Sharon’s decision to change her life started on a compost heap in Devon, UK. She and her husband, Gary had made it – they had the careers, the big incomes, all the stuff money can buy. They lived in their ideal house in the country. The only problem was their rubbish collection was unreliable, so to cut down on waste Sharon started a compost heap. Then some ‘thing’ began to grow on top of it. This Thing changed their lives.
[responsive_vid]
Our journey into downshifting started very appropriately on a compost heap about 15 years ago in deepest Devon. As a then twenty-something couple on hefty incomes we were about as blasé as you could get when it came to spending big bucks on unnecessary tat and space-absorbing stuff.
I had always loved the countryside and never strayed too close to suburban living and back then Gary and I were enjoying life in a tumbledown cottage just outside Exeter. With a very casual interest in being self-sufficient and a rather unreliable rubbish collection service we started up a compost heap in the back garden. Sometime in the early summer I spotted something odd growing on the heap. I thought it must be something horribly poisonous, but as weeks passed a very large and very beautiful squash-type thing developed. It became clear that we should do something with it, so one night after a horrible day in a stuffy office I bravely sacrificed the globe-like squash and roasted it in the Rayburn. Gary came home from work and we ate home-grown, all be it accidentally, squash with yoghurt and mint sauce and some rice, it was fantastic and it was cheap, nearly free in fact.
We were hooked. So what next? Well in all honesty we both hated our jobs in Marketing and were always secretly looking for something better or different. Over time our lifestyles became less wasteful and more productive – we grew vegetables, we preserved food, collected kindling, made and drank wine, sloe gin and damson vodka, shopped locally where possible and generally lived a fairly ‘good life’ so to speak. However, it would be untrue to say we were ‘green’, more that we were looking after ‘our own’ and not really aware or tuned-in to what was going on with the planet or outside the safety of our little haven where rain and sunshine were plentiful and the soil good. We were complacent.
Moving house to be near Gary’s new job marked a pivotal and pretty low point in our effort to live greener. Life was hectic and spending even more so, time was non-existent and we barely saw each other in order to keep payments up to date on our burdensome credit cards which had amassed over the years. Archie was in nursery and therefore in expensive disposable nappies. I had a three-hour round trip to work each day – somewhere along the line we had lost sight of what crucially mattered in life. We had to change and get things back on track, and so we did.
After many late nights talking through our options, we realised that not only were we time and energy poor but no better off financially as commuting and nursery fees ate away nearly all our income.
We wrote down lists of aims, ideals and plans, we identified ways of earning money in a more family friendly way, and most of all we read, and read some more: books, magazines, newspapers, journals, websites, case studies, biographies and blogs by those who had already made the leap into living more naturally and consciously. By researching options and lifestyle choices I became acutely aware of the wider impact all our individual choices had on the world as a whole, from choosing to buy local and insisting on fair trade to opting to cook from scratch and refusing GM foods.
Issues were raised in our house from homeschooling to politics, shopping to crafts. We both realised that we had taken control of our lives again and could make informed choices on how to live better in the future.
We started our own business and became responsible for our own hours, income and working environment. Working for ourselves has given us much more freedom and allowed us to enjoy time out with our children without having to schedule them around our work. I also completed a year-long course in Horticulture with the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) and most significantly we moved to a rural area of Tuscany in Italy.
The journey into downshifting is a continual one and each day brings a new challenge or discovery; I am constantly amazed at how many people want a simple way of life but do nothing about it. The debt issue is universal, most of my friends owe large sums to the bank, us included, although we are nearing the end of a long period of miserable loan repayments. Personally, I only recognised the link between income and expenditure in my late twenties when I had already immersed myself in the debt culture.
What has changed most remarkably in our lives is not what we do but how we think. I have always been a sucker for a bargain and trawled charity shops for cheap clobber, but now I consciously ask myself do I really need that novelty cake tin or pink spotty teapot or do I simply want it because it is cute. This train of thought is saving us money every day, and every day we are able to decrease our financial commitments and buy time and freedom. Of course, actions speak volumes and in our household things that come naturally nowadays are recycling, re-using, revamping, cooking food from scratch, growing our own, creating new plants from cuttings (totally free and makes great gifts), eating as a family, turning the TV off (well, as much as we can), enjoying the outdoors, and sharing our enthusiasm and home-grown produce with friends.
The move to Italy was more to do with loving life than downshifting. We’d had a long romance with the country and I wanted our children to enjoy a childhood in an environment where kids counted for something and were cherished by those around them. Sadly, the UK still struggles with this concept in my opinion. Children are welcomed in all restaurants here in Italy and there is no such thing as a children’s menu; most Italian food is loved by kids – you can’t really go wrong with pasta and pizza after all!
Italy has got recycling down to a fine art; we take all our rubbish with us when we leave the house and place it in the designated large roadside recycling bins, all clearly labelled. Train stations boast a minimum of three recycling bins and plastic bags are shunned by most food shops. One phenomenon sadly missing is the ‘charity shop’ as Italians are by nature very proud and do not entertain the idea of buying other people’s cast-offs. However, I think this may be offset by the strong make-do-and-mend approach still very much alive within both the home and workplace. Here, you can pretty much find parts for any type of electrical appliance or white good and everyday things such as shoes and leather goods are made to last.
