Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and you find me hundreds of miles away from home.
I've come on what my sister and I are calling a family pilgrimage.
I'm in Suffolk and I'm actually in the hotel room and I'll explain why I'm here and not outside.
We've actually been outdoors all day.
It's been cold,
It's been wet,
It's just not been suitable to record and so I thought I would wait till I got back here to share some reflections and today the theme is all around following your nudges and I'm going to tell you what I mean.
My sister and I have come on what we're calling a family pilgrimage.
My dad died last year and we come from the west of England from a place called Devon and that's where we were born and brought up.
But originally my dad came from Suffolk from the east of England and that's where my sister and I have come.
We thought we'd come on a family pilgrimage.
We thought we would come and reflect,
Meet up with relatives,
Some of the siblings of my dad that are still alive,
Meet my cousin,
Reach out to meet other cousins if they were available and visit different sites that my dad would have visited,
The house he was brought up in.
We also went to a couple of cemeteries to pay our respects to people that have passed on and we called it a family pilgrimage and it was my sister's idea and it was something that she suggested a few months ago.
She said would I like to go on it?
Today is all about following nudges because when she first said would I like to go on this family pilgrimage I wasn't sure.
My initial reaction was it's a long way,
That's a lot to do in a weekend,
Do I really want to do that?
And yet there was something stronger in me that knew it was absolutely the right thing to do and that's what I call my inner compass,
My inner nudge,
The wisdom,
The intuition that's nudging me along.
So although my initial habitual,
Oh that will be a challenging journey,
Oh that's going to cost a bit of money,
Oh that's going to be quite difficult to squeeze that into a weekend,
Although I had those initial fleeting thoughts,
I know to trust that deeper intuitive wisdom and that is what I followed and I'm so glad I followed that wisdom.
Today we've been out,
We visited various sites,
We've battled the wind and the rain,
We've driven to different places that we know dad would have been to and we've reconnected with the landscape,
With the place,
With the people and for me I get a real sense of dad being present as we look around this area.
And following nudges is something that feels so appropriate.
My sister followed nudges to come up here,
My sister followed nudges and she identified specific points that she wanted to come to.
My cousin who's been a little bit of a guide today,
She knows the air and she's been taking us around,
She followed her nudge to join us.
We've had extraordinarily rich conversations,
Conversations where we've asked questions about family members.
My uncle who is the youngest sibling,
So he was my dad's brother,
Younger brother,
He's older but he's still got his memory and he wanted to come and see us and he drove to come and see us and he met us for a meal,
He was following his nudges.
There is something about following nudges.
And then my sister who brought up a book that I commissioned probably about 10 years ago now and it was a book that my friend Ghost wrote.
She was a journalist and she was starting a business and she went and captured the stories of parents,
That's what she wanted to do and she supported me and created a book where she interviewed my dad and she interviewed my mum and then she captured their stories on paper.
And it's a beautiful book because it is my dad's voice speaking,
She's done it brilliantly and I followed my nudge to have that book commissioned and I didn't realise at the time how precious it would become when my dad with dementia lost his memory and this became his voice that lives on even though he has died.
I can't say how important it is to follow your nudge,
Follow that which feels nourishing and healthy within you,
Follow that guidance system and take the next step.
And over the next few days I'm going to share some further themes,
Themes that have emerged from this time away but today I just want you to remember look within and follow your internal guidance system.
