Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm back on Dartmoor.
I'm sitting on a grey granite boulder and the moorland grass has turned green.
I've been away in Ireland,
The island of Ireland,
For four or five nights and we've had quite a bit of rain here since I've been away and that yellow crispy grass that I was leaving behind is now fading fast and in its stead it's fresh new green growth.
There's a real greenness again right on the moorland here.
I'm sitting,
You can probably hear the sheep bleating in the background,
I'm sitting seeing a flock of sheep grazing below me and there's a herd of cows that are lying down in this afternoon sunshine.
They seem to have got a couple of new calves with them.
It's a very serene place.
And I want to share a couple of things from my Irish trip that have landed for me.
And when I was walking up here today,
I saw,
I think it's called a creeping thistle.
I saw a creeping thistle growing in the wild flower meadow that runs alongside the footpath up onto the moorland.
And some of the,
Most of the flowers now have gone and what you've got left are the seed heads,
The heads of seeds that blow off in the wind,
The white downy seeds that find their way out in the world.
And that kind of inspired what I wanted to talk about today.
Because when I was away in Ireland,
I met up with a friend,
Someone who knows me really well.
She's helped me in the past write my first book.
She supported me as a coach and an editor writing the book,
Helping me to self-publish it and getting it into the world.
She knows me really well.
She's probably one of the few people that really knows me,
Sees me.
That's what I felt.
When I met her in person.
She lives in America so often we are meeting online and it was such a joy to actually physically meet her and have a conversation.
And one of the things I realised in meeting up with her,
And we sat down,
We went to an Irish pub,
We sat in the corner and we brought out our writing pads and pens and spent some time writing.
One of the things I realised being with her and seeing her is that she absolutely sees me.
And I realized the power of what it is to be seen,
To be seen as who I am.
She had introduced me the previous night to one of her friends who is a woman that is involved in a group of other women who are looking at world peace.
That is what they're doing,
But they're not doing it from an antagonistic or activist kind of way.
They're coming from a place of love.
And I met up with this lady,
There was a group of us meeting up for a meal in a pub.
And we fell into this conversation,
So my friend gave the introductions.
And we fell into a conversation,
And I couldn't stop talking.
It was like we were jamming together.
We were riffing together with the conversation we were having.
We were both really inspired by each other and what each other was doing.
And my friend,
My American friend,
Was the one that had seen me,
Had seen her other friend,
And had kind of known that we had a lot to offer and to share.
And how does this relate to that creeping thistle which I saw as I was walking on my walk today?
For me,
What is relevant is that the thistle,
The way it shares its seeds with those wonderful little floating seed heads that catch the wind like white fluff on the air.
That is probably a really good description of me.
My friend saw me,
She saw who I truly am.
I don't tend to speak loudly.
I don't tend to brag about what I do.
What I do is I love to find myself being reflective,
To sharing with people,
Like-minded people like you guys.
I love that sense of the gentleness of being present with myself and with others.
I'm not a loud person and she absolutely saw that in me.
And for me,
I'm like the sea.
Head of the creeping thistle,
I allow my thoughts to gently catch the breeze and to go wherever they go.
That's how I operate.
And when somebody sees me,
I feel as though I am really grounded and rooted in who I truly am.
So today is a reflection on what is it like to be seen?
Are you seen by other people?
Do other people see you?
And tomorrow I'm going to talk a bit about what it's like when the opposite happens and I've got another illustration to share with you then.
What is it like to be seen?
Let me know your thoughts and don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
