Nurtured by Nature with Florence Williams

Florence Williams is our guest for this final episode of season three. She is the author of Heartbreak, The Nature Fix, and Breasts and numerous articles for Outside Magazine and other publications. She is also a public speaker and sometimes-podcaster and leads retreats in the U.S. and Europe. In this episode, Florence shares her insights about leading and attending retreats as well as her enthusiasm for the life-changing impact of nature. 

Learn more about Florence at her website or connect with her on Instagram. 

This episode was recorded at Builder Studios in Bountiful, Utah.

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Transcript

Nurtured by Nature with Florence Williams

Introduction

[00:00:00] Laura Walker: Thanks for listening to Writing Connections, a podcast for writers, retreat hosts, and creatives of all kinds. I feel like today’s episode has been a long time coming, and I’m so excited to get it out into the world. 

Those who know me well know what a big Florence Williams evangelist I am. Her book, The Nature Fix, changed how I relate to the outdoors, and her memoir/science text, Heartbreak, gave me a path forward through my own brokenhearted journey. I talk about and recommend her retreats every chance I get, and whenever our paths cross, I am continually impressed by her brilliance, warmth, and authenticity. I feel privileged to know her and excited to pass her wisdom along to you here.

In the conversation to follow, Florence shares her insights about leading and attending retreats, as well as her enthusiasm for the life-changing impact of nature. And, of course, she talks about the writing connections she relies on. Here she is.

Interview

[00:01:01] Laura Walker: Welcome to the show. I’m so excited to have you.

[00:01:03] Florence Williams: Hi, Laura. It’s great to be here. 

[00:01:05] Laura Walker: Thanks so much. So, let’s start with you introducing yourself and the kind of writing you do. 

[00:01:10] Florence Williams: Yeah. My name’s Florence Williams, and I am a science journalist. Like a lot of journalists these days, [I do a] combination of a lot of different things. I write magazine articles. I sometimes make podcasts. Mostly, I write books. I also teach some workshops and some retreats, and I do some public speaking based on the writing that I do. 

[00:01:30] Laura Walker: That is fantastic, and we’ll definitely dive into the retreat side of it for now. What’s your story or your history with writing retreats?

[00:01:39] Florence Williams: I wrote a book that came out in 2017. It was called The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative. And in that book—and through reporting that book—I learned so much about the science behind why we feel better when we’re outside, how it can be healing for us, how it’s good for us physically, how it’s good for us creatively.

After that book came out, you know, the pandemic rolled around, and I got certified to be a forest therapy guide, or a forest bathing guide as it’s sometimes called, because I wrote about forest bathing in the book and learned about the science behind how people’s nervous systems change, how people’s physiology changes, their cortisol level drops, their respiration drops, their blood glucose regulates—all this stuff happens when you’re trying to open your senses, when you’re on a trail or in the forest. So, I started actually leading groups out and learning more about that, which was really fun because, as writers, sometimes we don’t leave the room very much and we spend a lot of time with ourselves, or we’re interviewing people doing clinical work or doing other work.

[00:02:50] Laura Walker: It’s true, I feel like writing is such an indoor experience so often. Making it work outdoors, I mean, it takes a lot of work, right? It takes a lot of preparation to be able to find an outdoor space where you can write, so that’s cool that you were able to sort of bring these two things together in a sense.

[00:03:06] Florence Williams: Yeah, it really was, and for me it’s so inspiring to watch people go through some kind of transformation when they’re outside, even in, you know, a two- or three-hour forest bathing session. I might invite someone to go sit under a tree for 20 minutes and just get to know a tree, and sometimes they come back and they’ve accessed something in their emotional core, just by being quiet and not having their phone on and listening to nature and being in a meditative place. I mean, it’s kind of amazing. But those weren’t retreats; those were just forest bathing sessions.