The essential thing in changing your lifestyle for the better is to recognise your ‘energy thieves’ – in other words what really drags you down. If it’s your job, why not think about learning a new trade, one that inspires you and has purpose? If it is where you live, what are the possibilities of renting a house somewhere different, where you can enjoy nature? I long ago gleefully rejected the ‘must own a house’ mentality and now live happily and mortgage-free in sunny Tuscany. By taking a few logical steps to a simpler lifestyle you could literally be saving your sanity whilst saving the planet.
Sharon’s top three tips for downshifting:
Grow something to eat
As a little girl I remember my dad carving my name into the side of a marrow and each day we watched my name get bigger and bigger – pure magic.
Say No to stuff
Gadgets, gizmos and all those mad-capped supposed timesavers are just money wasters and space guzzlers. Learn to use your brain and your hands and reduce electricity and battery use.
Rescue some animals
What better way for children to learn about life than to watch an animal grow. Whether you choose livestock for food or pets for pleasure, loving and nurturing is a core life skill and one that gives back tenfold. Always check out rescue and rehoming centres for information – there is no better stress buster than a hug from an old dog.
When pregnancy strikes the first time, seasoned parents rave how wonderful parenthood is. They don’t tell you about the ‘OH F**K’ moment that hits within about seven days. It’s that moment when you realise that no matter what you do with your life, you will affect this little thing that you are now 100% responsible for. It’s that moment when your realise that if you take risks you have a knock-on affect on this little person’s emotional and mental well-being for the rest of their life which will impact on their kids and their kids after that. You have started a chain that cannot be broken. It’s that moment when you realise that you are now the adult in charge, you are the one that will have to fight off the zombies if there is a zombie attack. It’s that moment when you realise your life is no longer your own: it has been consumed by the ball of love – and even if you are not one for using bad language, a silent cry of ‘OH F**K’ screeches into your head.
It passes. We get on with the task at hand and do our best trying to achieve being even a fraction of the ideal parent we envisaged ourselves to be and we sometimes have a moment to remember the person we used to be. The person we are still somewhere underneath the peanut butter and jelly and parent taxi runs.
Every parent needs a ‘Me-Time’ trip. As soon as you have given birth to your last donation to the human population, start saving. By the time your last is 5 years old you have earned your right to a Me-Time Trip and will have enough cash to do it.
Steps to Your Me-Time Trip
1) Make a list of all the things you want to do before you die (let your imagination run!).
2) Match items on the list, i.e. ‘Learn to horse ride’ could be matched with ‘See elephants in the wild’, by going on a horse-riding trip to South Africa. Or ‘Help children in need’ could be matched with ‘Walk the Great Wall of China’ by doing voluntary work in a Chinese orphanage with a visit to the Wall while there.
3) Lots of charities do fundraising challenges abroad. For instance, Bóthar do a trip to India, and the IHWT do a Cattle Drive in Montana. Both of these are run by www.zarasplanet.ie. Find a charity that you would like to support and start fundraising.
4) Volunteer: If you are going alone, volunteering is a great way of having an adventure of a lifetime while making new friends from around the world at the same time. Check out www.vsi.ie for projects.
5) Start a Selfish Account. Buy a piggy bank or open a post office or credit union account and set up a weekly direct debit of a small amount from your salary. Save your loose change in a jar. You will be surprised at how little amounts add up quickly.
How Will They Survive Without You?
1) Cook double amounts of everything the week before and freeze, and leave a detailed menu for each day.
2) Leave complete outfits hanging in the wardrobe labelled for each day of the week.
3) Go during school term – this way the kids are occupied for the majority of the day and arrange with other parents for your kids to go visit directly after school.
4) Teach your kids independence from an early age a little at a time. Clean up a room, use a microwave, make a sandwich, use a washing machine and a dishwasher are all tasks an 8- or 9-year-old can be easily taught.
5) Forget the four steps I just outlined and get on the plane. So what if they live in the same clothes for three days, eat take-away every evening and have chocolate spread sandwiches for breakfast? Once you leave your children with an adult present, they will survive for a week without you and they will appreciate you all the more when you get back.
I want to introduce you to a person I met in New York at a course recently: her name is Josephine Bila and she brought me nightclubbing and to dinner after the course and showed me the best of the city that never sleeps. She is one of these people that you meet and you say ‘what a positive person, full of energy and full of life’. We were having lunch a few days later and she threw a clanger at me, something that I didn’t know. We were doing a business course and I was asking her about her business, now she works for a TV company full-time, but she’s also an emotional coach for people with chronic illness. I’ll let her tell you about herself and her business.
Josephine, when you were born you were a beautiful healthy baby girl but something happened so, could you just tell us a little bit about the background?
So, I was born the first child in my family and I guess after a few months I started looking jaundiced and tired, so they brought me to see the doctor and the doctor did a bunch of tests and they discovered that I actually was born with a genetic illness called Thalassemia.
That’s a long name!
