Family Case Worker Rachel Rodwell’s musings offering a glimpse into the therapeutic world of Dandelion Time.

I remember as a child, wondering how a seed ‘knew’ what to grow into.

Traumatised children can be likened to little seeds, cast adrift on the wind of life’s uncertainties. The crosswinds and thermals of life can sometimes be a buffeting, scary and isolating existence. These vulnerable seeds are often disconnected and desensitised not just from the world around them or from the gardeners who love and tend to them, but also from their own, hidden inner world of emotions and memories, buried deep within, like a forgotten blueprint.

The world around us is a sensorially rich environment and we as humans, are complex and sensory beings, evolved to interpret our environment through our senses, in such a way that can be meaningful and memorable. Sensory experiences form memories, emotional attachment to people and places, connect us to our world and give us a sense of place in our world.

However, for some children, who may have experienced trauma, the world can also be an over-stimulating and bewildering place. Children, in these instances can experience frighteningly, physical or somatic sensations and fragmented, repetitive images of unwanted memories and intrusive thoughts. They may not be able to identify where these disturbing thoughts and feelings originate, because the trauma had manifested in their short lives, long before their brains had developed enough to make meaning of them.

These ‘memories’ were stored in sensory form and when triggered, emerge, without warning as fragments, flashbacks, unpleasant feelings and sensations. For others, who were old enough to process painful experiences, the memories are so intolerable that they have become filed away or dissociated deep within the limbic system, cut off, with no means of retrieval.

Many traumatised children have developed the ability to protect themselves by desensitising… disconnecting themselves from accessing their own feelings, the stimulus of the world around them and ultimately, those important attachment relationships, crucial for healthy development. Desensitised children do not lack the capacity to sense…but because of the nature of past experiences, they have learned that seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching can reopen echoes of places they don’t want to revisit…uncomfortable places. Even the powerful sense of proprioception, which is the sense of self-movement, internal balance and of having a sense of place within themselves, can an uncomfortable place to access.

It’s a lonely place to be, as a child who fears to feel, because fear shrinks their contact with both inner and outer worlds and robs them of sense of place and grounding…without which, they are seeds cast adrift.

Seeds Adrift

Having alighted for a while in our fields, meadows and woodlands, these ‘seeds’ are often here because their challenging behaviours have indicated to those who care for them, that there is something profoundly troubling them. We are always so glad they have come to us, for we trust, that given time and space and place, these seeds can begin to unlock their unique potential, in readiness to grow into what they will become.

They may have low resilience and therefore, difficulty in managing stressful situations, difficulties in forming relationships with friends and family, challenging behaviours which can stigmatise them and low self-esteem and confidence. They may have difficulty in accessing and expressing feelings and as a result, develop behaviours often described as dysregulated, with ‘meltdowns’ and periods of lashing out to deflect the uncomfortable feelings that they don’t fully understand. Some children become withdrawn and avoidant, sometimes, selectively mute, refusing to attempt new experiences, fearing transition and change and often avoiding school. Others, feeling overwhelmed by intense thoughts and sensations, seek to alleviate the stress by self-harming behaviours. The impact upon their family of the above behaviours can be immeasurable and for many children suffering trauma, the parents and carers can be experiencing a parallel, traumatic response.

A Sense of Place

One of our prime areas to help our desensitised children is to slowly and gently help them begin to reconnect with their environment, themselves and their families, through hands-on activities that are sensorially rich and yet not overwhelming. For becoming ‘grounded’ is primarily about feeling safe…for if we do not feel safe, if we are living within ‘survival mode’, we cannot begin to heal.

The natural environment nurtures and heals. It does not make demands or threatens our autonomy. It simply grows and expresses itself through its cyclical, seasonal journey…rich in the texture of beech bark, moss and meadow hay, the vibrancy of willow herb, hairstreak butterflies and rowan berry, the scent of damp earth, young nettles and compost, the taste of hawthorn bud, cox apple and blackberry and the sound of buzzards’ call, breeze and beech hedge rattle.

Children enter a world which simply ‘is’ and it is an absolute joy to see them awaken to the nature around them…reconnecting to something intrinsically part of the fabric of who we are as human beings from the dawn of time. It is from this nurturing cradle of the natural world that our children begin to reach out, almost as newborns and begin to ‘remember’ how to engage their senses…

Bluebell flowers glow at dusk, the sheep’s fleece feels springy and his spine feels knobbly, newly pressed apple juice, tastes both sharp and sweet, guineapigs’ purring resonates from their tummies, green woodpecker laughter is lower pitched than the greater spotted, warm bread smells of sweet earth, Jack by the Hedge tastes of garlic and donkey breath warms cold hands.

Earthing

It’s all about making connections…for it is our connectivity to the world around us and those people with whom we interact, that shape our brains, equipping us for life and so this gentle reintroduction to sensorial exploration, begins to awaken the billions of neurons… those potential powerhouses of information floating around, just behind our foreheads, like microscopic seeds and each one having the capacity to grow the ‘roots and shoots’ of neural pathways which connect together like a neural ‘eco-system’…and connect, they do!

As with any connective and communicative system, nature makes itself known by how it feels, looks, tastes, smells and how it is heard. As nature speaks to children, they in turn, begin to say what they feel and how it makes them feel…’I feel happy…I feel worried…I feel calm…I feel excited’…simple feelings…but finally, they are accessing feelings and putting names to the feelings that have been locked away by trauma.

It is from the nurturing ‘earth’ of sensing, feeling, being and expressing, emerges the ‘doing’, initially as tentative shoots of new experience, that gradually becomes purposeful and immersive. This echoes the miracle of childhood development…feeling safe, sensing, perceiving and reaching out, repetition, consolidation…the good earth from which a billion neural pathways are grown.

Wet felting in warm, soapy water, brings adult and child hands working rhythmically together, small fingers press tomato seedlings into freshly made compost, draw-horse blades shave satisfying curls from chestnut blocks, wool is wound around willow rings and wet clay is moulded into vessels… It is during this multi-sensory and immersive process of engagement with the hands, that children begin to speak, to say, to remember, to express and to be validated. They are like the tiny sparks jumping from flint and steel to tinder…expressions of energy, igniting flames that both illuminate in dark places and bring warmth of belonging.

Growing produce, natural crafts and bushcraft are not contrived ‘activities’, but are simply reflections of the age-old ways of utilising the wealth of natural resources around us…with rhythm and flow which engages all the senses, connects us to the earth, to each other and ourselves…and brings together body and mind working in functional unity.

I once wondered how a seed ‘knew’ what to grow into…I have learned that it doesn’t, it simply grows and the joy is in the ‘becoming’.