When Sarah and I first started working together on an education setting, it wasn’t specifically The Cabin and the Lodge. Where we started, was answering the question: What would the education system look like, if it had been originally designed through a lens of children’s rights?

What we knew was that the education system that exists, was not designed through that lens. We knew that schooling had been designed through a different lens, that did not include an awareness of children as people, not property. Then, many years into its functioning, children’s rights emerged as a clearer concept.

But it was never designed or built with that in mind. The idea that children are people, with the right to a voice, and other human rights, came later. Any attempts to try to catch the current system up with that, is massively limited by it’s underlying building blocks and the beliefs and expectations that underpin its interpretation of what ‘education’ looks like, that has nothing at all to do with children being seen as full people with human rights.

So we wanted to know: what would an education system look like, if you started from scratch, and designed it through a lens of children’s rights, right at the start.

We worked on this for a number of years, and it led us to the theory, principles and practices, that you can now see in part at the Cabin and the Lodge.

Before the Cabin opened in January 2018, we had spent over a year working on another plan that would see our theory and ‘new system’ in place.

Originally, we had thought the way to get the practice up and running as a model, was to register as a private school. We knew we couldn’t register as a state funded school due in part to the level of restriction that exists in that route, that would mean we couldn’t create the practice we wanted.

So we thought maybe, we could create the space we needed by going the private route, where there is more flexibility and freedom to ‘do differently’. Accepting this was the first compromise we made, as of course our hopes always had been to be able to create a free to access setting, and this is still something we believe in being crucially important as part of the process of change.

In 2017, we happened upon an extraordinary site, that could have been perfect for what we were hoping to achieve. It just so happened, that this site was owned by a very special person, who fully understood and supported our aims. She was in the process of selling this property, and agreed to take it off the market for us, so that we could use the site to run a pilot of the setting for an agreed length of time, so that we could have the model up and running, to test it, and then be in a position to seek investment.

However, in the summer of that year, we realised that this wasn’t going to be a workable solution. There were many reasons for this realisation, that made proceeding with the pilot phase in this way unethical – the small scale pilot itself would have been great, but we knew we wouldn’t then be able to evolve it into the bigger scale project that the pilot was meant to achieve, the outcome on which the pilot agreement had been made. We very sadly had to end this project moving forwards, which, at the time was a massive disappointment and blow.

We knew our plan and theory was good – there was never a problem with the theory or the plan of the actual setting. The block was in being able to arrange everything else around it to help make it happen in the way we had hoped to. The physical space and infrastructure to bring the theory and practice to life.

At this point we got connected again to what mattered the most: getting the practice of this new model up and running, as soon as possible. We knew that ideas on paper are no where near as good as something being up and running, when it comes to affecting change. Not least because we could then explore the practice and develop it way more deeply and meaningfully than you can in concept stage.

So, we did a massive pivot. In the Autumn of 2017, we focused on ‘get it up’, and found a new solution and way to do this, with way less barriers, where rather than being stressed on a big project and lifting the massive weights that would have come with our original plan of the ‘independent school’, we could do what mattered – getting the practice going – in an easier, and more accessible way, within months.

That January, the Cabin opened it’s doors for the first time.

Since then, we have been able to work through and refine this new way of holding learning community, of supporting young people in a way that affirms their own agency, autonomy, personhood and human rights. We have been able to experience what it feels like to be in this ‘new way’, have seen what skills, tools and systems you need for it to run healthily, and have worked to develop these things.

We are now at a point, 5 years since the Cabin first opened, where we are able to share this more with other people outside of our own setting – which was always the aim. To build on the influence that the work has already had over the years on people and places – both new settings, and settings changing their culture and practices to be more consent-based. To help people in finding the language and nuance to better describe and create the culture and environment for consent-based education.

This has never been about just our own setting. We have, from the start, been in it for systems change. We have always known that we need to get our practice and principles right, test it, get it great and in a fit start to be shared and adopted by others – both in and outside of the mainstream system – in order to be part of the process of change. We’ve worked hard to do that, and it’s paying off.

It was never just about our setting or one setting. Change is coming, and for some, it’s already here.

Because these kinds of communities are relationship centred, and are values rather than rules based, it’s really important as a founder or person who has responsibility for culture creation, to have a really sound set of Guiding Principles.

Here is a five step guide to creating these principles:

1. Describe the relationship we intend to have with our selves
2. Describe the relationship we intend to have with others, including the environment.
3. Describe the kind of relationship we intend to have with the way, what, and how we learn about ourselves, each other and the world.
4. Describe what we will do to prevent, or when something goes wrong.
5. Describe the bigger picture – what the above is working towards creating, our ethical vision. This is your ‘Why’.

At the Cabin and the Lodge our Guiding Principles read like this:

1. Self-directed: Listening to your self, and exploring the world in the way that is meaningful to you and your own sense of curiosity and purpose. Being able to choose what, when and how you want to learn and do things, based on what feels right to you. 
2. Consent-based: Understanding your own agency and autonomy, and the freedom and boundaries that come with that. Being able to say an authentic yes, no or maybe, and respecting the boundaries and consent of others.
3. Ed(ucation) Positive: Anything can be potentially interesting and meaningful . Curiosity, problem solving and learning doesn’t have to be limited to subject silos or traditional value judgments about what is important to learn about and what isn’t.  
4. Shared Decision Making, Risk Management and Conflict Navigation: Young people should have the chance to influence and co-create decisions and solutions that affect them. We can understand and manage risk together, and conflict can be navigated in an open and honest way. 
5. Children as rights holders, social and environmental justice: People under 18 have human rights. Experiencing that all starts in the way that we are treated in childhood, and the way we learn to be with and treat others and our environment. ​

You can read fuller descriptions of these principles here.

The key thing is that these principles can act as a compass for you, in helping you navigate decisions, your own behaviour and actions in the community. They help you make sense of boundaries, when to take actions, and when to stand back. They are like a recipe for the culture and experience that you are together trying to create, and if you follow them, that experience will become manifest as best as is possible given the context in which you are working. Leave one thing out of the recipe, and it doesn’t work. They must be interdependent parts of a whole.

Once you are fluent in your own Guiding Principles, theoretically and in your own lived experience/practice, you will also be able to notice the tools and systems you might need as a community to support them, and work on finding or designing those things.

Final thought: Please don’t use this guide, or have Guiding Principles if you don’t believe them and/or aren’t willing to engage with them yourself. This is a no bullshit approach, so if you aren’t going to get on board yourself, please don’t create a set of principles that expects others to do what you won’t do yourself. Certainly, don’t expect the young people you are working with do be influenced by them if you aren’t going to be. Integrity is key for a values/principles based approach, and it’s key for consent-based self-direction too.

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Crew is a monthly meeting space for change making activists working on the issue of institutionally and relationally embedded childism and adult supremacy, and it’s associated problems. 

It is a networking and organising space, for problem sharing, strategic thinking, and creative planning. It is also a solidarity space, where we can share our stresses and disappointments, ways of coping with the challenges of doing this work, and seek support and reenergising. 