But then, also, what happened around that time is I went through a really painful divorce after a long marriage, and I wrote a book about that, about the science and the neuroscience of heartbreak. That book was called Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey. Again, learned a lot about the science behind why sometimes we get sick—for example, when we’re under emotional strain—and it was really as a response to that book that I thought, “Okay, you know what? I really want to take groups of especially women, although not necessarily always but especially groups of women, who have gone through something painful outside into the wilderness and spend time with them where we can bond and experience awe together and have some great conversations. But again, mostly letting nature and the environment do the work of making us feel better in our bodies.

[00:04:33] Laura Walker: I’ve had these opportunities to be up close with you in these experiences, both after The Nature Fix came out and when you were able to come out to Southern Utah University, where I was teaching at the time, and be with my students in Bryce Canyon, and then the experience outside of Telluride in the Colorado Rockies. I always think of that experience that I had where I was supposed to be talking to a tree and I ended up getting distracted by my little inch worm that has become so much of a metaphorical mentor for me.

[00:05:05] Florence Williams: Do you want to tell that story of the inchworm? 

[00:05:08] Laura Walker: I can, yeah. I love that story. I’ve talked about it in an earlier episode, but being here with you, obviously it’s, it’s so resonant.

We had chosen our sit spots, and I think you gave us something like 20 or 25 minutes, a scaled-down version of what you talked about where, you know, it can be this two- or three-hour experience. I really did try communing with this little sapling that I was sitting down next to, and then I saw motion in the grass. Very much was just letting my gaze wander. And I saw this little inchworm making its way through the forest, and I watched as it would inch its way up to the top of a blade of grass, and it would cling with its back legs to the very tip of the grass blade, and then it would suspend its entire body out into open space and just feel around in a circle until there was something there for it to grab onto. Because I was so attuned to it, I was able to even see its little front legs kind of like grasping, trying to find something to hold onto. 

I’m going to get emotional talking about this because this was right in the middle of my own heartbreak experience, and I felt this deep resonance with this little bug because I realized that I was doing the same thing. I was trying to find my solid ground. I was trying to find whatever was my next thing to hold on to.

Fast forward to the end of that summer: I’m back at SUU, I’m teaching again, and I knew within days of that first semester post-sabbatical starting that I was not going to be able to return to this career for the rest of my life. I, I love teaching. I have been so happy doing that, and it’s been so fulfilling, and something had shifted in me.

So, my life, really since then, has been these episodes of clinging to the top of one thing and reaching and feeling around for what the next thing is going to be, in terms of career, in terms of relationships, in terms even of paradigms, really. Like, how do I want to do and see life? And I’m kind of just feeling my way through it, and I can’t imagine where my life would be if I hadn’t had that very specific experience,

[00:07:25] Florence Williams: That’s so beautiful. It sounds like there was something about the lessons from the inchworm that also helped you feel better about where you were, like there was something resilience-building about seeing that reflected in nature.

[00:07:39] Laura Walker: Absolutely, and seeing that this tiny little creature was doing it was very inspiring because I was like, “Well, if this little bug can do this with no sense of where she’s going and how she’s going to get there, she’s just feeling around and figuring it out, then absolutely I can do it too.”

[00:07:55] Florence Williams: Oh, I love that. That’s the sort of thing that happens, and it can be life-transforming. It can also just help us tap into our own wisdom. There was something about you, of course, that knew that you were going to be okay, but you needed the reminder, and you needed the reflection, and there was something in you able to see that and able to see that lesson and that message. 

[00:08:17] Laura Walker: There was something about being out in nature that allowed for that connection and that interchange to happen that couldn’t have happened in any other way. Go nature! Go off! Like, I’m all for it. 

[00:08:29] Florence Williams: It’s some of the favorite work that I do, is actually being able to witness these transformational experiences. To be able to facilitate is very fulfilling because sometimes, when you’re writing a book, you don’t know who it’s going to reach. You don’t know if it will change lives, but when you’re actually out there with a group of people, you can see it happening.

