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Like many children, I loved being outdoors, playing in the woodland, splashing in the stream. I was fascinated by the natural world and the sheer marvellous complexity of life on earth. My fascination took me from those streams and woodlands to the islands of the Galapagos and the rainforests of Belize.
My name is Ria Mishaal, and I am a natural scientist, turned artist and photographer, living with my ecologist husband and two young girls in the beautiful wooded county of Hampshire in England.
From that young age I thought I would be an explorer, out in the wilds, discovering plants and animals, but life happens, and fast forward to now and the busyness of day to day as an entrepreneur and raising a young family has left me more remote and removed from that personal connection to the wild. I long for a deeper connection to nature, and to play my part in protecting the life with which we share this earth, but lacking in time and knowledge, unsure of simple ways to forge a deeper relationship.
The climate crisis is real, and scary and it's so hard to make changes in your day to day when it feels so overwhelming. We know it needs more than switching lights off and insulating our house, but what?
I believe that we respect and protect the things we know and love. We care for the things that we understand. Knowledge as they say is power, and with knowledge we can, as individuals, effect change. With a positive mindset we can achieve much more than we believe we can, personally, in collaboration, and as a species.
It is about changing our nature as nature changes around us.
But it isn't just about knowledge, it's about how we feel too, how we interact with nature. It can be about the quiet moments of connection that forge a lasting relationship with the wild. It can be about how to create moments of immersion that cause us to fall in love, rather than the knowledge alone.
The Changing Nature Podcast is about having conversations around how to live a more nature connected, more environmentally conscious life, with optimism, with wonder and with joy.
To open, I will be talking with a house plant specialist about creating your own indoor jungle, an ecologist about how to bring more wildlife into your garden and a British grower about sustainable flowers. I will share my journey into understanding nature connectedness and how I am trying to foster that connection in my children, for their long term well being. And that is just to start.
I hope you'll join me as I talk with different people about their passions, teaching us how to bring more nature into our lives, and how to make better choices in a way that allows us to shift our mindset.
Changing Nature launched 7th June! Don't forget to subscribe on your favourite podcast platform so you don't miss an episode:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