Crew may be for you if you are activated in the areas of: children’s rights, unschooling, consent-based self-directed education, feminism/anti-patriarchy work, family and education transformation, other social and environmental justice and healing work.

It is called Crew because the origin of the word is ‘to arise, to grow’, and draws on one simple definition: a group of people working together on a task. 

Crew meets online on the 3rd Tuesday of the month, from 7-9pm, via Zoom.

Here are the upcoming dates:

Tuesday 18th April 2023

Tuesday 16th May 2023

Tuesday 20th June 2023

Tuesday 18th July 2023

If you would like to be on the mailing list for Crew, drop a line to hello@sophiechristophy.com 

I’ve been thinking lately about what work is helpful towards the movement out of patriarchy to consent-based, self-direction. In listening to the thoughts of other activists and changemakers, and observing life including my own, it’s brought me to thoughts about the freedoms and liberation that we have, and how we use or don’t use that space.

There is one type of activism in this work, that looks like ‘shifting the goal posts’ in a way. It’s about making structural changes to systems and institutions, that creates more space for freedom of choice and broader rang of experience. So for example, in the education system, if you change the assessment process at the end by opening it up to things other than just exam results, you create the possibility and opportunity for different experiences in the lead up to that point. If you expand what is available on a curriculum, ie give people more choice about what and how they study, then you increase the possibility that people can make different choices or choices that are better for them and more aligned with their interests.

This is of course really important in making it possible for something different to occur than what is possible with greater restriction. You need to move these things to create space for difference.

However, just moving these things isn’t enough. When people have been conditioned in a certain way, within certain limits, expectations, beliefs, within a certain story of success and failure, just moving the goalposts isn’t enough to create the change that we want to see. Even with more space and options, it’s likely that people will still act and behave within what is ‘known’ and within the culture in which they have been immersed to that point.

Therefore, even once you have opened up more space, there is a need for new cultural experience, stories and learning, to help people make use of that space, that freedom, that increase in choice that is available. You would think that a basic human drive and need for agency, autonomy and freedom would just rush into that new space and be happy and make the most of it, and in some cases that might be what does occur, but for the majority I would say it does not.

Many people need to see things being modelled to develop their own confidence to explore the previously unknown. They need to see someone ‘jump’ before they are willing to jump themselves. So just opening up the space for the jumping isn’t enough without the support to enable folks to take that opportunity. For more info on this, check out this video.

This is true in personal life as well as in changing institutions. Having more freedom theoretically, doesn’t necessarily translate to a greater use of that freedom in personal choices and actions, or awareness of that liberated space in felt and embodied sense. For some it does – but for many it doesn’t. For many people, a lot of fear and uncertainty remains, residual from past oppression and limitations, fear that feels very real and current, that there is a threat looming over their exploration of their own freedom, that keeps people in their cages long after they have been given a key to open the door.

That fear may well be justified – in exploring our freedom and liberation there is of course risk. Risk of failures, dead ends, risk of change. There is a sense of safety in sticking with what is known, even if that is a cage. A sense of self-protection that comes with never picking up our own potential freedom, instead staying limited but feeling more in control. The reaction of others can be diminishing to our confidence and will to thrive in our liberation and spaces of freedom.

I once heard a story about seals that were living in an aquarium in Scotland. Their pen was on the edge of the North Sea, so there was a wall in the sea that they stayed within, but just on the other side was the full North Sea. One time there was a big storm, and the waves were so high, that they went over this wall, and the seals were able to swim out into the sea, off and away. Only they didn’t swim away. Later on, the aquarium keepers found the seals, back at the wall, wanting to come back into their enclosure. I imagine they were hungry. They didn’t know what to do with the sea in any case. They wanted to come ‘home’ to their pen. Wild animals raised in captivity or who experience captivity for a while usually need a reintegration process, and careful handling to successfully be able to survive in the wild lives they were born to live.

To get the most of the freedom and liberation we already have, and the freedom and liberation we want, to be able to explore that fully and make the most of it in this life that we have – to live in integrity and express our full selves, we may need to skill up. Take it on as an active challenge to be in that space, challenge ourselves, push ourselves a bit, understand that it might be a discipline to persist in exploring the liberation we already have, let alone what might be to come when goal posts move. What might we need to learn to make the most of that space and opportunity? To be more free, self-directed, to be more in our own experience of consent? What might we need to know? Is there more space for this in your life already than you think, that is yet to be fully explored? In your pocket do you have a key to the lock, maybe the door is already wide open…

I’ve been in a weird and reflective time lately. There has been a lot of change in my personal life over the last five years, huge shifts and pivots, and now I find myself in what feels like an entirely new situation. It’s fair to say that my life today is somewhat unrecognisable compared to how it was back then – or it least it feels like that, and yet, there are some things that remain the same. Isn’t that the strange thing of a growing and changing life – everything can change and yet somehow not everything? Even when all is different, some things just aren’t.

You could say that when change happens, it’s like everything gets dumped out on the table, and then over time, comes to form some kind of order again. If life were a big box full of things, there are these seismic times where it feels like everything in the box gets dumped out on the table. Then you sit with an empty box for a while. Then you find you need to go through everything on the table. And then, in Marie Kondo style, you can pick up each thing, see how it makes you feel, and decide whether it goes back in the box again or not. Maybe some things got a bit damaged in the tipping out stage, maybe there is the need for repair. Maybe some things got smashed. Other’s look the same, and can go back in. Others, you don’t want back.

For me the constants have been the love and regard I have for my children. My grounded commitment to the work of consent-based education and life. My love of and need for nature. Love for myself and others – although there has been plenty of wounding, sense-making, feeling, healing and grieving regarding the complexity and nuance of this. My love of life and hopefulness has stayed. Even in the darkest of times, even if it’s just a bare thread, there has been some access to this sense of light and connection.

What has come into the box in greater measure than before – magic and spiritual practice is one thing. I realised a few years ago, once we had the Cabin up and running, that I/we/the work needed more ‘protection’ than just the everyday. Systems seek to preserve themselves, the dominant paradigm does, patriarchy does. It’s not a level or equal playing field, you need more help than that in creating the new. I knew we/I needed more help. And I knew that for me that meant something magical and ‘other’. From that realisation came the development of a personal and group spiritual practice, a magical practice, and a more magical way of being in the world, in work, in my life. This new thing came along with all the change in my life and has acted as a life saving and tethering force.

And what now for the movement? When a lot of change is happening, it can feel like you just have to keep your head down until you get to the other side. Then, once things have settled out, you can look up and out more, get a sense again of the wider and bigger picture. What is happening out there? Where do things stand?

