6 minute read

YEAR OF THE INNER CHILD LIVE: NATURE

By Rachel Grant

If you prefer reading, here’s the transcript of the FaceBook Live.

Good morning and happy Monday. So nice to be here with you all and continuing our year of self care.

Oh my goodness. Last week we explored the idea of magnificence and how the world needs our brilliance and our grace.

One of the ways that showed up for me this past week was really thinking about the place in which my relationship deserves some grace, giving grace to my self, giving grace, to my partner.

We’ve been together for eight years now, so we pretty much have a handle on what was going on, and where our little places are, that we get caught up in with each other.

istock photo, kieferpix

The other day, I was talking with a friend about one of these things that happens in my relationship. We’ve tried different strategies, and it’s a minor thing at the end of the day. It really is. When I’m cooking, my honey loves to come in to the kitchen and give advice, switch things around and change the dial on the stove. good laugh. The other day he came in and he started to reach for the little dial, you know, temperature dial, and he just backed off. So maybe, and isn’t that fascinating, too, right? I just embrace it, but all of a sudden, it can change. Why? Oh, my goodness, that’s a bigger lesson for another day. into.

Wave a hand if that happens with your partner.

So I hope you had a wonderful week of noticing your brilliance, sharing your brilliance. Understanding that you are a gift to the world and you have something to bring.

One of my friends says to me, “You know, I’ve just decided that there are some things in my relationship that are just going to be forever fights, and they’re just going to be there. And so for whatever reason, there’s just no solution. There’s no getting around it. It’s just a thing.”

Of course, it matters what the thing is, and this is a pretty minor one. So I’m noticing that as I bring this place of ‘just grace and compassion’ into my relationship, it starts to be a little funny. We’ve started to have a

It’s nice to see all of you who are here listening to “Live.” Welcome, welcome. Let’s see what we have in store for this week. [Draws card for the week.] Okay, here we go. Here we go. Here we go. Okay. Try not to cheat. Okay. I think a lot of you are gonna love this one. NATURE!.

Oh, yeah! Getting out into nature as an act of self care. Take a walk in the beauty of nature. Feed your soul. Hell yeah! [Describes card.] We’ve got water, we’ve got trees. We’ve got this face in the sky. This person, that’s just completely beautiful contemplative, relaxed, restorative.

Nature is just legit when it comes to helping us decompress. My goodness, listening to the trees talking to us, feeling the breeze. Getting away from it all.

I’m reading a book right now about ADHD and studies have actually shown that for concentration, when people with ADHD go out and spend 15 minutes—take a nice walk into nature for 15 minutes—come back with more focus.

I think that might apply to a lot of us even if we haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD.

You know, the place that I grew up in Oklahoma—a little town, Bartlesville, Oklahoma—right out the door across the street was this big park. But if you then walked up the hill, you were in some woods. And if you went out the door to the right, and walked down past the apartment complex, there was the ‘Pathfinder.’ It was this paved path, but it meandered and meandered and went through the woods and then you could, of course, get off of that paved path and go off on these dirt paths. There were little ramps for biking and really cool places you could just explore. It was just exploration. As a kid just walking out the door, some places I became familiar with, but I would also often find brand new places, even though I knew these woods, so very well.

Now living here in San Francisco, I’m really close to the beach and the ocean and also to Golden Gate Park. So in many ways I’m living my life again. Circle, full circle, where I can walk out the door—I go to the right and there are the woods.

I have to tell you some of my best thoughts, some of my breakthroughs have come when I’m just out walking not trying to make it happen, but just being in nature.

So there’s soothing effects to being surrounded and it’s also grounding to just step outside the door and put your feet in some grass.

It doesn’t have to be an hour-long hike. It doesn’t have to be traveling to somewhere if you don’t have nature very accessible to you. I hope that you have at least a plot of grass nearby or sand or dirt where you can just take your shoes off and stand in your bare feet. (Barefoot or feet? Let’s take a vote.) In the dirt! It helps your body.

There’s a really cool book called Earthing. You can go check it out It talks a lot about the healing properties of just being connected to the earth. It has a lot to do with ions. I won’t go into a whole bunch of that. But standing for 5 to 10 minutes with your feet on the ground barefoot is restorative.

So I truly hope that you will take a moment this week and many moments this week to connect to nature. Another thought, just sit and listen to the birds. As I’m listening to the birds it made me think of that. What are the different ways we can connect with a nature?

Just stand and feel the sun on your face? Feel the breeze on your skin? Sometimes we need to re-imagine what it means to go out and be in nature particularly if it’s not easily accessible. So either way, take some time out, connect with nature. Enjoy the restorative properties of that.
Rachel Grant, Recovery Coach

About The Author

Rachel is the owner and founder of Rachel Grant Coaching and is a Sexual Abuse Recovery Coach. Rachel holds a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology and is the author of Beyond Surviving: The Final Stage in Recovery from Sexual Abuse and Overcome the Fear of Abandonment. You can download both free on her website.

She works with survivors of childhood sexual abuse to help them let go of the pain of abuse and finally feel normal.

Her program, Beyond Surviving, is specifically designed to change the way we think about and heal from abuse. She has successfully used this program to help her clients break free from the past and move on with their lives.

Reach Rachel here or on Facebook

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