#413: SPOTLIGHT: Eve Hepburn
#413: Eve Hepburn
January 14, 2025
A Backbeat of Community
Question for Eve:
Can you recall a specific moment in the last four months that you were in what you would consider to be “nature” and thought or felt for at least a split second that “maybe all is actually right with the world” ?
Eve's Response:
I feel like I’m taking the easy option by answering this question, as I’ve just spent the last few months transforming my life so that I can spend more time in nature. I left a career in investment management and retrained as a forest bathing practitioner, so I can support other people’s wellbeing through mindfulness in nature, while opening myself up more fully to joy. But this question, a lovely multi-layered one, is making me think about why.
It was Long Covid that kick started this journey into nature: it made me yearn, more than anything, to be outdoors (rather than having to spend days, weeks, months sick in bed). And so when my body relearned to walk, it was to the trees I went. Panting, breathless, I would arrive at my local park and collapse on a bench. And then a miracle would happen. The wind would caress the skin on my face. The starlings would nonchalantly sing their favourite songs. The low winter sunlight would paint the grass a golden hue. The trees would creak overhead, whispering, in the breeze, ‘we’ve got you’. And then my breath would slow. And my body would relax. And time would stand still.
And it was in these moments that I would realise, in a whooshing surge of clarity, that not only was I ‘in nature’ at that very moment, and that nature was doing its very best to heal me, but that I was nature – I was part of this ecosystem like everything else. I depended on everything around me, and they, in turn, depended on me.
And so began my learnings and meditations on nature. My quest to understand trees, and the communities they nurture; to decipher the fungal merchants connecting the trees underground; to understand how birds spread the seeds of young aspens, birch and rowan; how everything is connected in a symbiotic dance of life…
…and death. Because nature teaches us, of course, that everything is impermanent. As the moon rises and the tides turn, and the seasons change as we orbit the sun, so things are born from the soil, grow up reaching for the sun, and return to the soil - their lives lived - to nurture new growth. And if anything can help us broach the feeling that everything is actually right in the world, then perhaps it is this.
I suspect Eve would love all direct responses from you. I find it incredibly encouraging when I hear from any of you after I share my thoughts. It is powerful for me. I assume many others have a similar experience. So here is Eve's' email… pip
Amanda's thought…
Eve, what a beautifully captivating depiction of an extremely challenging journey. And a reminder of how the natural world, just like the human condition, constantly ebbs and flows. I love the juxtaposition and especially love the line, "everything is connected in a symbiotic dance of life." I'm so glad you were able to recover and find solace and restoration in this state of true interconnectedness with nature. Thank you, Eve. I'm so incredibly lucky to know you and your story.
- AP