Things are different now, I think they are. Covid has had its impact on that, political, economical stuff of course too. Things are not the same as ‘back in the day’. Organising doesn’t feel the same, the movement doesn’t feel the same, people don’t feel the same. Or maybe, I am wondering as I write, is it because I don’t feel the same that everything else looks different? I don’t think so. The conditions have changed, and things have changed and are changing? I don’t think I know where everything stands right now in the same way that I felt that I did before. I feel like home ed is different – perhaps its because my children are getting older so I’m not in the same stage, not being in and seeing other folk in the early stages of parenthood, that it feels now kind of separate? What is happening now with people who are just becoming parents – what’s going on for them? Is there the same discussion and discourse as there was for me 12 years ago? Is there the same rage and upset and emergent activism around the experience of babies and young children, the pain at the absence of healthy culture, relationships, systems, belonging, community? For baby humans and their parents? Especially their mothers?

And for folk in more of my circumstances who have opted out of the mainstream system, who want different for their children, the cycle breakers, those who have been drawn to and believe in a consent-based, self-directed way, and who’s children are now coming up to or in the early teen years. What is going on there? I have this feeling that folk are losing their track, and/or that there is a fearfulness emerging? New and different pressures to contend with? I feel like, there is something with the age of the children, the distance from the early years and or perhaps fatigue, that is causing people to lose some connection to their previous ways, and instead be drawn to something that is more in keeping with ‘normal’ or something? Like they are looking at their older children and thinking: now it’s time for you to do proper things and it’s the end of play. Now it’s time for the ‘real world’ and getting serious, or something. Maybe some kind of letting go is happening? Perhaps there is conflict, new and/or different needs expressed by young people themselves in all of this?

The things that mattered before… where are they now? And who are the new folk coming up?

I wonder what you think about it? Do you know what’s going on?

Alongside all of this wondering about the bigger and broader picture is wondering about the smaller more intimate picture of my own work, my use of time and energy. The Cabin and the Lodge, the team and community making that happen, including me – I’m part of a team, and that’s a wonderful thing, it’s a staple not to be taken for granted. I’m loving doing 1:1 work and small group consultancy, and the learning/training events, retreats, it’s deep work that feels great. Creating spaces of realisation, creating spaces where consent-based self-directed culture is normal and experienced by people of different ages. It’s healing and exciting. It’s peaceful and high energy. It’s creative and real. And at the same time I’ve been asking myself questions about how and where I work, who I work with – am I in the right places, doing the right thing, with the right folk? Am I lined up right for my purpose and what I’m meant to do here? I think the answer might be ‘yes and’ rather than ‘either or’. Yes I am, and I’m going to be doing more/different. As I line up right, I know my dance partners can and will find me.

Self-esteem is probably the most crucial aspect of a consent-based, self-directed life. It is also the thing that is most attacked by the receding dominant culture in which we live.

It’s hard to be self-loving in a meaningful way, if you don’t have solid self-esteem. It’s hard to make hard choices for yourself in your best interests, if your self-esteem is wobbly.

It’s easier to compromise yourself, betray yourself, become distanced from yourself, underestimate yourself, if your self-esteem is undermined and weak.

Self-esteem is the place to engage, to get a consent-based, self-directed life on track. To be connected to our self, to express in authentic ways, to care about ourselves enough to walk the tough but extraordinary path of a consent-based and self-directed life – we must engage with our experience of and current status of self-esteem. Solid self-esteem is also what enables us to face accountability, personal responsibility, to own our part of things, to meaningfully be accountable in our lives and relationships. To take personal responsibility for what we are responsible for and our own personal power.

Self-esteem is how much you take yourself seriously, how much you honour and respect yourself.

How’s your self-esteem at the moment?…

Self-Esteem Repair

If your answer is that your self-esteem needs some help, what next?

The steps towards healthy, strong, grounded self-esteem, are the same that you would take in repairing other kinds of relationships.

You have to rebuild trust through care and action.

You need to show your self-esteem, through your words and actions, that you are sorry and are going to build a different type of relationship with it. And you need to build this relationship through how you are, and what you say and do.

Over time, this will result in your self-esteem becoming stronger, more resilient, and more able to be the solid core you need it to be for your experience of self-direction and consensuality.

This can look like:

– being more honest

– being kinder (not necessarily ‘nicer’) to yourself, and others

– exploring and expressing your boundaries in a more explicit and forthcoming way

– engaging with your intuition (different to your triggered or stress reactions) and acting more from that place

– taking more risks by showing more of your self to the outside world

– noticing things in your environment that are directly either damaging to your self esteem or at least obstructing you from meeting your needs, and addressing these things in a direct way

Repairing and rebuilding relationship and trust takes time, persistence, and consistency.

I am excited to run the Consent-Based Education course again this year, starting in September. The course will have two parts: 6 online sessions via Zoom over 6 weeks, and a weekend in-person workshop at the end. It is an introduction and launch pad for those seeking to better understand, integrate and practice in consent-based ways.

You can book either just the online part, or the online and weekend workshop. The course will be assisted by Sarah Stollery and Max Hope.

What is the course about?

As family culture and education seeks to evolve beyond the traditional patriarchal, authoritarian model, and people make the choice to live together in more respectful, authentic and socially just ways that acknowledge the personhood and agency of children, essential questions come up as to what this means for our relationship with ourselves and others, and our outlook and interaction with the world around us. How can we be with ourselves and the children in our lives in a new way?

Consent-Based Education is a response to this tension. What happens when authoritarianism/patriarchy, the basis of all our existing systems, is stripped away, and we become more curious and individually empowered in our own lives, and desire this space for the children in our lives too? What does it look like to move beyond patriarchy, power-over and coercion, to embrace our own personal power, agency and autonomy, and question the education and social norms and values that we’ve experienced until now? What does consent mean to us, and how does it relate to experiencing authenticity, integrity, self-actualisation and healthy, honest relationships?

Who is this course for: This course is designed for parents and people who live and/or work together with children, who want to explore and go deeper into their understanding and practice of Consent-Based Education, for their own personal development and practice, to support their own and others life-long learning and growing in a consent-based way.

This might include: Unschoolers, feminist/social/environmental justice/decolonising oriented parents and educators, founders and facilitators of self-directed and consent-based education settings, home educators interested in children’s rights.

The online component of the course is made up of the following six sessions:

Session 1: What is Patriarchy, its impact and effect?

Session 2: Breaking Cycles – the Process of Change 

Session 3: What is Consent-Based Education?

Session 4: Love and Relationships, Boundaries and Freedom

Session 5: Living and Learning, Creativity and Flow 

Session 6: The Bigger Picture

Each session will last for two hours, and include the following:

Agreement making (how we are going to work and play together), 

Check-ins, 

Me sharing on the theme of the session,

Chance for reflection, questions and deepening the inquiry, 

Exploring putting the theory into practice,

Check out. 

The time and dates for the online sessions are as follows:

Time: 7-9pm (GMT)

Dates:

Tuesday 6th September

Tuesday 13th September 

Tuesday 20th September

Tuesday 27th September

Tuesday 4th October

Tuesday 11th October

Weekend Workshop:

Following the Zoom calls is an in person weekend, which will be a chance to meet, consolidate what has been covered on the Zoom calls, and go further in helping you to experience and learn practices key to consent-based education. The weekend will be held in Furneux Pelham, East Hertfordshire.

