You can take photos of your favourite places in nature to use as backgrounds on a mobile phone or computer screen, or print and put them up on your walls. Try listening to natural sounds, like recordings or apps that play birdsong, ocean waves or rainfall.
If you want to bring nature inside, you can: buy flowers or potted plants for your home; collect natural materials like leaves, seeds and bark to decorate your living space; arrange a space to sit by a window; grow plants or flowers on windowsills.
Learn to look at all of yourself from the most loving perspective. You are the exact right combination of experiences, insights, strengths, and imperfections that make a person whole.
Maybe you’re feeling like you’re not okay. You’re still whole. Trust in the process of working it out as you go and picking up the little gems along the way. No part of this needs to be perfect. Take any step in the direction that feels closer to whole.
Some changes will be very unexpected. Accept it as a new chapter in your life; as a fresh opportunity to gain knowledge or experience in a new area, or a chance to discover new people, new places and new skills.
Change will happen. You may be, at least initially, resistant to these changes. You cannot always control either the changes or your initial hesitancy. You can control your larger response to the changes. To do so requires your active participation.
Sometimes a counsellor is needed to help when the emotional pain is just too much and you can’t get a grasp on it. There is nothing wrong with this. Painful events in life can seem too much to bear, and speaking to a counsellor will help.
Keep a gratitude jar. At the end of the day each person writes one thing they’re grateful for on a slip of paper and places it into the jar. At the end of the month/year you can open and read them together or whenever you need to remember the good things.
If you want to grow your own food, you can grow vegetables in your garden or plant salad leaves or herbs in a window box. You can also grow food with others on an allotment or community garden, or go fruit picking.
If you want to experience nature more, you can grow or pick food, bring nature inside, do activities outdoors, help the environment, or connect with animals.