I know, it’s a really long one which means that you know it’s rare and no one has it and no one knows about it. So, what this means is my bone marrow cannot produce red blood cells that function, so I need transfusions every few weeks to survive so I’ve been getting transfused since I was a little baby and probably will for the rest of my life.
How often do you have to get them?
When I was a kid it was every week. Then I got older and I guess I could sustain the blood so it changed to every three weeks and now it’s like every two to three weeks.
Okay, so you rely on people donating blood just to survive?
Yeah.
It’s something that I never thought of – I am very embarrassed to say that I’ve actually never donated blood but I’m going to now.
Oh good!
The next time I see the (blood donation) van I’ll be in it. We hear about blood donations if there is a major tragedy or national emergency, when everybody goes to queue up to give blood because people need it, but we don’t actually think about kids (like you needed it since you were three) needing it to survive and people like you with chronic illnesses who need donations.
Also cancer patients. Most cancer patients who need chemotherapy, also need it. I always sit with cancer patients when receiving blood. So many people need blood transfusions.
So, it’s not just for accidents and emergencies. It’s a part of life and survival for some people.
Something like this illness which people didn’t understand and a lot of teachers were unkind to me – like very, very cruel, actually – separating me from kids, not understanding and talking about it. I really didn’t talk about it at all with my friends and my parents just wanted to separate hospital life from real life. And so we didn’t talk about it at home so, I thought that since I got so much negativity from teachers, that I wanted to work in a school when I got older and tell kids who were just like me that they can achieve whatever they want in life as long as they try a little bit.
So, I got my Degree in Social Work and while I was getting the degree I worked in an elementary school counselling children and the stories that they shared with me were so tragic that I couldn’t separate my own story from their stories, so I’d go home and cry every single day and that made me decide that I couldn’t work in that type of industry so I asked myself what is the complete opposite? And that is entertainment. I bought a book and I taught myself HTML which is a web coding language and I got a job working in web design right out of college.
Okay, so you went with something completely different, but then because you’re going to the hospital quite regularly you were having some bad experiences and actually that probably dragged you back into what your calling is, as such, so that’s what you’re doing now.
I listened to what the other patients were saying – that the hospital was giving them care, informing them about taking vitamins, get transfused two times a week instead of three, etc. They said that no one was helping them with their emotional problems; they had all kinds of anxiety and stress and fear about just life in general and no one was really answering the call to that, so, I thought since I had all this training and I’ve experience of illness, and have taught myself so much – like how to get through all the adversity – then maybe I could start a blog and help people.
Okay, so you started a blog to actually help people with the emotional side of things. When did you start that?
I don’t know if you know Kris Carr, she is a cancer survivor? She has a website that has a massive following and I wrote a blog for her and after I wrote that blog I decided I should start my own website. So kind of in conjunction with launching my post with her, I posted my own site and people have been taking notice and now so many people have written to me from all over the world. I Skype with people in so many parts of the country and I’m coaching them and giving them advice on how to talk to doctors or other various things and it has been really amazing.
With some models of psychotherapy, you keep talking about the past, the past, the past, and you are never really in the present moment and what’s happening with your emotions right now. So I coach people who are experiencing a lot of worries and anxieties around having an illness. The transformations that I have seen are amazing, so it’s kind of cool. This is the most fulfilling thing that I’ve ever done.
So, it’s emotional coaching – it’s more focusing on the positive?
Well, I don’t want to say ‘positive’ … it is positive, but it’s more of trying to understand your thoughts while you’re caught up in the cycle of negative thoughts and understanding how to basically control your mind more.
Right, so it is more about not allowing the illness to be your life but rather just be a part of your life?
Exactly!
You’re now writing a book, is that right?
I wrote a book and I’m meeting an agent at the end of the month. We’ll see what he says!
You are going to Dubai, to speak at an event as well, aren’t you?
Yes, I spoke nationally and now I’m going to Abu Dhabi actually to speak.
Cool, are you speaking to doctors or is it patients that you’re talking to?
They’re from all over the world – patients, doctors, family members, scientists, pharmaceutical reps … everybody!
So this has all come out of you taking action about and listening to what people need and using your experience to write a blog about it and this has all developed from that. That’s amazing!
Exactly!
So, obviously, having a chronic illness, there’s not very many positives about it, but what I find amazing about your blog is I read it and I’m lucky that I don’t have a chronic illness and I’m healthy as far as I know, but I get so much out of your blog because one of the things that you were saying is how you appreciate life more, so could you just tell us a bit about the positives that you have found out from your negative situation?
Well, I find that people get caught up in really trivial things, I do too sometimes – when it comes to relationships they can be difficult – but going outside and knowing that I’m completely free and I’m not trapped in a hospital, because I have been like that. That feeling of just being able to do what I want when I want: I recognise that every single day and you know not being attached to an IV or any kind of machine, I feel so incredibly blessed and it’s just that I think I’ve seen so many things like really horrible, tragic things, that most people never ever see in their lives, so it’s made me kind of slow down and step back and understand why it’s important to not obsess over very trivial things. To appreciate the little things in life.
I’d like to thank Josephine very much and we’re going to have her back on the show when her book comes out.