The two days will include:

Day 1: Stepping into Your Power: This work is activism, and it requires activism spirit and energy to have a chance to come to life. In order to do this, and to hold a new shape of consent-based education, we need to become aware of our own energy and power to do this work. This ability is also crucial to our experience of consent-based education and self-direction. We need to learn how to care for ourselves, as activists, and how to support our own healing journeys. This day will be focused on the physical and emotional experience of this, and will be a deep breath of oxygen to the embers of your own power and activist nature.

Day 2: Practical Tools: On day two we will explore and practice together practical tools that support the creation of a consent-based education. This will include: how to hold a meeting (can be adapted for a meeting of 2 people up to a meeting of a group), conflict navigation, setting up a consent-based ‘frame’, how to share and make risk management agreements, boundaries and identity work.

The in person workshop days will be held in a consent-based and self-directed way, similar to how we hold the day at the Cabin and the Lodge.

Dates for the Weekend Workshop:

Saturday 29th October and Sunday 30th

Communication during the course:

Once booked on to the course and before we begin, I will add you to a private Facebook group, which we will use for the duration of the course, to share the resources that lead in to each session, to use as a community space, and to post links for the Zoom calls. Before each session, a set of resources are shared for you to explore in whatever way you want to.

An important note about the transformational nature of the course:

This course has a transformational quality to it. It is designed through the lens and path of my own journey, practice and experience, which has been profoundly transformative and impactful to every part of my life. Every time I have run this course cycle so far, it has been a positive disruptor, has had a deep impact on my life, and been catalystic of change. This has included the ending of important relationships, changes in family relationships, personal growth, loss, grief, the emergence of new things, experience of self-actualisation and deep personal and spiritual alignment. I have witnessed this also happen in the lives of those that have taken part. You will be encouraged to manage your participation in the course in the way that you feel ready for and is right for you, however it is important that in booking on to the course you do so knowingly of the impact it may have, and that change may be catalysed as a result. 

To book:

There are two options for booking this course. You can book just the online part, or the online part and the in person weekend.

For online: £288

For online and the weekend: £468

Please note: Breakfast and lunch is included on Saturday and Sunday for the in-person weekend, and there will be an option to join for dinner on the Saturday night. Overnight accommodation is not included, please ask if you need advice on local options.

This is a small group course, with a maximum of 20 spaces available.

If you would like to book or have any questions about the course (including around payment plans or access needs regarding the course cost), please contact me at: hello@sophiechristophy.com

My first piece of education activism – activism in the traditional sense of the term ie direct action – happened when I was 6 years old.

It was during my second year in primary school. What had happened was, we were spending a bunch of time on writing practice.

The writing practice made my arm hurt. I don’t remember what I thought about it – whether I enjoyed it intellectually or was interested in it in other ways for example, but the issue was, regardless of that, it made my body physically hurt.

I reached a point of thinking this wasn’t a good thing, that doing something every day to the extent it that made my body be in pain probably wasn’t the best idea. One day during break time, I asked the other people in my class if writing also made their arms hurt. It was impossible to tell during the class time itself, because everyone just had their heads down and was getting on with it as far as I could see.

So I asked everyone – Hey, does all this writing make your arm hurt too? And the answer was a yes, other people in my class were also in pain because of the writing practice.

It’s not like I didn’t like picking up a pen at all. I totally did. For evidence, here is a picture I drew of my own accord age 3 whilst filling in time at my dad’s office. It’s not like I was anti-mark making or anything, I was just anti-doing it to the point of being in pain:

Anyway. I as I said, I asked the other folk what was going on for them, they said it hurt them too, so I said, what shall we do about it? There was a general sense that we couldn’t do anything about it, and I said, something along the lines of, that not being good enough and we had to do something because carrying on as we were wasn’t a good option.

I suggested that the next time we were in the class and writing practice started, that we stand on our chairs, and say: “Writing makes our arms ache”. That this might get the teacher’s attention, and then she might not make us do it anymore, or at least not as much.

Yes, ok let’s do that, was the response from the others.

So there we were, back in the classroom again. Nervous anticipation in the air. Knowing that if the teacher started us up with some writing practice again, that this opportunity for action lay ahead of us.

The teacher instructed us to start writing practice.

People got out their notebooks and writing tools. They began to write, and just in that moment of commencing, I stood up on my chair, and began the chant: “Writing makes our arms ache”.

And no one else moved a muscle. Not one, single other person, also got up on their chair.

The teacher I think was pretty shocked, baffled, by this scene.

I mean, look at me, not exactly the image of a super rebel:

But I believe I was pretty badass that day. I was also supremely let down by my classmates that kept their heads nicely tucked under the parapet. I was standing on my chair! Seriously! And they left me hanging, to face my fate alone.

There wasn’t really any fate. After a little while, the teacher just asked me to sit down again. And the writing practice continued. Due to lack of support, my action was stopped in it’s tracks, and I gave up on that method as a means to affect change. I gave up on my classmates too. Maybe other people didn’t care as much as I did. Maybe they weren’t really bothered and were ok with the run of the mill and their experience within that. Maybe that just wasn’t the kind of action that worked for them. I don’t know.

I do know that the teacher could have listened and backed off the writing practice a bit, or at least asked me if I was ok.

Seeing as we’re in Pride month right now, I thought it might be a nice time to share with you some of my own stories and journey as a queer gay woman.

I haven’t ever felt closeted, I also didn’t feel like I was gay when I was younger. As a child and young person, I had a strong sense of my own sexuality and sexual energy, but I would have said at the time that it was the person/energy I was drawn to, rather than their specific gender identity or sex. I suppose, if I had been given decent sex and relationship education when I was growing up, I would have had a better idea about the range of sexuality and relationships that were possible as part of the human experience, and I may have identified as pansexual for example. But, because my schooling happened during the Section 28 era, different sexualities and identities were completely erased, sex ed was rubbish, and there was so much general homophobia and transphobia and fearfulness about these things, that I had massive language and knowledge blindspots as a result. I sincerely hope it’s better for young people now, I believe that it is, and certainly it is in the settings that I work in.

I did know that people could be different from just the heteronormative model, because my own close family was more diverse than that which I am grateful for, but I didn’t have the experience of growing up in a proud queer family, or remember having affirming and open conversations about these things (my family situation was very complex). So, I was largely living in a super straight world, with a super straight youth experience and peer group. Even girls kissing girls was framed within a male gaze and as a part of a provocation for the boys. There was no queerness to be found in my peer group. No one was out, in fact, from school through to the end of uni, none of the young people around me were out. It wasn’t until after uni that some people I knew dared to come out – it makes me sad to think of what they might have lost because of that, but I understand that it was for their own protection.

Anyway, despite feeling that it was the ‘person’ that I was attracted to rather than a sex or gender, there was definitely a bias in my sense of attraction when I was younger towards masculine cis men. I wasn’t holding out for the girls at all, and I didn’t know any gender queer folk, which is probably also why I didn’t feel closeted. If had been in a more queer context, perhaps I would have explored more or noticed more, but I was happy dating and being in relationships with cis men, and straight relationship felt good to me and compatible with the sense I had of myself at the time and in my perceived future. From the age of 17 I had relationships with straight men, including getting married in my 20s.

