautiful pink and green markings, but I had no idea what was waiting for us!

 As Saturday evening crept around Evelyn desperately wanted to empty the trap and see what was inside, so we went to the garden, with paper and pencil in hand to see what we had caught.

It’s been a very long time since I emptied the moth trap, the last time was with dad and may have been in the mid 1990’s, so I am VERY rusty on names of different moths. I thought it was best to photograph all of them and then identify them later. 

I have done my best to identify as many as I can, but please feel free to correct me, those who are in the know! I have shared some photos of some of them, because they are just so beautiful, and I have made a list of species and rough numbers.

This is really our first attempt, but I am planning to make Evelyn a chart, adding moths as we go, so we can remember names and count and record how many of each species we find.

We are extremely lucky that our garden backs on to woodland and a wildflower meadow. It also has hedges, ponds and lots and lots of flowers and herbs that Evelyn has grown, so plenty of different foods and habitats for local moths.

A Jersey Tiger Moth, Box Tree Moth, Broad Bordered Yellow Underwing and an Early Thorn

Privet Hawk Moth, Rosy Footman, Elephant Hawk Moth and a Ruby Tiger Moth

Black Arches Moth, Small Magpie Moth, Riband Wave and a Meadow Grey?

Black Arches	1
Box Tree Moth	1
Bright-Line -Brown- Eye Moth	1
Comfrey Ermine Moth	1
Common Meadow Grey?	1
Dingy Footman Moth	20+
Dusky Sallow	1
Early Thorn Moth	1
Elephant Hawk Moth	6
Flame Shoulder Moth	1
Geometriade Moth	1
Jersey Tiger Moth	1
Large Yellow Underwing	1
Lesser Yellow Underwing	1
Magpie Moth (Small?)	3
Pale Prominent Moth	1
Powdered Quaker Moth	1
Privet Hawk Moth	1
Rosey Footman Moth	1
Ruby Tiger Moth	6
Riband Wave Moth	1
Silver Y	1
Small Fan Foot Moth	1
Straw Dot Moth	1
Twin spotted quaker	1
Yellow Tailed Swan Moth	1

 

We caught a definite 26 different species of moth in one night, there were some more, but many of them were micro moths, and I really can’t remember much about those yet. I hope we will get more efficient at identifying and recording the moths as we go on, but for now, this is what we caught and we are quite pleased with ourselves. I think that dad would be pleased that we are using his trap, Evelyn really loved it!

Hopefully we can bring you more moth trap escapades soon!

Sarah and Evelyn

Flame Shoulder Moth

A few Rudd and a Turtle Dove

Just thought I'd write a quick update on the fishing in this corner of East Kent recently. I decide to give the syndicate a rest for a while, partly to allow the huge amount of weed floating around to settle somewhere, but mostly just to have a break. The football has had me up late most weekends, so a 3:30 alarm on a Sunday morning doesn't appeal particularly. I have however been to a different venue on our CDAA ticket to try and target the big Rudd. Ive had some success with fish to 1lb 10oz, but not quite managed the 2lb target yet. A 3lb fish is a definite possibility, but a one in a million fish perhaps, so I'll start with a 2.

1lb 8oz of Gold

1lb 10oz of even Golder.

Shortly before Dad passed away, he bought himself a 600mm telephoto lens for his Eos 90D, he was already ill at this stage and never managed to take a single photo with it. I promised him that I would, so here is the beginning of that promise taking shape. I was sat in my flat minding my own business when i heard the unmistakable '"cooing" of a Turtle Dove in the old Oak at the bottom of my garden, thankfully I had the camera stuff nearby. My mum is keen to get out and take some wildlife photos as well, so hopefully we will find some more subjects to photograph.

Hopefully there will be many more chances to photograph these birds, I absolutely love them. 

The syndicate is calling me back, so It wont be long before I go back after the Tench, then the Eels, then it will be Perch time, so some more stuff to blog about!

Tight lines,

Benno.