The meandering path towards my calling

As is typical as one approaches mid life, I have spent a lot of time pondering what my purpose is. Do I have a calling?

This sounds grandiose perhaps, and the self conscious part of myself almost feels embarrassed having such aspirations.

Yet, this still unformed call feels greater than me and has done so for a few years now. It beckons, and I find myself needing to follow.

I feel more than ever taken with the feeling that there’s something I’m meant to do here on earth and that it’s time to get going with it.

It’s not just me, but a well documented phenomenon. Carl Jung called it a process of individuation, or the life long process of becoming whole again, your true self.

It is the individual's task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities . . . interfere with the fulfillment of this task. - Carl Gustav Jung (1973). “Memories, dreams, reflections”, Random House Inc

I’ve read many fabulous books on the topic inspired by Jung himself, from James Hollis’s “Finding meaning in the second half of life,” to Sharon Blackie’s “If Women Rose Rooted” which focuses on the eco heroine’s journey. These books have profoundly influenced me, especially the latter.

“The hero in each of us is required to answer the call of individuation. We must turn away from the cacaphony of the outerworld to hear the inner voice. When we can dare to live its promptings, then we achieve personhood. We may become strangers to those who thought they knew us, but at least we are no longer strangers to ourselves.” - James Hollis, "Finding Meaning in the Second Half of LIfe"

“It is a Call to Life – a full, authentic life. It is a Call to rise from the half-sleep of our existence, and take up our part in the great unfolding of the world.... For many women, that Call occurs at midlife." Sharon Blackie, if Women Rose Rooted

In November last year, I left my career of 15 years in government relations after my maternity leave ended. Such a move naturally accellerated the soul searching already underway.

So what is it I feel I’m here on earth to do? Well, this will naturally evolve with time, but for now here is what I’m focusing on:

So, what is my calling?

1) Being a great mum

So the main and most important thing to me right now is focusing on my two little girls.

I worked full time after my first was born, in a job that really wasn’t adapted to having young children, so this time really feels like a blessing. I appreciate every minute.

Blackberry picking with the girls

This summer has been particularly special as we have spent so much time in the woods together, and also in the garden playing with the mud kitchen.

I lost my mum when I was three, so spending this time with the girls just feels like something I really need to do at the moment, and it’s been so healing for me to be able to dedicate myself to them.

2) Training to be a counsellor

I’ve also restarted my counselling training at the Albany centre in St Albans. It has been great to get back stuck in to the training after having taken a break when my youngest was born.

When I qualify, my hope is to offer therapy services that combine trauma healing with reconnection with nature.

Therapy has changed my life and allowed me to make great headway with processing my own trauma. And the great thing about the gestalt school that I’m training in is that it takes the whole person into consideration including their bodily experiences.

The training is really manageable with my children as it’s one weekend a month. Though being away the whole weekend has been hard for my youngest, who has had some separation anxiety, it’s also been great that my husband can be at home this time with the girls. We are also lucky that my mother in law comes over from Paris to help too.

You can read more about why I’m trying to be a counsellor on a blog I wrote a few months ago.

3) Our Wild Roots

Excitingly, I have also been working on a new project. I made a new friend, Rachel, a couple of months ago. Our kids go to the same school and we are neighbours, and we kept bumping into each other at Sherrardspark Woods, our local Woods.

Together we have decided to launch a new business called Our Wild Roots which aims to connect families with the wild, to enrich childhood, build community and laying the foundations for a more caring world.

We had our first meet, Mums in the Woods, on 20th July and it went really well. We’re excited to continue this series of events in the autumn.

We also have big plans for how we want to take this forward as a movement because we really believe this reconnection is the change that the world needs if we’re going to have a liveable planet for our children.

I will write this in the coming days, but just stay updated with our activities. You can actually sign up to our newsletter here

4) Love Wild Plants

The past week I’ve been on holiday in France really thinking about how I want to use this website going forward.

I’ve had moments of confusion in the past year about whether the website is too narrowly focused on plants now that I am doing Work related to healing and building community which also overlap with nature connection.

But I’ve come to realise that there is still a craving within me to explore my fascination with wild plants specifically, and that our loss of connection with these plants and historical relationship with them is a core reason we are so lost in today’s world.

If we don’t know, love and understand something, how will we ever protect it? But what is it exactly that we need to remember about these plants? Part of me senses the answer is lying in history, but also in archetypal patterns to use another jungian phrase

I do think all links to these plants and the meanings we ascribe to them can give us some sort of clue as to how we are supposed to relate to the natural world, which of course we are intrinsically the part of.

I want to keep exploring this, and ideally I would love to do some sort of academic study. However, this is now not possible for me at the moment neither financially or with regards to the time commitment that would be required while looking after my girls.

I’m therefore going to be setting up my own study syllabus using the skills that I have gathered from my previous academic study where I explore a historical or thematic issue relating to wild plants.

I’m just finalising the syllabus but I’ll share that in the coming days too.

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Concluding thoughts

I’m still not overly sure where this where this calling is taking me, but I know that’s ok. As Sharon Blackie comments in her latest book on fairy tales, Ripening, the fairy tale heroine rarely knows where she is going when she answers the call, only that she has to go. Well, here I am embarking and trusting that all will fall into place and become clear. Stay tuned.

Amanda xx