[00:08:50] Laura Walker: As someone who’s run a lot of successful retreats, and I know that you’ve interacted with first-time retreat-goers, like I was in the Colorado Rockies, as well as more experienced retreat-hoppers, what advice would you have for someone who’s interested in attending a retreat? 

[00:09:04] Florence Williams: I think it’s important to go with a little bit of an intention. What are the questions that you’re asking? We work on this, like, the first night of the retreat. If you show up without a question, that’s okay, but at some point, early in the retreat, I think it’s helpful to be able to articulate the questions that you’re asking.

And then cultivating a mindset of openness and vulnerability so that you’re open to what happens. Sometimes, when we’re in a new group of people, or if we’re on a retreat by ourselves, we have some defenses up. Those are natural defenses. But I think that the retreats that are the most powerful are the ones in which we sort of let that armor down and we open ourselves to possibility, to experience, to candid conversation with each other.

You know, I always tell people this isn’t therapy. I’m not a therapist. We want to open ourselves up to what we’re experiencing, and I find a great way to do that is by queuing our senses, and that’s something that being in a nature space can really help us do also. What happens when we soften on the inside and when we let down those defenses: we can access deeper planes of insight. And sometimes being with a group can really help us do that too because we see each other, we hear each other, we feel heard. There’s a group dynamic in which we’re sort of encouraging each other toward insight.

I think that those are major factors of what makes a successful retreat. And then, I think it really helps to have a leader who’s not going to try to indoctrinate you into some cult because, actually, that does happen. And there are a lot of bad retreats out there. And, anything you can do again to facilitate that softening, so movement, exercise a little bit, can be really helpful.

And then, after the retreat, I think it’s important to keep reflecting, to have some integration. How are you going to go back to your normal day-to-day life? And, like you, you may go back and be like, “You know what? This is not what I want anymore. It doesn’t feel congruent with what I’ve learned about myself on this retreat.”

[00:11:09] Laura Walker: I can see that as a really important blueprint. To sort of anticipate, “What is it that I want to get out of this,” to be open to whatever you communicate to yourself or whatever the universe or nature is communicating to you, and then to really reflect on, “Okay, how do I carry this away with me back into what feels like the real world?” 

[00:11:31] Florence Williams: That’s right, and one thing I love about these retreats is that a lot of women end up staying in touch with each other. There’s a touch point that they have, and there’s someone who understands what they’ve been through.

[00:11:42] Laura Walker: It’s funny that you mentioned that, because I’m in two weeks going out to California with one of the guests from the second retreat that I did with you in Colorado, and these connections have been really, really valuable for me, so I can definitely attest to how magical it can be to maintain those if you have the opportunity to.

[00:12:01] Florence Williams: I think a lot of women—and some men but a lot of women—are real connectors, and we thrive in community if we can share the energy that drives us toward creativity. I love that you’re doing a writing retreat together. I love doing writing retreats with friends too. I also love doing them alone or with my dog, but we do thrive with these connections.

[00:12:26] Laura Walker: So much of what I’m intending to do with this podcast is to create that virtual sense of community where writers can really connect and see how all of these different parts of—I’ve been calling it the writing ecosystem—how they fit together and feed off of each other.

[00:12:43] Florence Williams: Yes. With that second retreat you mentioned, that one really did have a writing focus as well as some nature immersion. Of course, those two things go great together. But, the woman I co-lead those with, Lisa Jones, also continues to teach online, and a lot of the women continue with her classes after the retreat, and that’s a nice way to keep that community going as well.

[00:13:04] Laura Walker: What about advice for somebody who is interested in leading a retreat?

[00:13:09] Florence Williams: There’s a lot of room for a lot of different approaches to this. And, of course, there’s so many different retreats out there, and some of them are so particular and obscure, like someone was just telling me there are pickleball retreats in Costa Rica. So, if you have an interest in something where there is a community that you can tap into, that’s of course a start.

