Jackee Holder on the good things in life

7 May

The Wintering Sessions with Katherine May:
Jackee Holder on the good things in life

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Jackee Holder is a writer, walker, coach, interfaith minister and daughter of the windrush. In this uplifting conversation, she talks about the capacity of life to uplift us, her love of libraries, and how a tree helped her to treasure her name.

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Please note the transcript is automatically generated and may not be completely accurate.
Katherine May:
Hello, I'm Katherine May and welcome to The Wintering Sessions, the podcast that sets out to learn from the times when life is frozen. This week, I'm talking to writer coach and interfaith minister, Jackee holder, whose most recent project is writing with fabulous trees, a map that encourages us to find creative inspiration in green spaces. Here, we talk about all the good things in life, libraries, trees, and sea swimming mothers.
Katherine May:
So lovely to have you here. I'm really excited to talk to you because I followed you for years on Instagram. I'm not even sure for how long and you're always kind of out in the world weaving magic. And yeah, I suppose I wanted to start by talking about what it is you do, because you do this really big cluster of things as well as being a writer.
Jackee Holder:
Oh, I love that. I'm so delighted to be here. And I have to tell you something that I'm gonna be honest about. Yeah, I had no idea. You follow me on Instagram for years?
I did. Yeah. And you know, what I was trying to work out? And I'm not sure if I'll get to the bottom of this. Because I think I think I've come across you through Barbara Carrellas, would that be right?
Jackee Holder:
It might be by the way, or by the way, but do you know, you just have no idea of who's following you sometimes on social media, you know. And sometimes you don't know the impact that you're having on people. Or people have, you know, it's just really amazing the kind of energy that is generated. I absolutely love my Instagram followers. Honestly, they feel like my tribe, I can get heart warmed by just going on to my Insta for, you know, five minutes, just seeing comments people are making seen which posts really resonate with people. It could just bring a smile to my face. I'm really heartened today that I wouldn't have known that neccessarily, so thank you for sharing.
Katherine May:
It's funny, isn't it. But I I always think that I mean, I'm quite quiet on Instagram, in that I don't tend to you know, I tend to click like on posts, but I don't ever think of anything to say. And I'm always amazed by how chatty people are like in a in a really wonderful way. Like, you know, people reach out to you and talk to you on there. And it's all these beautiful kind of fleeting connections that get made. And I just think there's something really wonderful about that place, you know that we we talk so often about how awful social media is. But I think we should really stop and be appreciative sometimes of all the wonderful things that we get too.
Jackee Holder:
I totally agree with you. Because I tell people and they do start laughing in my face that I'm an introvert who learned to be an extrovert. So people look at me, they think, oh, she's an absolute extrovert, but I'm not. I am an Introvert. I grew up with six siblings. I was one of six, you know, my family, you could go down pretty quickly? , you could fight for your space. And I was a middle child. I was the first of my siblings that was born in the UK, mum and dad came over from Barbados in 1961 and 1960, respectfully, and two older brothers, I was the oldest girl growing up in the art the family that I grew up in. And so yeah, you had to, you had to assert yourself, you had to find your ground to stand on. So I learned to flex between the two, both in my personal life. And in my working life. Because I'm very much the same in my working life, I can really step in front of a group and I can be very chatty. I can be very engaging. But as soon as I press that stop button, I have to the garden, I have you have to replenish is I'm going way off topic already. But what the hell, I think I think this is going to be the last in the series. So I think we can be meandering. I think that's the invitation today. But like as a, like when I learned I was autistic, I realised at the same time that I'm an introvert. But I mean, like you I kind of trained myself in being an extrovert and I would have told you at that time, if you'd have asked me I mean, you know, I'm only talking about five or six years ago, that I'm really social and I really love you know, getting out there and talking to people. And for me, I've had this, you know, battle with myself to kind of work out what it is I like to do because I was so deeply masked that I was masked even to myself, you know, I'd learnt to pass. And that passing has always been a real privilege that I've been able to enact. But it's also been quite harmful to me because it's left me really exhausted. And I've kind of come full circle now because for a long time I retreated and became like very isolated, wanted to be very isolated. And now I'm trying to, I suppose a little bit like you trying to get the right balance between still really liking people actually. But not letting those relationships totally drain me and take me to the point where I'm making myself sick from them.
Jackee Holder:
So I really appreciate what you've just said, because what I realised as I was listening to you, was that I found the balance quite a long time ago. In 1999, I started running. I mean, I'm talking about running from my front door down to Brockwell Park in South London, I only lived about not even 10 minutes away from Brockwell Park. And then one day I miraculously made it around the park, much to the annoyance of an elderly woman who was walking up the hill as I was making that last climb. And she literally sidled up beside me as I was huffing, puffing, you know, that sort of splattering, sort of running that you do when you're not fit at all?
