Today and tomorrow, I am in North Carolina with Dr. Janet Courtney teaching about nature play therapy and then play therapy supervision.
You're going to find all sorts of great theory, interventions and pictures in this book.
But there's one story that did not make it into the book.
In fact, it is THIS story that made writing the chapter that I co-authored with Dr. Bree Conklin so difficult for me. (It has nothing to do with Bree - she's the best writing partner ever!)
I had the worst writers block whenever I would sit down to write this chapter - I just couldn't get anywhere with it. Even though I LOVE nature! And I love using nature as part of child development, education, and therapy.
But I had a big secret that none of the editors knew about me. And there was a part of me that thought that if they knew it, they would kick me out of the book. (They don't know this story yet either so the editors might be a little nervous right this second...)
You see, when I was a little kid, my family lived in Key West, Florida right on the ocean. I could literally go outside and my backyard was the ocean. It was a weird ocean though...not sandy bottomed at all. This ocean was filed with seaweed and It was really gross to walk on.
But because of that, it was also filled with all sorts of cool stuff - colorful fish, seahorses, hermit crabs, horseshoe crabs, conch shells, and those flower looking things that when you touch them they shrivel up - sea anemone!
It was a legit aquarium in my backyard.
And because I was 7 or 8 and a young genius, I wanted to keep these creatures for myself. Up close. And so, I would collect them in one of those 5 gallon paint buckets.
(I'm pretty sure I even used the water hose to fill the bucket and added salt from the kitchen to make my own saltwater).
You see where this is going, right?
They all died. I killed so many little creatures back then. And every time I sat down to work on this chapter, I felt terrible about it. I'm calling it NatureShame.
Last spring, my 6 year old son caught a tiny-baby frog. He was so excited - and he wanted to keep it in a little box so he could enjoy it up close (hello, genetics!). But before he could get the box ready, the frog jumped out of his hands and when he turned around to look for it -
he stepped on it (and smashed it). He felt terrible and he cried for the poor little frog.
Maybe we all have a nature shame story.
As adults, we know the rule "pick up, don't pick" but as children, I picked A LOT of flowers!
And we know not to release balloons into the air and send them to heaven but most of us have done that before too.
We learn about interacting with nature by making mistakes in nature. We learn how to take care of the oceans by being near the ocean and seeing how cool and beautiful it is. And we learn how to do nature play therapy by testing out little interventions in small ways -
don't let your nature shame stop you from getting the benefits of using nature play in your life.
So now you know the truth -
get the book and learn how to be a good steward of nature and
how to use it in your life and in your therapy sessions.
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