Patricia Pearsell and her family have lived in Whitby, Ontario for many years. Spending time with family and friends, music, singing, growing food with her family, the outdoors and now writing, bring her great joy. She has been a Warrior Mom since 1998 when their oldest son was diagnosed with cancer for the first time. After his recovery from treatments and surgery for a second cancer diagnosis she was forced to realize that she had been ignoring her own health and well-being when she was diagnosed with adrenal exhaustion, and so began her journey to better health. With over twenty years of experience as a caregiver and advocate she continues in that role for her family, friends, and other patients and families facing medical challenges offering support and liaising with the medical community. Patricia has a special interest in supporting other parents and non-professional caregivers in looking after themselves while they care for others. Having rediscovered her love of being in the forest she has been studying the healing effects of nature enjoying opportunities to share the simple beauty of nature therapy with her family, friends, other patients and caregivers helping them to recapture their outside mindsets.
Patricia Pearsell, we met through our mutual friend Stacy Sequin. Would you please talk about how that happened?
My dear friend Stacy had given me a copy of Take Back Your Outside Mindset for Christmas in 2019. She always puts quite a bit of thought into what she chooses to give as gifts. She knows how much I enjoy being outside in my yard, or camping, or hiking. The title intrigued me and I began reading it right away and I immediately felt a realization that I needed to do this – to get outside again and often. Your story and your book truly touched my soul at a time when I was feeling extremely overwhelmed and full of negative ruminations. I honestly feel that it has changed the quality of my life, and my family’s. The best part though is how the effect has rippled through the communities of women that I am connected with, and how my sharing your book with them or encouraging them to get outside more often has helped them too. I fully believe that returning to our outside mindset is crucial to our overall self-care as women and as caregivers. I decided that I had to meet you and reached out to you online but we have not been able to meet in person….yet.
Before I ask you how you and your son are doing. In the introduction we learned that you were diagnosed with adrenal exhaustion after your son was diagnosed with cancer. And that you had negative rumination. Can you tell us a little about that please? Before you do, I will remind our listeners that negative rumination is that kind of thinking that starts with what if, if only, I can’t, I am …. Negative rumination are those repetitive thought cycles that spin around in your head like a broken record when you are looking back with regret or worrying about the future. These fearful and worrying thoughts do not allow your brain to rest. What did you discover in the book especially as it relates to you as a caregiver?
When I read about negative rumination in your book, Take Back Your Outside Mindset, that is one of the biggest ahah moments that I had. I didn’t realize that that was what I was doing to myself – was perpetuating that cycle of negative rumination until I read about it in your work. And I think it is something a lot of people do and just don’t realize it. And it does take a little bit of realization to help get yourself out of it. So for me, one of the best examples I can give you is, it was keeping me awake at night worrying about the decisions we made for our son’s care and how that was going to affect his future. Of course no one can predict the future, we don’t have crystal balls, and I was spending a lot of time and energy worrying about what was going to develop, how he was going to develop… what is his future going to be like? Who is going to help him down the road? All these things that at the time did not serve me or my family in any good way.
I found that at the beginning I had to encourage myself to acknowledge those ruminations in that cycle, and find time to get myself out of the house, and outside – and change my environment completely.
I found the best way to do that was starting by going outside in my yard. Then I started to go outside into the forest and reconnecting with a passion that I had for most of my life, but in the busyness of life and being a caregiver, I had forgotten… and had become disconnected from that passion, that connection with nature.
Yes and it is so interesting that MRIs of that part of brain that registers negative rumination shows that when we are in green space, our negative rumination goes away, automatically. So we don’t have to learn anything new, we just have to get there. Especially if you are a caregiver your brain needs a rest. This prevents cognitive decline and dementia. So when you are outside you are helping yourself and your loved ones. Patricia could you please tell us a little more about your son and how he and your family are doing?
Right now we are all doing very well thank you. Our oldest son, Brandon, is now 26. He is in good health, and just has some challenges with regard to everything he has been through. When he was 4, it was a brain tumor. When he was 6, he was diagnosed with skin cancers and jaw tumors. When he was 19, he was diagnosed with an osteosarcoma. That is a side effect of all the treatments that he went through when he was 4.
So it has been a rough road. Then he had a major surgery a year after his last cancer diagnosis to remove the remains of the tumor. This had a massive impact on his body. He had to learn how to walk again – which he did.
And then he went on to college! And then he graduated with a diploma that he had been after. He has a very positive attitude and is a really upbeat kind of guy. He loves making people laugh. He does not focus on the negative things in his life – because there really aren’t any: he is here. And that is the biggest gift.
And the rest of my family we are all in good health, mind and body. My entire family benefits from my learning how to take back my outside mindset. And that helps me. So when the caregiver in the house is in good mind and body health, that helps everyone else in the household. Wouldn’t you agree Verla?
Yes, you have another son, and I imagine he benefits too…
Yes, he is very busy guy with home renovations. He is a very active person as well. He has also realized how much better he feels when he makes time, and makes a point of getting outside. He particularly loves being in the forest, He and I go camping together a couple of times a year. It is always a beautiful experience. I have an amazing picture that I should send you Verla. One of the campgrounds has a 400 year old white cedar tree, and is considered a medicine tree, and he is hugging it.
And Brandon is that his name? What did he take in College? I see him when you post a few pictures of him and he looks enlivened, almost sparkling with energy. Brandon, our warrior took automative mechanics. And yes he is.
Recently, I got a facebook message from you that was very exciting. You asked if we could talk on the phone. During that conversation, you said that you were taking other caregivers out in the forest, using some of the stuff in my book, and that you were thinking about calling yourself an Outside Mindset Coach, which I was just thrilled about. Can you talk a little about that now Patricia?
