Time to GROW our communities

Time to GROW our communities

By Polly Palmer - Project Rewild mentor and creator of Growing Communities

We’re living in an experience we have no connection with! We dismiss our thoughts, our feelings, our senses and our intuition. Whilst externally, we discard the land, our water, wildlife and in more recent times even each other. We spend our days in sterile boxes, hunched over, tethered to a screen, participating in a lie in which we are being social, productive, and prosperous. While in the process, life is secretly stolen away from us. 

In our human experience, cyclical energy has been lost! We’ve lost it with our factory farming, and plastic-covered ready meals. We lose it every time we overindulge in watching countless episodes of the box set we are currently into. But are we actually happier for it?  Can you honestly say to yourself “I am happy and fulfilled where I am right now. I don’t need or want anything more?” Or, in the background is there a constant striving for something else, something new? Is there a voice inside telling you Once I get this new ‘thing’, this new sense of status, I’ll be happy? But do you ever get there or is there always a desire for something else? Leading to a never-ending cycle of dissatisfaction? This energy is static and blocked, it's no longer cyclical. We consume and never give back! Even down to the simplest of processes such as composting our food waste, we send it to landfill instead, stripping the soil of its nutrition which further strips the plants of their nutrition, and in turn, strip ourselves of the building blocks for healthy bodies and minds. We lose participation in connection, but at what cost? We are one of the most overweight, depressed and loneliest nations on earth and it’s tragic.  Ask yourself two questions. Do you feel free? Do you feel alive?

To me the answer is simple… Take less and give more. Put your energy into the soil, into the land, into food you grow and have to wait months to eat. Spend your time outside in nature with people telling stories, laughing, confessing your embarrassing drama of the day, cook together, dance together, sing together and grow together. Be together! Start feeling more and thinking less. Energy given gives back. It’s like building a fire. The first spark comes from within you. You put your energy into creating that initial spark, then the fire gains strength and gives you back energy in the form of warmth, light and cooked food. Therefore there is always loss and gain but nevertheless the energy continues to flow between experiences. 

By intentionally and purposefully engaging with our present experience in nature, we naturally re-find ways back to our interconnection and our interconnected awareness; our intuition! When we come more into our senses we become more aware of ourselves as a living part of nature, rather than a spectator looking in on the other. Being present in nature helps us to trust and notice our intuition, showing us our instinct is still very much alive within us and part of our domesticated human experience, if we only give ourselves the opportunity to connect with those ancient parts of ourselves. When we allow ourselves permission to be part of the experience of our planet, we can see what we have forgotten but nevertheless not lost.

We are at a crucial point in our existence where we must find our way back by going forward together.

At the Growing Communities project, We are creating new outdoor growing spaces for our children, families and communities. Learning how to grow food, in a sustainable and fun way. Working outside in the mud and the dirt encourages us all to become curious and inspired.  To learn how and where our food actually comes from.  These groups offer a place to step away from the all-consuming, fast-paced world and allow space to slow down to nature's time. A place to support children and families to feel free, connect with each other and with nature. A place that supports new friendships and support networks.

Using No-Dig, an environmentally friendly growing method, groups will learn how to work with nature to grow a vegetable garden. Protecting the soil and local ecosystem to harness nature's gifts by working in relationship with it and each other.  Not to say there is growing without challenge! Growing food, as well as working on ourselves, will come with hurdles and difficulties but these are also part of our human experience which should be honoured and respected. This is life and these lessons teach us how to grow.

We are life itself and we must reconnect with the natural world we come from, we are a part of its existence! What we do to the earth is reflected back on ourselves in a mirror we’ve sadly trained ourselves not to see.

We can tap back into our connection, it’s not gone. It’s very much here and part of our existence. If we only attune ourselves with our senses, our emotions, our intuition, our food, the land and the natural world we are a part of.

This is not some impossible state of mind, which only a few specially trained people can achieve. It’s all right here and EVERYONE has access to it. It’s about the choices we make and where we choose to put our energy. When we give first we receive. Receive joy, connection, energy and aliveness.