It has been a month ago that I wrote a blog. The last blog was about my grandmother’s death and how I found solace and inspiration through the willow in our garden: My grandmother was a […]
Author: Ms Woods
A certified forest therapy guide and storyteller
A NW-European woman wandering in forests and fairytales
MY grandmother was a willow woman
This weekend, my grandmother died. Early March, I saw her for the last time, to celebrate her 86th birthday. She was already dying a bit for some years, because she suffered dementia and Parkinson. Every […]
Let’s address whiteness in the outdoors
The International Day for Biological Diversity is a United Nations–sanctioned international day for the promotion of biodiversity issues. It is currently held on May 22. This year’s theme is “our solutions are in nature”. However, […]
Branching out: A Tree Pageant
Each year, the Belgian Tree of the Year is elected. This is not necessarily the most beautiful or oldest tree, but it is a tree with a special story. Actually ‘pageant’ might not be the […]
It’s VE day. Let’s talk about Nazis and the environment
On 8 May 2020 we, in Europe, celebrate 75 years of victory over fascism. Victory in Europe Day, generally known as VE Day or V-E Day, is a day celebrating the formal acceptance by the […]
My first #Virtual Forest Therapy Walk was in San Diego, New York, Denver, Toronto and in Belgium – at the same time
In times of corona, I get to know the garden and forest surrounding my family homes better. I needed also time for myself to heal some inner wounds, but from the middle of April I […]
A woman in the polar night, a woman in lockdown
“In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen to spend there a year there with her husband. She thinks it will be […]
Geography of Fairytales: Why are the Germanic stories in forests?
According to Sara Maitland, whose fantastic book ‘From the Forest: a Search for the Hidden Roots of our Fairy Tales’, fairy tales are ‘site specific’. A geographer, I try to make sense of the place […]
Carolyn’s story: A Poem about Forest Bathing
Please meet my fellow forest therapy guide Carolyn Peduzzi. We belong to the Squirrel Tribe, a group of 20-30 guides, all of them situated in North-America, who started their practicum to become a certified forest […]
Changing the stories we live by #6: from Princess Mononoke’s Curse Spirits to the Corona virus
Last June, I got to know the curse spirits of princess Mononoke in real life. I organised a group excursion to one of the certified forest therapy bases in Japan. Now I see some similarities […]
