Rooted Connections

A Foundational Offering

I'm changing this space a little, moving from just poetry to wider offerings, and have been considering how to craft and curate this space of Rooted Connections. 

I started my Substack journey as a way to explore my revitalised love of writing. An unexpected consequence of this has been the way its shaped my development whilst founding a business. I experimented with having two publications here - one to focus on writing and another to focus on a sister element for my evolving services. 

But life is complex and as with the world under our feet that supports and nourishes the planet we're guardians of, everything is too connected to keep in boxes.

So, here I am, combining general thoughts, comments and essays on just about anything that interests me. Most often, there will be themes and obvious connections between all posts. I'll aim to tag and link them accordingly to make life easy.

But......

I’ve been sitting with the discomfort of starting my commentary on the world.

I’m conscious of the global systems I exist in and the continuous wave of multifactorial events that occur each day and night. Each time I begin to write something, it feels frivolous and insensitive against a backdrop of vast social, political, financial, and ecological injustices and violence.

I don’t believe, as a developed nation, which has previously colonised numerous countries and cultures, and continues to benefit (even if ethical frameworks exist) from other global geographical resources (including people), that we can ignore or accept our impact of action or inaction. In essence, it feels unethical to take the global benefits and ignore the negatives. We're either global citizens in a globally connected world, or we're not.   

If we’re comfortable to travel across the globe, experience other nations and cultures, and import goods and services from these places, we can’t turn the other way when those same or neighbouring places and people are facing hardship and brutality.

An uncomfortable truth of global responsibility is individual or personal action. Some people have a load of tenacity, resilience and courage when initiating, influencing, and taking direct action to effect immediate change. Others are quiet resisters, supporters, observers, witnesses, and recorders. We need both and in between. Often, we may find ourselves with varying capacity, finding that we ebb and flow between ends of the resistance and activism spectrum. And some may never have the capacity to participate in any kind of activism. All of that is OK. We're a mixed bag with the whole being greater than our parts - the magic of community.

From a closer perspective, I acknowledge that for too many people in communities local to me and across the country, much of what we see and hear about health, wellness, leadership and living life in general, is often out of reach, for a multitude of reasons. I often think about people I’ve encountered in my work. If you’re a young woman recovering from a broken pelvis, sleeping on a mattress in a sixth floor flat you share with a boyfriend addicted to drugs, the last thing on your mind is getting up at 6:00am to journal whilst drinking hot water infused with fresh ginger before you head out to the closest, safest green space you can find, which is over two miles away, on foot, because you can’t afford transport. 

Or as an elderly woman, so distrustful of people in authority after a traumatic incident over fifty years ago, that she’d rather take her chances of recovery from a fractured hip by lying in bed, without medical care. This woman isn’t going to want to hear about the benefits of forest bathing, or how getting a dog can improve her health.

I can only offer what I’ve experienced or write about what I’ve seen and learnt about, from a place of relative privilege. I’m eternally grateful for the immutable time and place I’ve been born into, the systems and people I’m supported by. 

I know what my holistic capabilities and boundaries are – encompassing physical, emotional, academic, cognitive, and spiritual aspects. My usefulness and impact in resistance and action needs to focus on a part of the whole for it to be effective. Even this makes for an uncomfortable truth, knowing that too many have no such choice. Recognising our own platform, gifts, abilities and changing capacity, is one way of making a difference. And for some, the only option that isnt detrimental to their own health and wellbeing, is to focus only on their own life, switching off to external events. Managing Mental Health During Traumatic World Events 

Over the years, I've learned what my own boundaries around these topics. I'm clear about the principles I stand for. As someone who’s arrived to this point through socialist healthcare and leadership, I lean towards the ideas presented here -  Global Responsibility Principles Global Responsibility Principles

I also know that for me, my energies are best spend focused on a particular aspect of global responisibility. The part of this big global, shape shifting, chaos that I choose to focus on is Ecology – a system that covers the vastness of our human experience as part of the integrated whole. 

The event that piqued my awakening as an eleven year old was the Falklands War. I couldn’t understand what was happening and quietly observed trying to make sense of it. I became aware of animal welfare, a supporter of the World Wide Fund for Nature and vegetarian at the same time as noticing the issues of social, political and economic (in)justice. More specifically, I was influenced by the emergence of (Dame) Anita Roddick and the evolution of  The Body Shop. I was thirteen in 1984 when my mum took me to London, specifically to visit The Body Shop. The same age I learnt about  CNDand the incredible women who set up the Greenham Common Womens Peace Camp. Rumbling on in the background were the Miners Strikes. I doubt I would have had the vocabulary to describe it back then, but I knew in my bones all these aspects were connected. 

Inspired more recently by the work of Roman Krznaric , specifically The Good Ancestor,  Kate Raworth who bought us Doughnut Economics and Cormac Russell with Asset Based Community Development, I see ecological issues, in all forms, as the thread that binds and weaves the health of all communities and the answer to all injustices.

Spiritual ecology in particular has been the space for my current development and guidance.  We cannot turn back the hands of time, return the horrors back to Pandoras box, dismantle the structures we’ve built or topple the patriarchal and masculine biased energies that have pervaded our planet in one go. 

I'm reminded of the beautiful proverb; 

              "The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. 
                               The next best time is now"  

Our starting point is here and now. As a coach, therapist, and leader (thought and organisational), I’ll meet you where you are and start from there, inviting you to meet me where I am so we can evolve, learn, and act together.

Same planet, same sun, same moon but from different perspectives – physical, metaphorical, ecological, and societal.

I’m here for the cathedral, ancestral and multi-descendant thinking, to offer ripples of long-term change and influence. I’m inspired by the work of many that have come to my awareness in the past few years – notably Amisha Tala Oak, Rooted Healing, Merline Sheldrake, and so many more from many genres, that I’ll come to another time. 

I know that this way is the best I can do, supporting others who can offer something more immediately tangible, and with greater impact. I'll continue to support organisations and people who I believe are creating ripples or making an impact and I'll keep up with small pieces of activism that add to the greater whole. 

Thoughts, articles and invites that follow, will come from these foundations and principles, clunkily articulated above, and summarised in a way meaningful to me as compassionate, spiritual, inclusive, community minded, and radiant.

I’ll write on a variety of subjects, in a variety of ways, as they come to me. The common theme will be how to live a life well, of purpose, fulfilment, contentment and ease in the paradigms and systems we find ourselves in.

With love and witness
Ren 🌿✨💚

Edit: Since first writing and publishing this post (from a different publication in November 2025), I've listened to gorgeous and thought provoking podcast, hosted by Amisha Tala Oak on her All That We Are channel. You can listen to it here Cultures of Healing and Resistance Parts that resonate specifically with this piece for me are around the 34 and 47 minute marks.