Why I work to plant seeds, spark curiosity and inspire hope

Learning through my own recovery.

In this article, I’ll be unpicking the words guiding my approach to working with teams and organisations. I’ll share how these connect to my own mental health recovery.

Because whilst messy, painful and exhausting, recovery has also taught me a thing or two. The kind of stuff you can’t learn from a textbook. And I nurture those insights, which are at the heart of my lived experience practice.

Planting seeds (ideas)

So let’s start from the ground up (literally). I work to plant seeds (ideas). My aim isn’t to tell you what to do and exactly how to do it. My mission is to empower you. I share experiences and knowledge, intentionally. In workshops and webinars, I create space to explore ideas together. And then it will be over to you.

And those ideas take time to grow. Just as a seed planted in soil requires the right conditions to germinate, so do ideas that lead to sustainable change.

Within my own recovery from anorexia, I learnt (the hard way) about the importance of pacing. The moment in my recovery that I experienced a zest for life, my mind would be alive with colours, ideas and energy. I would become captivated by all that life could be, as anorexia was rapidly losing its grip. And when I rebuilt my life too quickly, too soon, I stumbled.

So, I learnt to slow down and reflect, whilst still remaining focused on moving forwards. I gave those ideas and shifts in thinking the time and space they deserved, to grow and thrive.

Sparking curiosity

Curiosity is one of the elements that I believe creates the environment for those ideas to grow. It enables us to open our minds to truly listening and learning.   

I aim to spark curiosity in autistic experiences of mental health. Why? We don’t have to look too far and we can see the statistics. We don’t have to look too far and we realise how much change we need. When we listen and learn with curiosity from lived experience, we build our understanding of what those changes are.  

My recovery also taught me about the wonderful combination of curiosity and compassion. Let me share a moment with you. A doctor walked towards me, papers (my patient notes) in their arms. They sat down beside me. It was the first time they had met me, and I was terrified, my heart already sinking. All that they knew, were words written about me. They placed the papers gently to one side and they said, ‘I’m not interested in these, I want to hear how things are for you, I want to hear your words.’ The fact I remember that moment so vividly reinforces how powerful it was. 

Through all aspects of their communication, they showed compassion and a curiosity for hearing my voice. And when those two elements have been present, it’s paved the way for working together with others. It’s built trust, but equally it’s created a shared understanding of what I’ve needed, rather than what other people have assumed.

Inspiring hope

Finally, I cannot talk about what I’ve learnt through recovery, without talking about hope. Through all the twists and turns, I needed hope. And I also needed those around me to have hope, regardless of the way my brain might work differently. In the same way that a growing plant harnesses the energy from sunlight, hope became my fuel, my motivation.

And just as the sun often shifts behind the clouds, hope isn’t fixed. There were (many) moments where I sat in the absence of hope. Sometimes this was the result of my own spiralling thought processes. Yet other times, it was because of external messages from society and other people, that I wrongly internalised as truth. And this is one of our opportunities for change, fostering consistent messages of hope.

Hope wasn’t a passive element within my journey; it didn’t just happen. I learnt I had to nurture hope. I had to use language intentionally to become recovery-focused. I accumulated evidence of all the wins, no matter how small they seemed. I listened to stories of other people’s journey, reminding me that recovery is possible. There are many ways we can inspire hope. 

Please do explore my website. You can read my other articles, listen to me talk about my mission and get in touch with me using my contact page.