As a child, I loved the weather, and my earliest memories were making a rain gauge out of a tin can and a lollipop stick and keeping a weather journal. I dreamt about being a metrologist, but my science and intellect then weren’t up to the job. I’ve always had a deep love of nature and animals and thought about becoming a vet. However, that alluded me too for the same academic reasons. So, I decided that as I couldn’t look after animals I would look after people. I was a nurse for nearly three decades, and then one day realised my career and my life needed to change. I was burnt out and exhausted. Photography during this time was medicine to my soul as I photographed skies, landscapes, flowers and church buildings (I love old buildings too).
My idea was to work in a bookshop, only the bookshop became a primary school where for the next nine years, I had the happiest of times in the role of a teaching assistant. This led me into the world of speech and language for children and crucially English as a second language. I was given a Topic and Culture group and I thrived in this environment. Eventually, I re-trained in English as a second language but finding employment in this speciality, in my locality, was difficult. I had no English degree. So, one morning in August 2018, a decision was taken to create my job and I became self-employed.
This decision took me down a road that I have never stopped walking on. I joined a women’s business group and started to read and listen to some of the best minds in personal development (see my library). I launched English to Care in Oct 2019 with no students and with the determination to walk on regardless. Today, I teach Functional English and Medical English, and have the most beautiful family of students at an agricultural site who are non-native speakers close to where I live.
While all this was in progress, I started to walk and took up my notebook again during Covid. Having a background in healthcare, I started to read more widely about the connections of health, the mind, the benefits of being in nature, mindset (self-limiting beliefs), the power of writing, journalling, gratitude and the Law of Attraction and Vibration. Recently, I have participated in online writing sanctuaries by the amazing writer Beth Kempton and have a basket full of notebooks on various topics and poems.
Footstep conversations are where a lifetime of experience, (including anxiety and depression) learning and skills come under one title. Its purpose is to share what has helped me the most to live the best life I can now.
At age 60, I have realised that nothing is too late and it’s truly not where we start from that counts but where we finish. I hope in this busy life you too might find some solace, peace and wisdom around a central theme of walking. Where I hope to bring both the best of Science and the Arts together to create, through words, pictures and audio a quieter place of happier living. If I can achieve that here for just one person (other than for myself) then my life’s journey will be complete.
I live in Norfolk with my family on the edge of the Fens and have become a grandmother to a beautiful grandson who I am now writing children’s stories, just for him. I love music and took up the piano at the age of 56.
I dedicate Footstep conversations to anyone who is weary of life’s travels and who too might want to choose a different path, like I did.