Yes absolutely. I had been so inspired by your work that helped me to realize how simple it can be – it is not as hard as people think it is.
I have been blessed with the opportunity to attend a camp called Soulful Camp. It is a grown-up camp for women, that focuses on self-care, self-development, and self-compassion. I have been able to lead groups of women into the forest using your book to develop a workshop. And I talk about your book and show the girls your book. I say this is what inspired me, please go get yourself a copy.
One of the things that made it easy for me to make up this outline were the options that you give for finding ways to take back your outside mindset on a daily basis.
And I love the CONTROL pneumonic. It empowers women to have those tools …that is ok to make that time for this….to go into your neighborhood and find some greenspace or some beautiful trees to just spend time with. It’s ok to take that half an hour or hour for yourself… or even just a couple of times a week.
The feedback I was getting from these visits into the forest was so positive and motivational. It makes me want to keep learning more and doing more.
The powerful thing that happens when I take the Soulful group and others into the forest is the ripple effect… where I am helping these other ladies get to this point of reconnection, and they take that with them. They move forward with their life, and they share that with other women. And so it just continues in a positive way.
When I see the expression of awe on their faces when they are in the forest, and learn that they have never really just taken the time to stop and pause and notice. And this is what they tell me afterwards, they thank me for helping them to reconnect. And that is the word that we use, because that is actually what happens.
I encourage them as we are entering the forest, to right here, at this physical marker…I put up a banner or a flag or something to indicate the start of our little journey and I say “right here, this is where you drop everything else, you leave everything else right here, all your baggage stays here…if you want to pick it up on your way out, that’s up to you, but don’t bring it with you in here. This is your time, this is your space. We are going to do this together, or you can go off by yourself a little if you want.
I go and scout the trails ahead of time and I try to find a few little places that speak to me, and hope that those women will also find the beauty in those spots. I try and find places where they might want to sit or journal or collect bits of the forest floor to take back with them … little momentos of their time …something to smell, to touch…I encourage journaling. Phones are allowed to be used as cameras. So it is really a beautiful experience. Unfortunately, it is only 90 minutes long, and it goes by really quick.
What your doing is wonderful. You referred to Dr. Langer and noticing. And in the book I applied her work to enhance the power of being outside. So by simply noticing new things puts you in the present and is enlivening. And this is so easy to do when we are outside, because we pay attention differently when we are outside. Our eyes softly wander and this gives our brain a rest. It sounds like you are doing just a beautiful job. Congratulations on that Patricia. And do you get them noticing fractals too?
Yes that is something we do talk about, because fractals are available at home in your yard. My favourite thing is I show them – and this is something I actually learned in grade school. In this one particular class in Winnipeg, when we went out, no matter what the weather. This was in the Fall. She told us to pick up a leaf and hold it up to the sun, and just track all the lines… this is when we were learning about photosynthesis.
But for me now it is a different understanding, that everything in nature has fractals in it. Even now, I am looking out of my window at the branches of my Linden tree and it is all patterns – it is so peaceful.
Dr Richard Taylor, a physicist at University of Oregon, has developed a fractal fluency model based on the reality that our insides are fractal and all of nature is fractal – so we see fractals in nature this settles us down. Do you still have your adrenal exhaustion Patricia?
I do still struggle with adrenal exhaustion from time to time if I don’t pay attention to the signs. I also have IBS. But both of those things are much better managed now. I don’t suffer nearly as much as I used to…I must say that the improvement started when I began to go outside more, which allowed my system to calm down in a very natural way.
It definitely helped me – mind and body – especially since the mind and the digestive system are definitely connected. When you calm the mind you can help calm the digestion and visa versa.
Absolutely. And when we are outside our minds settle and become more creative. In fact the research shows that by going outside improves our short and long term memory, to concentrate, helps us to problem solve, to learn new things, and to become more creative. Obviously, these things have happened with you, I understand that you have contributed chapters to two new books. Please tell us about that.
I have been blessed with the opportunity of being a co-author on two recent projects that introduced me to the world of writing.
When the opportunity to share my journey in Ignite Your Passion and Step Into You Purpose arose the timing could not have been better. I had recently realized my purpose and how I came to that realization needed to be shared because I felt it could help other women too. In our book there are 12 amazing female authors sharing how we came to realize our purpose.
The second is the most recent book of the 1Habit series with Steve Samblis and Forbes Riley. It is titled 1Habit To Thrive In a Post-Covid World. 100 authors were brought together to suggest new more positive habits while supporting dropping some that are not serving us well enough.
I do have plans for writing my own book in the future, especially now that I ‘got my feet wet’!
Thank you very much for this Patricia. And helping and inspiring caregivers like yourself to take back their outside mindsets.
So listeners please check out Patricia’s two books. And check out my book and workbook Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Prevent Dementia, and Control Your Chronic Illness.
Thank you for listening to the end, and remember that each time you go outside you are helping yourself to feel better. Especially if you are a caregiver your brain needs a rest. When your brain gets rest – this prevents cognitive decline and dementia. When you are outside your breathing rate slows, heart rate slows and your nervous system flips into the peaceful rest and digest state. Notice new things in the old – be curious and interested – like you are when you are on vacation.
And remember that going outside prevents disease and will help you to live longer – so you can be there for your loved ones and be your healthiest like Patricia too.
If you have low energy and your emotions are getting the better of you, spending time outside close to trees lifts your self esteem, lifts your confidence to be able to control your life. It is simple and it is free. And this is a good thing, because we all need a little more of Your Outside Mindset.
