A thousand tiny reckonings that call us home...

Winter’s hibernation and an almost hermit-like existence for the last six months has provided long periods of reclusive introspection. I’ve found myself revisiting memories of childhood, young adulthood, and how I ended up here in this version of Life I now find myself in.

Many memories involve the bush around my childhood home. In those wild places where we played after school. Orange orchards, bush cubbies, dusty tracks, pushbikes, and a tyre swing in the council reserve. It was a childhood of saltwater and sand, camping and pit toilets. I didn’t know it at the time, but nature was already anchoring me - offering a kind of knowing that didn’t need words. The kind of wisdom that lives in the body.

As I became older, the experiences grew with me - journeying into adulthood, relationships, mothering, and my work with children and families. Through the fires and subsequent darkness of burnout, over the treacherous mountain paths and rugged terrain of searching, learning, breaking, and remembering. 

Somewhere along the way, I stumbled across various relational education models and Forest Schools, and with these encounters I felt something ancient in me begin to breathe again. The ember touched by this breath gradually became a flame. This. This is what childhood could be for all children. Messy, connected, embodied. A world full of curiosity and meaning.

So I embarked on a mission to create such a world.

At first it was small and tightly embedded in my work within Early Childhood Education. But, in the same way that an ember birthed by hand drill fire requires patience and tender nurturing, my dreams didn’t manifest overnight. There were dead ends. Programs that ran beautifully, then ended. A new job, another attempt. Frustration, deep depression, chronic pain, and loss of direction.

The ember was consistently extinguished and reignited. Each time I slowly… tenderly… began again. And again. And again. Each time, embodying the learning that comes with the medicine of these seasons. 

Eventually, another unfolding of circumstances beyond my control arrived as the whole world went into a spiral. Suddenly everything I had known was no longer available to me. I may have allowed this time to cripple me, reinforcing all of my unworthiness and fears, but I’d learned enough to make different choices this time, and I used the situation to make my dream a reality. I walked out into the bush, barefoot, on my own terms… I called a community together… and Earthside Explorers was born.

The fire burned brightly for years and was both the most fully embodied version of myself, and one of the steepest learning opportunities ever. I began to listen more deeply than I’d ever been able to before - to others, but most importantly to myself. I was no longer creating the world I had envisioned just for children. It was expanding, becoming bigger and more far reaching.

My work began to include whole families and communities, and I realised I could no longer work only with the children. I needed to break through my own limitations and expand the vision… to the families and communities that raise them. Because to create a connected culture for a few children a few hours a week is one thing… but to empower the adults raising them to create such a culture? That’s another thing entirely. 

I found myself facing another opportunity to ask “How willing am I to really listen?” “Can I follow my soul here?” and “Do I really have the faith I say I have?” 

Life is a lot like living within a choose-your-own-adventure novel without being able to skip ahead and find out which chapter leads to your doom or your delight. Yet every chapter promises a journey further into discovering ourselves in ways we could never have before imagined.

It is far from a straight line. It loops and bends back on itself more times than we can count. There is no clear map, no one right way. It can feel disorienting and confusing. There are no neat answers in the mess and miracle of being human. Just a thousand moments of presence. A thousand tiny reckonings. A thousand choices to return to what is real. Here and now.

Sometimes what we find in these places elicits joy and excitement, a vast vista of rolling hills and fields of flowers. Sometimes we quickly shield our faces from what we see, unable to look at it directly, calling it ugly, or fearful, or worse.

We live in a culture that avoids discomfort, that pushes grief down… and yet, to parent well, to mentor with integrity, to exist as human and be able to show up fully - we must be able to sit with it all. The heartbreak, the rage, the longing. The daily tensions. The uncomfortable guilt. The sacred responsibility of tending to wounds we didn’t create - and sometimes the ones we did.

A much younger, more naive version of me, used to think I could help people by healing them. She thought that if she could just remove the hurt, then the world would be a better place. So she attempted to rescue everyone from their pain, make it go away, by being and doing everything she thought they expected, or needed, or wanted.

I know now, that’s not how it works.

I can’t take pain away.

I can’t heal another’s hurt.

In fact, it’s possible that some wounds might never be healed… only lived differently.

The inconvenient and uncomfortable truth is that pain is a crucial and necessary component of this experience we call being human.

My role now, as I see it from this vantage point, is to walk within this world embodying and sharing the wisdom I’ve gathered. Expertly holding, witnessing, and lovingly accompanying others as they allow the process of Life to happen.

To bring understanding and compassion to pain, to be comfortable with discomfort, and create the conditions in which growth becomes possible. To draw out what’s already alive in you. Your flame. Your knowing. Your truth. So that you might fall in love, once again, with all of you. And very likely, as a result, your relationship with family, your world, and your life.

I choose to work now with those who choose this for themselves. Who are ready for the radical self-responsibility required to undertake such a journey. Who choose a different world for all children, for our children’s children, and for our children's children’s children. A more enlightened, loving and compassionate world begins within ourselves.

There was a time in my career when observation and deep listening meant something very different. When behaviour was something to be managed or controlled. When relationships were purely about peer interaction and developing ‘appropriate social skills’. But the work I do now isn’t about ticking boxes, or abiding by outdated systems.

It’s about Soul.

It’s about remembering who we all are beneath the noise.

It’s about making space for wholeness to rise.

In full relationship with the All of Everything, everywhere.

This work matters because it’s not separate from life - it is life.

And it calls us home.