Reflections from New York

It's been a reflective couple of months for me. I lost both my maternal grandparents within 10 days of each other, they were both 91. I was very close to my grandmother, spending many school holidays staying with them in Frampton on Severn a beautiful village in Gloucestershire.

My grandfather was a farm labourer on the manor farm, and my childhood was shaped, going with him into work, watching the milking, sheep dipping & combine harvesting and helping in his vegetable garden. Perhaps that is why having the croft has been so important for me. My paternal grandfather also worked on a fruit farm, had a huge vegetable garden and kept geese - and for a while my father ran a market garden and free-range chickens. The earth to me is so important and now my grandparents have returned to it.

A week later, I lost my only pedigree gilt, she went into labour on a night when it was snowing - went outside to nest and died. By the time I got to her, the crows were already doing their work. Nature can be cruel and relentless - two days before we had temperatures of 19 C.

Spring has naturally been my most vibrant energetic time, it's when I have fell in love, made big decisions, grown. This spring I have just had my 50th birthday, do I feel different, Yes. I am wiser, who knows - time will tell. What I do know is that the work I have been chosen to do in awakening people to the process of love and acceptance, to recovery to journeying with another hurt distressed person is like planting and growing, preparing the seed bed, watching the seed develop its roots, its green leaves, how important water and light is, pulling out the weeds to stop its growth being stifled, watching the flowers open, the fruits develop. Isn't that exactly what the workers job should be in the recovery process?

I am writing this in New York. A huge city with millions of people, yet walking around, there are trees everywhere - gardens on top of buildings where ever people are. They still need to feel in touch with the earth, even when surrounded by so much concrete. We had a great public meeting last Thursday on working with voices, about 70 people were there including the organizers. There is a definite hunger here to do something different, to look beyond medication and diagnosis - workers are fed up of being in a system that is failing people. I think that the hearing voices movement can bring about great changes here, if it is grown and nurtured - and workers are grown and nurtured to sustain it.

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Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor have an international reputation as speakers and authors. They are the directors of ‘Working to Recovery Limited’ an innovative international consultancy, training and publishing company with a cutting edge approach to supporting and improving mental health provision.