It is a pretty crowded space. There are a lot of retreats out there. I think that it helps, probably, to have a little bit of training in what it is that you’re teaching or coaching or leading in. I mean, a lot of life coaches end up leading retreats. The one I co-lead in Telluride is with a life coach. She’s great. She’s an extrovert, and she loves the social dynamics of these retreats, whereas I’m a little bit more of an introvert; I like to talk about the science, and I like to put people under a tree where everyone’s quiet. I think that we complement each other really well.

I would definitely research the market and see what kind of community you have, what you can offer that’s a little bit different or unique. I also recommend things like getting trained in wilderness first aid so you can take care of people if there’s a problem.

[00:14:13] Laura Walker: Yeah. Especially if you are doing something that’s more outdoor-based like that.

[00:14:18] Florence Williams: I also think it’s helpful to prescreen the people who sign up, because you’re not equipped to handle a mental health crisis, so you want to make sure that you’re not going to have someone experiencing one, ideally, when you’re in charge.

[00:14:30] Laura Walker: That’s a really good point and something that I bet a lot of people don’t think about. I certainly hadn’t thought about that when I was planning my retreats last year.

So, you mentioned doing writing retreats with friends, doing solo writing retreats. Aside from retreats, what other kinds of writing connections have been important to you along the way?

[00:14:48] Florence Williams: Well, I’ve been fortunate to have a number of great editors in my life, and I’ve learned so much from them, whether it’s a magazine editor or whether it’s a book editor or whether it’s a peer. My best editors have been friends who are really talented. It helps to have a peer community that you can lean on. But certainly the official editors I’ve worked with have also been incredible, and I feel very lucky about that.

You can hire editors too, and especially now, there are so many great writers who teach online or who work with groups online like you do, and I think that you can find people who would be very happy to be paid to look at your work, and some of them are absolutely fantastic. There’s a huge community out there. 

[00:15:35] Laura Walker: Definitely. It’s hard sometimes to see the positive outcomes of the pandemic, but I think the ways that we’ve connected and built up networks within the virtual space is certainly one of those positive outcomes, that it’s so much easier now to find somebody who writes and teaches and edits and mentors.

As a science writer, have you found or identified—aside from the professional editors who you work with through publishers—how have you found editors or advisors or mentors within that space? 

[00:16:11] Florence Williams: Again, mostly it’s my peer group now, my friends with whom I’ve been sharing work for many years. I’m lucky to have built that now, but I do get a couple Substacks that I really love. I get Meghan O’Rourke’s Substack—shout out to her. She does a combination of memoir and reporting, and she’s a poet, and she’s the editor of the Yale Review. She’s super high-level, very thoughtful about how she teaches writing and how she deconstructs pieces of literature. Not just her own; she talks about her own work, but she also talks about other people’s. I really recommend her Substack. That’s actually one I pay for, so shout out to her. 

[00:16:52] Laura Walker: Yeah. Substacks are incredible in that way. I mean, there’s so much to be learned and gleaned from the sort of musings of all of these different writers. 

[00:17:02] Florence Williams: I think it’s a little overwhelming. There are so many, so noodle around in there and see who seems like a fit. I do get a bunch of free ones, and I enjoy sort of dipping into that river once in a while. 

[00:17:13] Laura Walker: Yeah, for sure, and having up the boundaries that will allow you to not feel overwhelmed or inundated.

[00:17:20] Florence Williams: Yeah. Talk about a crowded space. If you’re a writer who wants to start a Substack, I think there are a lot of resources for that out there, but that is also a crowded space and probably pretty hard to make a living at that. 

I feel like it’s a ton of work and for probably not a lot of gain for where I am right now. That may change in the future, but right now I’m focused on actually doing what I like to do, which is writing books.

[00:17:42] Laura Walker: And the sort of seasonal newsletter that you send out—as one of your readers and fan girls, I’ll just say, honestly, it’s important for me to have those occasional connections where I’m not feeling like, “Oh my gosh, I have to read this every week or every other week,” but, you know, just hear what’s going on in your life.

