Before I start telling you about my mental breakdown in all it’s gruesome glory and about how I discovered the healing power of nature, I thought I should probably let you know the setting in which it all came to be.
I was brought up in Taunton, the county town of Somerset, in the South West of England. It’s a beautiful part of the country, surrounded by hills and nature, and I was extremely lucky to grow up there. I spent my childhood roaming through fields with my friends, dissecting unfortunate insects, making mud pies and climbing trees. Nature-ry stuff.
Somewhere along the lines I turned into a rebellious teenager, where smoking and shoplifting, snogging boys and dabbing with illegal substances became my norm. I couldn’t give a toss about nature, it bored me to tears. I thought it was something old people were into and I was certainly way too cool to stop and smell the flowers anymore.
I moved to London and after a few years of random jobs and random house shares, I finally found my feet and incredibly landed a job as one of London’s top nail artists. I was tending to the nails of celebs like Frank Ocean and Missy Elliott, traveling around Europe, working at fashion shows and photo shoots, basically living my best life.
Or so I thought.
What I haven’t touched on yet is my history of mental health issues, stemming from textbook tricky family dynamics and exacerbated by various traumatic life experiences (and substance misuse); these consisted of but were not limited to a coke habit in my late teens and early twenties, mixing with questionable characters and getting into all sorts of sticky situations, suffering a miscarriage in my mid twenties and being raped a year later, you know, the typical life stuff that usually results in chronic depression and an anxiety disorder. Truth be told I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety on and off since I was 15, and I’m now 33.
Of course back when I was a teenager I didn’t take it seriously and neither did any of my family. I thought there was something wrong with me (well there was), that I was just a bit pathetic and weak, or as my Dad tactfully put it “overwhelmed with life”. I tried different things; I read self help books, I medicated with cannabis and class As, and struggled on, constantly swinging from the darkness of depression to something resembling happiness.
Thankfully in my mid twenties I was finally diagnosed by a mental health professional with depression and anxiety (me, not the mental health professional), was put on antidepressants and after a few months wait, given therapy. Things drastically improved to the point where I was able to carve out my exciting and glamorous career in the fashion industry.
Fast forward to the end of 2016 and I was slowly but surely unravelling. I was at the peak of my career (it’s always then that everything goes to shit isn’t it?) and I’d stopped taking my medication, because, well, I was fixed now wasn’t I?
I was completely wrapped up in my career (and myself) to the detriment of my social life, relationships, hobbies and interests. I thought I was the tits, and all that mattered was my career success and the status of being at the top of my game. We all know this isn’t going to end well don’t we?
Then all of a sudden, like the number 35 bus, loads of bad things came along in quick succession. Briefly, I fell out with a close friend, my cat died, I had to move house, a cancer scare (turned out to be nothing but someone with anxiety always thinks the worst), yet another doomed relationship ended, and some pretty heavy family shit. Oh and did I mention I’d been smoking weed everyday for 7 months?
It was the perfect recipe for a full blown episode of acute anxiety and depression and probably a bit of cannabis induced psychosis for good measure.
I found myself unable to sleep properly, waking every morning at 5:30am with blood rushing, heart pounding fear and dread, I had no appetite as I constantly felt sick with anxiety, I was chain smoking as if my life depended on it and I couldn’t work.
At my worst all I could do was lie on my bed wide awake with Chill FM on really quietly (I couldn’t tolerate silence and I couldn’t tolerate noise), and a bottle of lavender oil under my nose to try and calm me down. I’d get up every 5 minutes to drink camomile tea and chain smoke roll ups. Being alive was excruciating, something I could only just cling on to with my fingernails. I tried to repeat affirmations on loops until they became empty mantras with no meaning. But at least it stopped my mind collapsing into the blackness never to return.
It got to the point where I had no option but to come back to Taunton, to my parents. I needed looking after and I sure as hell couldn’t look after myself.
One sunny afternoon a few months into breakdown hell, I was managing to sit having a cup of tea in the garden with my Mum, and I watched as she got up and started scraping moss out from the cracks in the patio. I was intrigued, something looked so satisfying about it and so I asked if I could have a go.
Before long I’d de-mossed the entire patio and was now trimming the edges of the grass with a pair of scissors. It sounds bonkers but this seemingly insignificant act, scraping moss from a stone, was the catalyst of my recovery. I felt like I was doing something worthwhile, I had a purpose! Even if it was small. The more I did the more I wanted to do. I could see the visible results before my eyes, the patio was looking better and better and I was helping my parents by doing a tedious job in the process. But tedious for me it was not! It required just enough effort for me to push the trowel through the soil and moss, not too much that it was overwhelmed me but enough to feel a satisfaction in seeing it curl up into the trowel with each thrust. The screeching noise of metal trowel against stone slab added to the sensory satisfaction.
It didn’t matter if I did it badly or even if I did it at all. This mossy slab was placing no demands on me. As I focused on the task in hand, of getting the cracks clean of moss, of seeing them come back to life, I forgot I was ill, I forgot everything else and was completely in the moment. I felt stillness within me, like nothing I’d felt in months. It gave my overworked, strung out brain a break.
From then on I started to do little jobs in the garden each day; a bit of weeding here, a bit of trimming there, even a few seeds tentatively planted and dutifully watered.
I liked the feeling of soil in my hands, it quite literally grounded me. I started to see little shoots of seeds I’d planted in the earth, and each day I would water them, weed them and marvel at the incredible wonder of nature and it’s ability to grow something from apparently nothing. I successfully grew runner beans, lettuce, parsley, spring onions and a carrot (yes just the one).
The more I gardened the better I felt and the more I realised I needed to live back in the countryside.
I couldn’t go back to my life in London, back to living in the middle of the city, with sirens wailing 24/7. I realised how essential nature is to our well being. I craved it again, I craved space, greenery, less people more nature, the sound of the birds tweeting and the sky at night lit up with a blanket of stars.
I know mine is an extreme case, and that I was fortunate to have the option of coming back to Somerset, most people can’t just leave their lives behind and move to the countryside however much they want to. But I do believe that everyone, no matter where they live can make nature a part of their daily lives. Whether it’s growing plants in a window box, getting outside in the fresh air more often. Of just slowing down and noticing the birds, the trees..
I don’t know if it was because I grew up there or because I’m a sensitive soul but coming back to live in the countryside and reconnecting with nature was one of the best things I could do for my mental health.
The A Word 