I would say that it wasn’t until after my youngest child reached just about 3 years old, that I started to question my sexuality, or how I was experiencing it at that point. Around the same time as this, but for reasons separate to it (believe me), my marriage was falling apart. This was truly devastating, and not something I had ever imagined or wanted to happen. I was desperate for my marriage and family to remain intact, but it seemed that that was an impossibility, which will always be one of the the greatest traumas and tragedies in my life.

At that time, I was in a process of questioning many things. I had already been on a de-schooling journey for quite a few years by this point, and was questioning almost everything in my life, and in culture and society. It was a time of a lot of flux, reconsideration, opening up and falling apart. My work around consent and consensuality was also really reaching a peak point too, which had a massive impact on my sense of my own lived experience, and led to me questioning how much of my current lived experience felt consensual to me. The answer was, not very much!

Some way into this, I met an amazing gay woman, who I felt totally attracted to in a way that woke up my whole sense of myself and life. After years of sliding further and further into a lived experience that didn’t hold me, meet my needs or nourish me, I started to feel alive again. I started to wonder whether my sexuality was undergoing some shifting process, and that honestly is what I think was happening. I’m inclined to believe that for me, once my youngest child was no longer breastfeeding or so dependent on me in a physical way any more, that something in my system did start moving and evolving, and that this included my sense of and experience of my own sexuality and attraction. I was in relationship with her for just over 2 and a half years and I am so grateful for that time.

I felt very much as though my own sexuality swung far away from straight cis men. Perhaps some of this was a reaction to my marriage breaking down and the experiences within that, but it also felt true in its own right. I strongly felt that I was gay, a queer gay woman. I would say I was also feeling more gender queer than I had before, I think the early years of motherhood and maternity had pulled me into a strong feminine energy. Now I feel like I am in a feminine and masculine energy balance, where at different times I lean more into a feminine energy, and at others more of a masculine energy, some times it feels very balanced between the two. Again, I don’t feel like I’ve been in any kind of gender closet, I just think that my sense of myself is growing and evolving over the course of my life in a way that feels really natural and empowering.

It’s wonderful to feel that my whole energetic range is available to me in this way, through shades of masculine and feminine energy, and that I can play with it and explore it as feels right to me and to the situation or environment that I am in. In terms of my sexuality now, I would probably still say what I said as a young person, that it’s the person/their energy that I am drawn to, so perhaps pansexual is the right label for me. But, in some ways it doesn’t feel like that label says enough. I do think it is the person, but think I also do need that tension, or friction, I’m not sure what the right word is for it, of same sex/gender bending queerness. I can describe myself as a gay woman and it feel like a fit, but I don’t think it quite says enough either because my gayness is a more queer than that! So maybe queer gay woman, or even queer gay person, is the best mash up – it can depend on how I’m feeling or what is happening at a given time.

What I know is that I am really happy for myself, to have this experience, to be queer and in a queer, gay relationship. To be able to live my life publicly and in a proud way – something that has only so recently become possible for people not in heteronormative relationships, and can still feel and be out of reach for many. I am so grateful for all the activists and change makers of the past who have pushed and fought for social change that has made my experience today possible. Who have made it safer for me and my family, and for other people that I love and work with – I am committed to the continuation of that work. I have the joy of living with my partner, Max, who is brilliant and wonderful and so good for me, who I get to love, live life with, be creative with, collaborate and work with. To be a family with. I am so proud and happy to be with her, to be queer, to have a family that I love. To have what feels like broken free of the shackles and barriers that confine traditional notions and lines of sexuality, gender and relationship. To be in a liberated space where I get to live an expanded life every day.

If you would like some Pridey viewing and more gay stories, I recently watched Heartstopper and Rebel Dykes and loved them both.

 Authors: Sophie Christophy & Max Hope. This piece of writing was originally published here on Write On Changemakers…

Sophie Christophy and Max Hope love being outdoors and connecting with wild places but are curious about whether their experiences of ‘the wild’ and ‘nature’ are the same. Sophie is a feminist and children’s rights activist, an unschooling parent and Co-Founder of The Cabin and The Lodge, two self-directed and consent-based settings for home educated children. Max is Director of Rewilding Education, co-facilitator of Call of The Wild and co-lead at The Lodge. They are activists and partners in work and in life. In this exchange of emails, they explore the overall theme of ‘what is it with the wild’? and debate what it means to feel deeply connected to nature. 

This dialogue follows on from two previous ones: the first on Rewilding and Unschooling and the second on Creating Radical Changes in Education.

Sophie:

Max, at the end of our last piece of writing, we were exploring the question of where we put ourselves in the process of change and activated work. In part of it I mention the “self-healing through nature-based experiences” aspect of your work. You make reference to the Mary Oliver quote and question: “how will I use my one wild and precious life?”, and in our first piece of writing together we dove into the query of whether rewilding and deschooling (and then unschooling) are theoretically and experientially comparable.

I can’t help but think of the phrase ‘going out into nature’ – words we often say, often in moments where there is a need for relief – and how that idea shows up in our work and lives. I’m interested in what this means to you, because it is such a strong inspiration and constant theme. Why do we care about this? What does it mean to and for you, for us? It’s easy to say the words, but what is the story behind them for you? How is it defined, significant? Can you maybe tell me how this all began for you?

Max:

Let’s start with language. Nature. Going into nature. Nature connection. What does it really mean? I’m going to come clean here. Although I am surrounded by folk who use the term ‘nature’ and ‘nature connection’, and I sometimes use it myself, I don’t like these phrases very much. I far prefer talking about the wild. That’s my language. The wild. Rewilding. The wilderness.

What even is ‘nature connection’? I do like the distinction between ‘nature contact and ‘nature connection’. Going outside and walking up a hill whilst wearing headphones and looking at the ground is an example of nature contact. We are with it and yet not in it. We are not really engaged, not connected. Nature connection is deeper than this. It is about seeing, hearing, paying attention, caring, being impacted, and so on.

Having a relationship with the wild implies reciprocity. It is not a one-way relationship. It’s not about using the wild as a resource and taking, taking, taking. It’s not simply about saying ‘being in the wild makes me feel better and so I’ll do more of it.’ I mean, it’s great if being in the wild makes me feel better, of course, but what does the wild get out of this? How can I have a relationship, a real relationship, with birds and animals and rocks and the sea and the sky and the elements? What does this mean?

I have been lucky to have had some profound experiences in the wild. I remember lying on the earth one night, as part of a wilderness solo, and hearing the earth breathing. I have shouted for the wind and the elements and asked them for help in lighting my impossible-to-light fire and watching in amazement as the flames burst to life. I have slept next to a river (yes, the beautiful River Dart) and waited as the water connected directly with my soul.  Crazy huh? Must be my imagination playing tricks on me. Must be the influence of tiredness or illegal substances. No. Really, no. I have come to know and see and believe that I am a part of the wild, a small part of a deeply interconnected ecosystem. This is not a cognitive or intellectual realisation. It is a felt sense, an embodied experience. It’s real and it’s important, to me anyway.

