Mental well-being by far is the best thing about outdoor adventures, then physical health and finally that connection with the great outdoors and nature.
An Outdoor Instructor, Adventurer Blogger, Mountain Walker, Paddler, sometime climber and general outdoor nut, that’s me. Originally from Bristol UK, I now live in the Wye Valley and I get to hike in the Brecon Beacons, paddle the river Wye, walk in the Forest of Dean and climb the cliffs along the valley. An Outdoor Instructor and blogger I believe that everyone has their own mountain to climb and every step towards that is an achievement. My career previously was the polar opposite and the pressure of running a Textile Design Degree and working in the fashion/textile industry resulted in a breakdown in 2015.
I am also a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister. I am a friend, a colleague, a leader, a volunteer. I am a qualified teacher, a Royal College of Art graduate, a textile designer and an outdoor instructor. I desperately seek assurances, I desperately seek admiration. I want people to admire me, to think I am so very, very lucky, I want people to want what I have. I crave acceptance at the expense of my own passions, desires and needs. I have spent my life wanting to make everybody else happy so that they will just like me and want to be my friend. Yet I have crippling anxiety. I have a million, gazillion thoughts running through my brain. I read a passage in a book that was written by an old friend and become consumed with guilt, desperate for her to still like me and want to know me. I am irrational and I am constantly arguing with myself; telling myself that my thoughts are ridiculous, they are completely unfounded yet they are still there turning my stomach in to knots. Making me feel physically sick, nervous, worried, and unable to leave the house. Convinced everyone is judging me. This is who I am in this world.
Getting outside is incredibly important to me. First and foremost I am a hiker, I am happiest up mountains where my anxiety is released. Canoeing, climbing, stand up paddle-boarding, mountain biking, surfing, wild camping are activities I engage with weekly and as I now work as an Outdoor Instructor accessing them is easy peasy! Mental well-being by far is the best thing about outdoor adventures, then physical health and finally that connection with the great outdoors and nature.
It is the one place where I can banish those niggling thoughts and process ideas. I talk to myself, tell stories and recall happy times. I make plans and put things in to order. Then I just think about what is happening right then, in the moment and fall in love with the outdoors all over again – and again – and again. When I am there I feel free, happy and content. I fall in love with myself again, I accept who I am right then. Since my breakdown in 2015 I have used the outdoors as my treatment room. It is where I have accessed memories that I had shut down, reawakened old feelings, confronted them and dealt with them.
There are many experiences which have got me to where I am today, some funny, some scary, some monumental some are all three. From having a breakdown whilst working in Paris, following a meeting at a high end designers apartment to having an epiphany up a mountain where my new life in the outdoors, and my blog was born. Memories come and go, remembering funny times like on my Mountain Leader training course where we had a scientific experiment to see which type of Doritos chip burns the longest (cheese by the way), beating a man dressed as Iron Man in a 10km race, climbing an E1 ‘by mistake’ and topping out completely shattered, yet elated. Taking a group on an expedition to North Wales and walking up to find all their tents floating around the campsite, learning to surf and being so excited the first time I stood up that I just kept walking, straight off the end of the board. Every experience that makes me truly smile, from the inside out has been in the outdoors. Happy days.
Follow Eli's work and blog, To Outdoors & Beyond
I am also a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister. I am a friend, a colleague, a leader, a volunteer. I am a qualified teacher, a Royal College of Art graduate, a textile designer and an outdoor instructor. I desperately seek assurances, I desperately seek admiration. I want people to admire me, to think I am so very, very lucky, I want people to want what I have. I crave acceptance at the expense of my own passions, desires and needs. I have spent my life wanting to make everybody else happy so that they will just like me and want to be my friend. Yet I have crippling anxiety. I have a million, gazillion thoughts running through my brain. I read a passage in a book that was written by an old friend and become consumed with guilt, desperate for her to still like me and want to know me. I am irrational and I am constantly arguing with myself; telling myself that my thoughts are ridiculous, they are completely unfounded yet they are still there turning my stomach in to knots. Making me feel physically sick, nervous, worried, and unable to leave the house. Convinced everyone is judging me. This is who I am in this world.
Getting outside is incredibly important to me. First and foremost I am a hiker, I am happiest up mountains where my anxiety is released. Canoeing, climbing, stand up paddle-boarding, mountain biking, surfing, wild camping are activities I engage with weekly and as I now work as an Outdoor Instructor accessing them is easy peasy! Mental well-being by far is the best thing about outdoor adventures, then physical health and finally that connection with the great outdoors and nature.
It is the one place where I can banish those niggling thoughts and process ideas. I talk to myself, tell stories and recall happy times. I make plans and put things in to order. Then I just think about what is happening right then, in the moment and fall in love with the outdoors all over again – and again – and again. When I am there I feel free, happy and content. I fall in love with myself again, I accept who I am right then. Since my breakdown in 2015 I have used the outdoors as my treatment room. It is where I have accessed memories that I had shut down, reawakened old feelings, confronted them and dealt with them.
There are many experiences which have got me to where I am today, some funny, some scary, some monumental some are all three. From having a breakdown whilst working in Paris, following a meeting at a high end designers apartment to having an epiphany up a mountain where my new life in the outdoors, and my blog was born. Memories come and go, remembering funny times like on my Mountain Leader training course where we had a scientific experiment to see which type of Doritos chip burns the longest (cheese by the way), beating a man dressed as Iron Man in a 10km race, climbing an E1 ‘by mistake’ and topping out completely shattered, yet elated. Taking a group on an expedition to North Wales and walking up to find all their tents floating around the campsite, learning to surf and being so excited the first time I stood up that I just kept walking, straight off the end of the board. Every experience that makes me truly smile, from the inside out has been in the outdoors. Happy days.
Follow Eli's work and blog, To Outdoors & Beyond