Stories of loss, healing and empowerment: Women discussing nature as healer following marriage breakup and divorce
During this multisensory autoethnographic presentation, we will candidly discuss our personal journeys of healing our hearts through connecting with nature following marriage breakdown and divorce. It is designed to demonstrate how our vocation as outdoor educators provided the context and the skills to heal through reflective practice.
We will focus on the connections between personal experience and the social context, which is an integral part of autoethnography (Chang, 2007), and central in context of the social constructs of marriage and family. Nature sparked transformation and created the throughline in reshaping our identity and sense of belonging.
The presenters will weave our lived experience of family breakdown coupled with our insights as researchers to discover the common threads. Finally, we invite others to share their experiences in an inclusive and compassionate space.
Helen Cooper, Tonia Gray & Val Nicholls
she/her
Helen takes every fork in the trail as she continues her journey of 25 years practicing and learning in outdoor and experiential education. Currently she is a full-time student at Western Sydney University (WSU) part way through her PhD on Education Outside the Classroom.
She is also working at WSU as a tutor of a couple of subjects in the Education faculty , fitting it all in amongst being a mum of two teenage daughters and one dog.