I find it so hard to explain. I get the sense that some folk know what I am talking about. They know. They feel it too. They have a yearning, a deep desire, a longing, a longing to be part of the wild. Other do not. They might enjoy being outdoors, going to the seaside, walking in the countryside, but not in the same way. These folk enjoy the outdoors, but they enjoy lots of other things too. For me, this is about finding the place where my soul can be still, where my mind can settle, where I can zoom out and find a different perspective. I go into the wild when I need solitude, when I need support, when I need to find myself. My inner compass is strongest in the wild. I can hear myself. I can tune into my soul.

What is the wild like for you Sophie? How do you feel when you are in the wild?

Sophie:

I’m going to write in response to two of the things that you mentioned: language, and your last question. Language is important, and at the same time, I also hear myself saying “I don’t care about language”. I think this is because there’s two things going on at the same time for me: one is a desire to clearly express myself and be understood, and the other is a desire for a better shared language to start with – one that doesn’t require to mop up the mess and expend energy on clarifying difficulties in understanding caused by our patriarchal, coloniser belief system constructed language starting point – our shared language is so problematic from the start that it’s hard to communicate when you are speaking from a place that is trying to exist out of that culture. And then it gets fatiguing to even bother trying to get on the same page and understand each other, which is where the “I don’t care about language” thing. I care about feeling and communication, but wrestling with the inadequate expression and depth of the English language and dominant culture feels like a waste of my energy.

My definitions of nature and wild, just so it’s clear what I mean in using those words:

Nature: true essence

Wild: undomesticated, untamed spaces and experiences

What is the wild like for me? How do I feel in the wild? I think that really depends. I don’t have a romanticised view of the wild. I understand it as a space of life and death. I know the feeling that you speak of, the sense of interconnectivity, of being part of an energetic system, an eco system, grounded and bigger than just our selves. I know the sixth sense of feeling intimately connected to shall we say, plant and land nature – feeling connection to and kinship with trees, earth, moss and lichen. Wanting to feel aligned with the birds, and animals, and have a sense of understanding and rhythm with them – to learn from experiences and witnessings.

I also know the feeling of loss and death, and near misses, that I also associate with the wild. The most extreme until now probably having been the experience of giving birth – that for sure was my wildest experience to date. I wanted it to be unmedicated, as ‘medically’ unassisted as possible, I knew strongly on some level that it was important to the transition to feel every aspect of that process and be present for it, as part of my own transformation and initiation to motherhood. I trusted I was held in it. It was also the closest I have ever felt to my own oblivion, the most extreme and intense physical experience, something that felt ‘to hell and back’, that took me to edges I didn’t know existed. Some people do die in that process – is there anything wilder than that? Nothing is the same after that. And maybe in other ways, being caught in a huge storm where you feel and think that you might die, could be equally personally catalystic. But maybe not just a storm, what about the ‘wild’ experience of a separation, an intense grief. But also, nearly drowning in the sea, or feeling lost somewhere and not knowing if you will be found or can find your way?

What do you think about these different edges of wild? The potential for holding and feeling of connection, but also the near death and the breaking down?

Max:

Is there anything wilder than the experience of giving birth? Wow, What a question. Although I have never given birth myself, as you know, I am sure you are right. The way you describe it is so visceral, elemental, connected, at one with the universe. And yes, so life and death. Mothers die. Babies die. Just like they do in the wild. As humans, we believe that we have got to a stage where we can control everything, control life and death, medicalise and intervene in every process but of course, we can’t. I wonder whether the process of giving birth connects you to your own nature, your own wild? And does it make you feel connected to all the other species, especially mammals, that also share this visceral life-or-death experience?

Your story has also taken me down a different train of thought, and that is about women and their wildness. It hadn’t occurred to me until a couple of years ago when someone told me that they thought a ‘wild man’ was to be celebrated and yet a ‘wild woman’ was to be feared. What they meant, I think, is that wild women are characterised by a particular energy: an undomesticated, untamed, dare I say uncontrollable one. Taming wild women, controlling the wildness within women, is therefore a function of patriarchy. Wild women are colonised, their bodies are controlled, their experiences are diminished or belittled. From the moment that girls are born – or more accurately, from the moment that they are allocated a gender with a set of social expectations about passivity, gentleness, nurture, kindness, care – they are tamed. And yet childbirth, as you describe, is not always controllable, not always containable. Wild women burst forth.

I fear I haven’t answered your questions. Your writing was not just about birth. You also mentioned other ‘extreme’ human experiences that might bring us closer to our wildness. Drowning. Feeling lost. Possibly having a near-fatal accident. Being stranded somewhere overnight without food and with no certainty of rescue. The authentic feeling of being in a life-or-death situation. I haven’t had any of these. I mean, I continually get lost, as you know, and it can at times feel as if I will never find my way back, but I think that somewhere, even in my panicked state, I do know that I will survive. It’s not really life or death.

I am thinking about the growing interest in creating (or recreating) extreme experiences in the wild. Vision Quests. Rites of passage adventures. Trekking up Mount Everest. Camping out amongst wild animals. Some of these are designed in such a way as to take the human experience to an edge, with fasting, sleep deprivation, deliberate severance from routines and day-to-day resources, all with the intention of intensifying the experience of nature and bringing us closer to our wild selves. I wonder if these experiences are trying to take us closer to the life-or-death experiences that you mention. I have chosen to sign up for some of these experiences. I have done Vision Quests. I have done solos in the wild. I have camped out in Alaska amongst wolves and bears and lynx. I can attest that my senses were heightened. I did feel more connected to the wild world and to myself. These were powerful, transformational experiences. They give me something different, some visceral, that everyday life does not.

I’ll end for now. So much to say. So many questions. I invite you to go down any of the paths I have been exploring here, but if you do want a particular question, I would be curious to know your thoughts about wildness, gender, and patriarchy?

Sophie:

I’m so happy that this writing has taken this turn. It feels really good and juicy, and to the point, which I love. I’m going to reply to the question “whether the process of giving birth connects you to your own nature, your own wild? And does it make you feel connected to all the other species, especially mammals?” Yes, is my answer. It felt very animal, and very wild in the sense that it fragmented all that is culture and containing of our deepest energy. Giving birth felt very animal to me, and it felt very sacred at the same time. It felt deep and important in that it reached all the edges and went beyond. I felt forever blown apart and changed. My body also felt very animal, all of the things, the fluids, the fur, the skin, the membranes, the breastfeeding, I was like an animal mama with my animal baby.

