For sixteen years, I've worked alongside disabled children and adults and those who have experienced trauma, and in systems that often fall way short of the care and support they should offer. Across every setting, one truth kept returning to me: people heal most deeply when they are met by nature. Not just the green and blue spaces around us, but the inner landscapes we learn to listen to again when we feel safe, seen, and connected.

In 2024, during a threshold walk with Becoming Crew, a clear and unexpected vision arrived. I saw the possibility of a web of belonging for the care-experienced community—something rooted in nature connection, community, and the remembering of one's own inherent worth and place in the web of life. That moment planted the seed that would eventually become The Gathering Ground CIC.

My Nature Facilitation training with Change in Nature offered the fertile ground that helped this seed grow. Through the 2025 cohort and later as part of the crew, I found a community that understood the power of nature-based transformation. With their support, the idea that had once been a whisper became something real and tangible.

And then came along Kirstien and that vision became a shared one! The Gathering Ground CIC was created to offer care-experienced people what so many systems fail to provide: spaces of belonging, connection, and restoration. Through nature-based programmes and experiences, we create opportunities for people to reconnect with themselves, with others, and with the living world that holds us all.

Today, my work as a social care consultant and founder of The Gathering Ground CIC is guided by that original vision—simple, powerful, and enduring: to build places where the care-experienced community can ground, grow, and thrive.

I am Kirstien, and I work from The Field of Possibility near Totnes, increasing people's awareness of how they are psychologically designed to adapt and thrive.

I'm delighted to become a director of The Gathering Ground CIC and to support care-experienced young people to realise their potential. I believe that, like everyone, they have a great deal to offer the world. Yet the challenging circumstances they may have faced, the absence of consistent family support and belonging, and the labels they have been given can make it harder to recognise and step into that potential.

In my own life, being outside in nature and discovering that I am not separate from nature has offered me sanctuary in life's storms, a compass when direction felt unclear, and a place where I know I belong. I'm looking forward to learning and exploring with care-experienced community, how the power of nature, inside and out, can improve quality of life for all.