[00:18:00] Florence Williams: I have defied the common wisdom on that because people say, “Oh, if you have a newsletter, you need to really deliver regularly.” And I just send out my totally free newsletter through my website about every quarter. And that’s about it. 

[00:18:12] Laura Walker: Yeah, I decided when I started my own newsletter to follow the schedule of Tim Urban, who writes the blog “Wait But Why.” His tagline is that he does a new blog post every sometimes, and I’m like, “That’s perfect. That’s what I can commit to is ‘every sometimes.’” 

I’m thinking about this idea of people writing and being vulnerable and sending their stuff out, and the way that it can sometimes feel like—like you said, it’s not always as gratifying and fulfilling as it might be because you don’t know who your readers are and you don’t know whose ears it’s reaching, and that that can sometimes come with a sense of failure or a sense of rejection.

I feel like with all the shifts that have happened in my life lately, especially with moving from full-time teaching where I had so much scaffolding and so much of a network in that space and so much support, and now I’m building this DIY writing career, which has opened me up to quite a bit of rejection, and so that’s something that I’m thinking about a lot these days. I feel like it’s, in a sense, it’s par for the course as a writer, and I’m just wondering if you can speak to your own experience with rejection or what can sometimes feel like failure even?

[00:19:25] Florence Williams: Having the community is really key to that. I have always been in sort of a writer’s group where we get together for lunch once a month. I’ve done this for many, many years, and I have moved across country several times, and when I land in a new place, I build it all over again. And I just build it. I don’t wait to get invited into one. I just find some other writers and I say, “Hey, let’s get together once a month,” and it’s great because we often don’t even necessarily talk about writing. We complain, and we throw shade on editors we don’t like or rejection letters we got. It’s really helpful to be able to vent in that kind of safe space, right? I don’t necessarily want to unload my complaints on my partner about this, but it’s great to have a container where that’s okay to do.

And then, of course, we also really support each other and cheer each other up and tell each other, “That thing you wrote last week was really great, and here’s how you can make it better.” So, I think the community’s key, and then the other piece is really cultivating within yourself a sense that you’re doing this for yourself ultimately. The authenticity is important, the doing what feels true to you, and that’s not going to necessarily always find a market, but it will make you feel like a more whole and happy person.

I have gotten more into meditating and mindfulness lately, and I think that is such a great frame for sort of letting go of external validation. I used to thrive a lot on external validation. My enneagram is a three, which I’m not proud of, but I have evolved, I think, a lot, to the point where I don’t take it as personally anymore and I’m doing what feels right for myself.

So, I think meditation, focusing on the self, and then also building community. Those would be my trifecta of advice. 

[00:21:17] Laura Walker: I love that so much, and I’m finding it really incredible because this is something that I’ve been grappling with, and two weeks ago in a conversation with my sister, it struck me how dependent on feedback I’ve been. I’ve been in academia for my entire adult life, either as a student or as a professor or when I was in my MFA program kind of doing both, and that is a space where there is so much feedback, and I had really come to depend on that feedback as a sort of compass. I would curate the responses that I wanted from my students and then use it to build or to shift courses so that I was meeting the student’s needs and expectations better. And since I’ve stepped away from that, I have found that there’s no built-in feedback system, so I’m constantly seeking out feedback, and that can be really grueling and it can be really dissatisfying because a lot of readers, and I would say even other writers sometimes, aren’t very well-equipped to give the kind of feedback that you might be looking for.

I’ve really just settled on, “Oh my gosh, that’s what I’m doing, and I need to rely on myself and my own inner sense of authenticity—” like you said “—and integrity to know that I am moving in the right direction and I’m doing what I know is the best approach for me to be taking.” 

[00:22:42] Florence Williams: Feedback can be really helpful too, but I think you need to be clear with yourself about what kind of feedback would be most helpful and what kind you want. And then set up boundaries so that you’re not getting the stuff that’s not helpful. 