And yes, your question about wildness, gender and patriarchy. Patriarchy is a process of control, dismembering and dominance. Just look at what happened when patriarchal colonisers encountered indigenous community and culture – they sought to sterilise and destroy it in equal measure. Patriarchy is a violent fuck up, as is its false notion of a gender binary and binary gender based socialisation. Boys are tamed out of their wildness of heart and care, out of a large amount of their emotional range and experience. Out of their bodies and boundaries too I think to allow them to receive and deliver violence. Out of their own feminine leaning energy. Girls are socialised out of their strength, confidence, leadership, loudness, bodies and boundaries too. All are conditioned to please and achieve through domination or withdrawal. The impact of patriarchy goes on and on. Wild women are feared, for sure. Wild men are rare, maybe, adding to their allure, perhaps because of the hint that they might be both strong and emotionally connected too. Unless by wild men it is meant violent men, but that is surely something other than what we mean here. I don’t know how many truly wild men and women there are, given the culture we marinate in and contexts accessible to us to meaningfully explore this. It’s a tough path back to wildness and nature.

I wanted to write also about something else that you mentioned, this idea that you shared that you haven’t been in a life or death situation, in an ‘extreme’ human experience. And I want to ask you, was it not like that when you came out? Didn’t that feel like a tightrope of life and death, the risk of telling? We can feel the risk of death in different ways. Feeling rejected, that you don’t belong, that you aren’t approved of, or ‘ok’, that need to belong, to be loved, that being threatened can feel like a life or death situation – I think that’s why people stay closeted to a certain extent, there’s a fear that to come out would be tantamount to dying. Or causing the death of the person that other people think you are, and not wanting to do that. Do you think that coming out counts as a wild experience, like the ones we are talking about here? There are some many ways to come out in a patriarchal culture. I think it’s all pretty wild to cross those lines, but what do you think?

Max:

Is ‘coming out’ a wild experience? Hum. I’ve never thought about it in that way. My coming out happened a long long time ago – over 30 years ago – which was way before I thought much about wildness. Or, I should say, my initial coming out, my first coming out, my most important coming out, the one to myself and to those closest to me. Coming out is not a one-off experience in our world, as you know. But let me think back to that time.

If we consider wildness as an internal process, as you have described earlier, as a return to self, a return to our own true essence or nature, as a connection to authenticity, then yes, accepting myself as queer and then choosing to tell others about this was indeed a part of returning to my wild self. For me, denying this would have forced me to live a deeply inauthentic life. I couldn’t – or chose not to – do this. Coming out was about my own alignment.

But is it life or death, an extreme human experience? What if we look at it though this framing of wildness, like surviving a storm or getting lost in the wilderness? Yes, I guess it is in a metaphorical sense although I don’t want to exaggerate my own experience. Many LGBTQ+ people face a real danger in coming out. They are disowned and diminished, and they face physical, emotional and sexual violence. They are murdered. This really is life or death. It was not like that for me, and even in my darker moments and most disturbing fantasies, I did not envisage an actual threat to my life. I knew I would be OK. I knew I would survive. And I did. But the fear of what might happen was real. The fear of being cut off, shut out, of being a disappointment, of not living up to expectations, of losing family and friends. The fear was real. And some of those fears did play out, yes. And so, I think it is probably right to say that it was an extreme experience. An unsettling, life-shattering, life-changing experience.

How can the wild – the external wild – help us with these experiences? When people choose to go on a Vision Quest, it is often framed as having three stages – severance, the quest, and the return. The first stage is a deliberate separation from the things that tether us to our everyday lives. This includes identities, societal expectations, gendered roles, family dynamics and so on. A death – or a death of a particular aspect of the self – might be a welcome outcome of a quest. This includes gender identities. I have heard stories of people who have gone out on quest with one name and gender identity and returned with new ones. That’s powerful. The fact that they go through this transition alone, cut off from other humans, whilst held in a wild space, is significant here. The wild can hold us and be with us in many ways. The wild does not have the same expectations as our selves, our families, our communities and so on. The wild just lets us be.

I am reading a book about gender identities, and it contains this short poem:

In a forest

With snow

Down a path.

I ask,

‘If a person is alone in a forest

Do they have a gender?’

(Mina Tolu in Non Binary Lives: An Anthology of Intersecting Identities).

For me, having an LGBTQ+ identity leads to interesting questions when I am in the wild. Do I belong here? Can I see my experiences mirrored in nature? What can the wild tell me about myself and the way I live my life? What can it tell me about human constructions of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and so on?

Sophie. I would love you to tell me more about what you think in relation to these questions?

Sophie:

I would love to start by adding more to what you have said about death. I’ve said before, that I feel like I’ve “died a thousand times”. These haven’t been physical deaths, but deaths and ending of sorts. My experience of death in this way, is when you feel and let everything shatter around yourself, radically let go, in order to do what needs to be done, what you can feel inside is the right thing to do. Even when this is against the dominant culture. Even when this should be a recipe for shame and rejection. Even when this feels like entering an unknown and unforecast existence. 

This might sound dramatic, but I’m not talking about big moves necessarily. I’m talking about small and silent deaths, and more obvious and visible ones. The experience of “stepping out alone” can feel like a death in a world where we mostly try to belong and conform to one extent or another in order to be safe. Now that I use tarot cards and other divination tools, and am keenly aware of my own intuition and spiritual connection, I can understand these deaths and their purpose in that context, in their necessity. Being in and feeling connection to nature and it’s cycles, also normalises this as part of life- in fact, not accepting and being embracing of death and change seems unnatural and counter intuitive when you can witness the cycles, rhythms and movement around you.

The snake that sheds its skin. The creature that transforms from caterpillar to butterfly, with a melted stage in the middle. The cycle of deciduous trees that gradually emerge, are lush and bear flower and fruit, then turn to brown, wither and shed to rot back into the ground. The waves, and movement of the tide, rushing in, rushing out, being high, being low, being still, being in storm. 

A bodily death is inevitable to us all, but there are many other deaths to experience on the course of a life time, and many accompany a path of self-liberation and rewilding when you live in a culture with a violent history of patriarchy, coloniality, disconnected from all that is and instead based on fearful coercive and controlling power over dynamics.

For me, what nature can do for us, and this is coming back to the questions at the end of your last writing, is open up that space for questioning, for difference, for the crack in the door. In nature we can see diversity and difference, we can see changes, cycles, rotting, rebirth. We can see options. We can see all kinds of behaviours and non-verbal expression. We can slow down and find ourselves in the mess of it all. And perhaps from there, we can look back at the rest (our lives, the dominant culture etc), and decide what it is we want to do with that. What do we keep, what has to go. The wild doesn’t tell us what to do or how to live. But it can create the space for us to hear those questions for ourselves, and look around us, and see that there are options. It can potentially still our nervous systems enough, for a little while, to move out of personal coping, defence strategies and survival behaviours, and into something more grounded, free, centred, and connected. Maybe we can actually hear ourselves. And if we can hold onto something of that when we return to ‘life’, we’re in a more powerful place to accept and even initiate change, for ‘death’, for our own liberation, for an ecosystemic experience. 

What is it that you find most difficult to hold on to, when you return from the wild? 

Max:

The wild has everything. When I allow myself the time and space to slow down and pay attention, it is easy to see life and death, gentleness and ferocity, nurture and destructiveness, and everything in between. What I see, most of all, is all beings – animals, plants, mosses, birds, soil, wind, rivers, seas etc – just getting on and doing their thing. They do not seem overly preoccupied with what anyone or anything else is doing. Although they operate as part of an interconnected ecosystem, they do not seem to worry about the bigger picture. They are just living, existing, surviving, thriving, living, dying and so on.

