Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me,
Liz Scott.
I'm centred in a gorse thicket.
There's a load of gorse bushes,
Thorny bushes,
Growing all around me,
Sheltering from a blowy south-westerly wind up here on Dartmoor.
I don't know if you can hear the skylarks above me.
They are singing their hearts out.
It is glorious to hear and beside me are some cattle.
They are lying down some of them are munching and they too are sheltering I think a little bit from the southwesterly breeze using these gorse bushes as a way of shelter.
And today's reflection came about after being around someone recently,
A friend,
Who's really very,
Very troubled and lost in what can only be called a storm,
A hurricane of emotion.
And I saw this friend yesterday and briefly touched base with her,
And what I realized from what she was going through,
She seemed physically shaken by a trauma from many years ago being reawoken within her.
And she was visibly feeling winded as though she had been taken ablow.
Life had physically thumped her and she was trying to be steady in this storm of unsettledness that she was up against.
And my heart absolutely went out to her.
She was finding it so hard in that moment.
And yet what I saw also within her as she stood in that storm was incredible wisdom,
Incredible humility,
And quite frankly,
She inspired me deeply.
She realised,
First of all,
That she was in the middle of a thought storm,
An unsettling churning of emotions that had arisen quite unexpectedly,
But understandably,
And she was not able to do anything about this uncomfortable churn of emotions.
It was raging within her.
So the first bit of wisdom she realized is that she could do nothing about it.
She didn't even say that she wanted to get rid of this emotion.
She realized that it was there for her to see.
There was something in there for her to experience.
And she stood in it.
And again I was.
.
.
Taken aback by her strength of character and wisdom.
As she realised what was important for her.
She was actually part of a group I was in and she said to the group,
I can't contribute today,
I need to press pause.
I'm with you,
But I just need to press pause.
I just need to be with this emotion that I'm experiencing at the moment.
And again I was taken aback,
Blown away by her wisdom.
The wisdom that she had,
That she needed to press pause.
She also knew,
Deeply knew,
That she didn't want to investigate the why.
She didn't want to analyse what was going on.
She knew that it was something that had been triggered from her past,
But that she did not want to give it any energy.
And again,
I just admired this resilience and wisdom that she saw within herself what she needed to engage with and how to deal with this storm and churning of emotion.
And for me,
I deeply saw that whilst I would have loved to have taken the pain away from her.
My job was to stand beside her in a rock solid way and listen and be present.
And for her to know that it didn't matter what she said,
Didn't matter what emotions came up.
I would be there for her,
Not trying to fix,
Not trying to make her better,
Not trying to help her understand what was going on.
I would just be there as a rock solid support.
So today is just a reminder that when you are around someone who is lost in churned up emotions,
Best support you can be is just to be beside them.
Don't try and fix it,
Don't try and make it go away,
Don't try and make them feel better.
Don't try and investigate their past or dig it up.
Just be present to them and see in them the resilience.
That they have gotten themselves and be present to that resilience,
To that wisdom that they are showing in that moment.
Let me know your reflections on what we've been talking about today.
And I look forward to being with you again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
