Following My Path

There has long been the seed of pathfinding in me. I am my father’s daughter. My father was a cartographer, back in a time when a place was surveyed and a map drawn by hand. I don’t remember learning to read maps, but I do remember bedtimes with the enormous Reader’s Digest atlas, and journeys sitting always in the front seat of the car, finding the way whilst my father drove. He had such faith in someone so small.

That seed could so easily have remained a seed. Cartography changed, and when I understood I would never make maps as my father had, I entered another world that I love. The world of learning. I spent may years as a teacher, heart and soul, at home and content.

Until there came a year when I wasn’t. My heart and soul were in dis-ease, I wasn’t at home and I lost my contentment. I see numerous reasons for that now, and all of those losses left me lost. I stepped away from my job and hid, until a good friend reached out a hand and told me not to give up on the world I loved and invited me to come and work with her, in the incredible mountain world of ski kindy.

And I fell in love again. This time, though, my love wasn’t blind. And the seed in me cracked open and began to germinate. What could I do differently this time? And could I help others to take care of themselves so that they too might remain in love with this incredible world in which we have made a home? There has to be a way, a path to be found.

It seems to me that it is our calling to help those in our care to discover who they truly are and to know the things that matter to them, and to understand that this will be as unique as their fingerprint. And it is then our calling to support them to explore where they would like to go and what they would like to do with their unique blend of personality, gifts, values and talents.

It also seems to me that the best way we can do that is to walk that path for ourselves. Understand who we are, see how we have walked here, and know where we would like to go.

And I am very good at pathfinding.

The seed that was planted in me by my father now has roots, shoots, leaves and flowers. My business is to help you be found if you are lost; to help you discover who you are and where you are; and to help you see your way forwards.

You might be a child; you might be the parent of a child; you might be a teacher; you might be a team of teachers; you might merely be someone who used to be a child.

I would love to help you.