When I am in the wild, I slow down, and I can see myself in this same way. One small being, just doing my thing, doing my best, operating as part of an interconnected ecosystem. Living and dying. Surviving. Thriving. I can feel myself letting go of many everyday preoccupations and allowing myself to still my mind and body. My nervous system calms down. I can hear myself, I can feel my own internal compass, I can become grounded. It is a deeply nurturing and calming experience.

This is where it gets hard, and this is where I come back to your specific question. As I return from these experiences in the wild, whether they have lasted for a day or a week or longer, I can become overwhelmed by noise. I don’t mean the traffic noise and the sounds of human voices. I mean the noise that accompanies the lives of many of us. The noise of emails, of text messages, of people. The noise that is associated with a routine and a job and a family and friendships. The demands that are put on me and that I put on myself. The expectations that I have internalised about what it means to be a good person, a sibling, a child, a colleague, a friend, a lover, a partner and so on. All of that. Do birds and animals do that? Do they feel that pressure? The louder it gets, the harder it is to keep hold of myself. In my view, human beings have developed a way of being and of living that is very complicated. We are socialised to think, feel, and behave in particular ways and it is exhausting. For me, anyway. To try and peel back some of those layers – as you are so good at doing Sophie – is a continual process and it is hard work. In the wild, the caterpillar metamorphosises into a butterfly in the way you have described above, but with humans, this does not feel like a linear process. It is back and forth, one step forward and two steps back, slowly edging towards a more authentic and truer expression of ourselves.

The wild helps me to come back to myself.

Returning from the wild presents a challenge in keeping hold of myself, of being able to hear my soul calling to me.

My question for you, Sophie, runs the risk of anthropomorphising the wild world, but I am going to ask it anyway. Can you see yourself in the wild, and in particular, is there a creature or plant or other being that you feel a particular resonance with?

Sophie:

I loved reading that Max, and I’d love to answer your question! Yes I can see myself in the wild. I think I am the wild and so I can see myself all over the place! I think I see myself, and I also see difference to myself, and actually it’s in those spaces of contrast that I find the wild deeply helpful as it opens a question and a challenge. For example, when I see a fern growing out of a rocky wall, seemingly with no soil or traditional place to grow from, I see myself, my own resilience and ability to grow out of what looks like nothing, almost a mystery to the onlooker to understand: how does she do that? A beautiful mystery that must be being nourished and meeting it’s needs somehow. Then when I see the snail, and how it moves along at its slower pace, tracing this line, slowly along the surface, I think “Wow, I could be like that snail”. I could slow down, let everything fall away, go slow, leave a slippery glistening trail, let myself be led and inspired by that snail. And that helps me learn how I can be with myself in different ways and give myself the things that I need that don’t necessarily come to or occur to me in my usual way of being.

When I see a big strong oak tree, old as hundreds of years, that has been here forever, thick of trunk with deep roots strongly anchored in the earth and strong branches that can with stand any storm, staying strong and true and centred in its treeness, I think: yes, I am an oak tree, strong in the face of it all, an anchor for the eco-system around me, able to withstand the hurly and burly of the elements and time and the human made world, certain and secure. But then, when I see it’s thinner branches, and leaves, waving in the breeze, a sense of swaying and flexibility, a movement, response and softening to the wind and changes around it, it reminds that as well as being strong and anchored and secure, I can be an oak and also find some of that movement, that flexibility, that ‘give’, which ultimately is what helps the tree to endure and truly be strong over time. How both are needed in order to continue.

I guess in the wild I look for sameness and resonance, and difference and therefore opportunity to learn. Where can I see myself and feel connected and affirmed in my own nature and wildness, where can I see difference and potential and opportunity that might otherwise not be in my awareness as an option and possibility to explore, experiment with and potentially grow into.

The creatures in the wild that I am most drawn to are the most quirky and unusual (and perhaps often misunderstood): snails, bats, shrews, rats, woodlice, moles, frogs, sea horses and leafy sea dragons for example. The scrappy creatures that are funny and amazing and different, with special talents and intriguing ways of being. I love marsupials and platypuses in Australia – I have links to Australia and I think since childhood a connection to those animals that has formed some of my experience of wild life. I love them because they’ve survived with their quirks seemingly against the odds, and they strike me as creative and inspiring. I like possums and koalas and echidnas – animals with pouches! I breast-fed and put my babies in a pouch, so it’s no wonder really that I feel an affinity with these creatures. I’m grateful for the animals that remind us all that there’s lots of ways to look and be, so many different definitions of ‘cute’ and ways to exist in the world beyond the traditional, mainstream perspective.

How about you? What do you see of yourself in the wild?

Max:

I am drawn to the wolf. The symbolism of the wolf and the actual wolf. Wolf as the ultimate representation of the wild. Wolf as the domesticated dog gone feral (or is it the other way round?). But do I see myself in the wolf? Am I the wolf? The answer is no.

Much as I would love to see myself in the totem animals, the wolf and the bear and the lynx, the lion and the tiger and the whale, I have accepted that I am not these beings. I am a part of the ecosystem, along with everything else, but I am small. I do my thing in my own way, working hard to survive and thrive, but often I am unseen. When I had this realisation, whilst sleeping on the ground under some towering trees, I initially felt some sadness, but quite quickly this feeling was transformed into relief. As human beings, we are often burdened with a pressure of needing to ‘make an impact’ or ‘change the world’ and I have spent a lot of time worrying about whether my impact was enough, whether I really could change the world. Now, we could debate for hours about what impact I might or might not have had during my time on this earth, but for me, the acceptance that I was only a small being and operated as part of an interconnected system was significant. Pressure off. Ego in check. Focus on the here-and-now rather than the legacy that might be left behind. A tiny being. A blink of an eye. One gust of wind. A worker bee. One garden bird. A single fish. All important, of their own way, but only because every being is important. That is where I see myself.

Having said that, I picture a flock of birds where one is flying slightly differently, a school of fish where one looks as if it is carving out its own route, a cluster of trees in which one is standing apart from the rest. I see myself in non-conformity, in not fitting in. I see myself in beings which are surviving and thriving in unexpected ways. Queer ducks. Gender-bending clown fish. I see myself in the nature stories which are unreported and invisible and must be sought out.  Stories which are hidden within the dominant discourse of male dominance and survival of the fittest. Stories which are deliberately ignored by those who can only see the world through their own patriarchal lens. These beings are out there, in their thousands, and I see myself as one of them. The wild is diverse and if we want to see ourselves in the wild, we can find ourselves in that diversity. We just have to look more closely. We just have to pay attention.

Sophie, you started this piece by citing Mary Oliver, who asks “tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” (Poem: A Summer Day).

In the same poem, she also says:

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

And here, Sophie, is my question to you … but one for another day and another piece of writing. What for you, is a prayer?

Answers on a postcard, please.