Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
Oh I wish you could be with me here today.
I'm sheltering actually behind one of these very traditional stone walls on Dartmoor.
Grey granite stones piled on each other with grass growing between the crevices,
There's moss,
There's orangey ferns growing out the top and I'm just in this crouched position behind the wall sheltering from an easterly wind.
It's quite a cold wind and I'm looking up over Western Beacon which is looking to the west and I can see the sun trying to shine through the clouds as it starts to set because of course it sets so quickly now at this time of year.
And as I climbed up,
Up,
Up,
Up onto Dartmoor,
Higher and higher,
I was able to look back onto the village I live in and there I was standing up on top of this hill looking backwards at the rooftops,
High above the rooftops as though I were a bird flying over the rooftops.
I could see the village,
It looked in miniature and just a few minutes earlier I'd been right in the middle of that village and yet here I was now looking down on it and in perspective suddenly what seemed to be everything in my life,
The walls of my house,
The roof above my head,
The roads that I walked through,
The houses I was seeing as I walked through the village,
Suddenly what seemed so big and present in my life just a few moments ago now just looks very distant,
Very small in context,
In the landscape,
A small village on the edge of Dartmoor amidst a very green rural landscape.
And that's what happens for us from when we move from being caught up in something.
Might be an identity,
Let's look at the idea of an identity but to be honest it could be any thought or story.
So one minute I am lost in the identity of whatever I'm creating at the moment.
It might be an identity that people see me as which is a daughter or a sister or a stepmother or a wife or an aunt and for me when I look at identities and in particular I want to look at this idea of identity for older women.
Older women when they get to a stage in their life are shifting like some of the key identities that they've had for a long time.
Maybe it's around their career,
Maybe it's around being a mother,
Raising children,
Maybe it's around a relationship,
Being a wife,
Maybe it's about being a carer to your parents,
Maybe it's an identity about slowing down or shifting gears or looking at something else to get engaged with in your life.
Identities as we move into this space of being an older woman which is usually in your mid to late 50s early 60s something like that,
That's when you start to see things differently.
Identities can look and feel confusing,
They can look and feel as though you are in rock solid identities that are all built around you and you can't do anything about.
And yet today my request is that you look at identity and look at the identities that feel very fixed for you and realize like there is a door you can walk out of,
There is a road you can walk along,
There is a hill you can climb and there is a space that you can look back at the identity and just weigh up whether that identity still serves you,
Whether the roles and responsibilities that came with that identity still feel as though they are a good fit for you.
Today is all about reflecting on identities,
This isn't about doing anything,
This isn't about taking action.
Although you might feel a desire to take action that's fine,
All I'm asking you to do today is to reflect on those different identities.
What do they mean to you?
What does it mean if you're an older woman and your children now are moving on into their independence,
They're moving away from home,
What does that do to your identity around motherhood?
Where does that leave you?
What roles and responsibilities have you been acting out of for a long time that maybe need a bit of a refresh?
Maybe you need to climb a hill and look down on that identity and just see what it looks like to you now.
So today is all about shifting perspective on the identities that you have,
The identities that you have lived through and it's about taking a different perspective on any of those identities and seeing whether they are still a good fit for you.
Let me know how you get on.
