Meet Jane

Eighteen years ago I was diagnosed with a serious auto-immune disease called Addison's Disease.  At the time I was running a successful flower farm and floristry business, arranging flowers for weddings, selling at farmers markets and sending bouquets all round the country. I had just been featured in Country Living Magazine as the face of Scottish flower growing.

But I had been finding everything too much for a while, the physical work, the long hours. One afternoon I sat in the rain in the middle of my cut flower patch, surrounded by buckets, sobbing my heart out knowing that I couldn't go on.

A few days later I collapsed and was rushed to hospital and it turned out that part of my brain had switched off and that I was no longer producing steroids.  The exhaustion that I had been putting down to running a business while caring for small children had an actual, physical, potentially lethal cause.

I'd like to say that I changed the way I lived at that point, but that would be a lie.  It took another decade of repeatedly overworking and crashing before I began to listen to my body.  

By that time other auto-immune diseases had clustered onto the original giving me what my GP describes as an 'extremely complicated medical condition', I had gained a lot of weight due to artificial steroids, I was continually fighting against brain fog and tiredness and I had completely lost sight of the person I am meant to be.

Coming back from that was a long process, systematically exploring what builds up my energy and what saps it, deeply engaging with the place where I live, changing my outlook and the way I treat everything from my to do list to the way I organise my time.  

I transformed my life, making it more spacious, gentle, connected and engaged.  I began to walk with a spring in my step again. I became vibrant.

I began to talk to people about what I was doing - the way that I incorporated connection with nature and creativity into my days, the ways in which I slowed down, the ways that by doing less, putting myself first, I was actually managing to do more.  

I talked a lot. To hundreds of women.

And somewhere along the line it became obvious that it wasn't just people who had chronic diseases who benefitted but people who were exhausted and burned out, women going through peri menopause, or caring for their elders or just feeling as though they had lost their mojo. 

Reconnecting back to nature and creativity, slowing down, treating yourself gently turn out to be a cure for all kinds of things.

The Studio Club came out of this - an affordable membership space where there is the opportunity to bring nature based creativity into your life within a supportive, generous community - and now a range of beautiful natural craft kits are about to join my offerings.

Do get in touch if you want to chat 

Much love

Jane