[00:22:54] Laura Walker: One of my important boundaries has been entirely outsourcing social media to somebody who is younger and better equipped to handle that because I don’t know what to do with that feedback. It doesn’t give me useful information. It’s been a huge burden off, and then I feel like there’s more space for me now to just do the writing, which is the part that I’ve always wanted to do anyway. 

[00:23:14] Florence Williams: And it sounds like you’re really in a huge growth space right now, by having shifted and learning this whole new way of doing your work, so I think cultivating that sense of curiosity and “What can I learn?” and checking in with yourself about it. That’s exciting. Growth is exciting. 

[00:23:31] Laura Walker: It really is. Absolutely. It can be exhausting, and I am trying to enjoy the messiness of this very creative space that I’m in right now.

[00:23:43] Florence Williams: Well, I’ve been enjoying watching where you’re going with it. 

[00:23:45] Laura Walker: Thanks so much. It’s been a great journey. I’m loving it. 

So, I’m curious, as we’ve talked about all of these different places within the writing world and the retreat world, what is coming up on the literary landscape that you’re excited about?

[00:23:59] Florence Williams: Yeah, good question. I still love to read books, and I’m still prioritizing that, you know, and there are so many distractions, and some of them are really tempting and addicting, and I do spend probably too much time on my phone, but I always come back to the book and I’m still excited about the book.

I am reading more than ever, and I feel very committed to enriching my life by reading for the rest of my life, so I’m excited about books, and I hope people continue to write them. I hope publishers continue to publish them. I think that there are probably exciting opportunities for self-publishing that are coming up, and that’s potentially great if people can afford how to make it work financially.

I think the whole Substack idea of people developing and building their own audiences can help connect writers to their readers, and I think that that’s exciting. So, it’s not all grim out there. 

[00:24:52] Laura Walker: Yeah, for sure. There’s definitely a lot to be excited about.

[00:24:56] Florence Williams: I would love to see us all spend more time being creative. People are realizing that their traditional work lives have really atrophied their creative powers and their mental health, frankly, and I don’t know what’s going to happen with AI taking over part of people’s jobs or entire jobs, but what I hope will happen is that there will be ways for people to create and then find communities for their creativity and audiences for their creativity and peers for their creativity, and maybe we’ll all have more time to sit around, playing the banjo and writing poems, and then, somehow, be able to still survive economically and feed ourselves and our families. And, and that’s the challenge because our political climate may not facilitate that. So, we’ll see. 

[00:25:42] Laura Walker: It is such a big “We’ll see.” It’s all, “Let’s see how this pans out.”

This has been so wonderful talking with you. Thank you. I appreciate your time, your enthusiasm. Always love connecting.

[00:25:53] Florence Williams: Thanks for having me on. I always love talking to you too, Laura.

[00:25:56] Laura Walker: Real quick, before we wrap up, tell us where people can find you and your writing online. 

[00:26:02] Florence Williams: Everything channels through my website, which is easy. It’s florencewilliams.com. You can sign up for my free newsletter that you’ll get four times, and you can find my audio work, my narrative nonfiction, my bookwork. It’s all there. 

[00:26:16] Laura Walker: And information about your retreats? 

[00:26:19] Florence Williams: Yes. We have one coming up in Italy in June that I’m super excited about, and we’re still doing that one outside of Telluride, and we’re doing the writing one, so got three coming up this season. Please reach out, anybody, with any questions about those. 

[00:26:33] Laura Walker: Love it. Alright. Thank you so much, yeah, and hopefully people will reach out. 

Outro

In Heartbreak, Florence writes about becoming a “fuller, keener, softer, wiser version of [her]self,” and I can honestly say that her words—on and off the page—have helped me do the same. I hope you’ve enjoyed our conversation, and if you have, I hope you’ll share the episode. 

This wraps up season three of Writing Connections and my first season as host. Thanks so much for coming along for the ride. Stay tuned for some bonus content this summer, and please check out our archives for past episodes that may be of interest. Take care out there and, as always, keep connecting.