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been there.
Jackee Holder:
..and she says to me "can't you go any faster". Did not just say that to me. Of course II got a fire in my belly. I made it up the hill. I made it to the gate where I started. And that was
to head into my journal, I have to go out for a walk. I have to not talk to anybody the beginning of my wanderings. I call them people who know me, call them, I became a regular runner. So I'd run every morning from my house around Brockwell Park. And then I used to head up to this tree that was sort of top of the hill, it was this huge, sprawling evergreen oak. And I would literally land under that tree every morning. At the time, I think I just started training as an interfaith minister. So we were taught something called body prayers. So I would literally use that as an opportunity to practice.. It was called an earth body prayer. And I would do this body prayer under the tree. It was like the tree was my Cathedral. The tree was my church. The tree was my sanctuary. And that became my morning ritual. Honestly, it was, like the holiest of times during a very difficult time.
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And trees are so significant to you, aren't they? I mean, I want to talk a little bit about your, what do you call it a map? a pamphlet? that you've published recently.
Jackee Holder:
Yeah It's called writing with fabulous trees, my writing my writing map that I did with the wonderful Shawn from writing maps, he commissioned me to co write with him the writing the fabulous trees, writing map. So what we did we put together 12 journal prompts that are connected to trees, parks and green spaces. It's illustrated. And the idea behind it is to, I really wanted to help people make that connection with nature meaningful and purposeful, and fun. So that we could find a way to engage with our own narrative around nature.
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah. Because sometimes people need almost like a kind of help with structuring a fascination with nature. You know, like, that's how you can get started. Because there's that early intimidation. I think when you want to do something, you want to forge a new relationship, you want to start a new practice maybe. And, and you need like a little guide to say, Okay, well, look, here's some ways here's some permission. Here's some ways in that's what I thought was really beautiful about the way you'd find it. I could just see loads of doors opening from it.
Jackee Holder:
Well, that's the thing isn't it? we've we've, we're we're now in a culture, where everything is almost like you need to be an expert or really good at something really, really quickly. And often people don't know how to begin that conversation with nature. So when I ended up under that tree, what I started to realise quite quickly was what my roots were, yeah, wherever in my life was I grounded? What did I need to plant in my life so that I could remain grounded. It was almost like I could take the metaphors from the tree, and I could translate those into journal prompts for myself in my journal and because I have been a very I've been journaling for years, that was an easy kind of segway for me into my journal. So sometimes I would sit on the aup raised roots of the tree in the summer, and just sit and write in my journal afterwards. Because I use the metaphors from the tree to really kind of inspire my journaling.
Katherine May:
Yeah, it's lovely, and trees just provides so many ready made metaphors for so many, you know, it's a metaphor for all seasons in trees isn't there
Jackee Holder:
You've got a metephor fro all seasons of trees. We can map our life through the seasons of trees through the seasons in nature. So nature and trees, obviously, are all one, they all they inhabit the same environment. Because if we're looking at the seasons, we're also looking at trees through the seasons. And I think it's really important because I think often in our lives, particularly when we think about the just a digital overload, we can become really disconnected from where we are seasonally in our lives, you know, which is why I think your book is so profound, because you speak so you name so clearly the season of wintering and what many people we don't want to talk about the wintering of our lives. You know, when I think one of all the examples and all of the people that you spoke about in your lives, in your book, you see those places that people had to go to where they had to face some of the Hard Knocks of life, they had to face some of the difficult, turbulent things. You know, I have this image of you running in the sea that morning with the woman getting in the sea in there for a second, running back out again. But actually, what wintering did what you did with facing that harsh, cold reality of the sea. Was that you got stronger. You got more resilient. Yeah. In the sea water.
Katherine May:
Absolutely. And you know what I was thinking about just this, this morning. I was reading Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. I don't know. Yeah, you've read that? If you're a fan
Jackee Holder:
Absolutely. In my twenties I read her works because she was phenomenal.
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah. And I love the way she's, I think she's beginning to find some new popularity. But there's that whole idea that God is change, that change itself is the force that you must align yourself with. And that to do that, you have to engage with suffering, essentially. And I felt God that it didn't strike me so much the first time around that I read that but this time around, just reading it this morning, I thought, oh, wow, that's so so true. And it's actually what I've been kind of reaching to say, in a way as well that, that our job is to align ourselves with it, because otherwise we're punished by it. She's so sharp.
Jackee Holder:
She is very sharp, isn't it and I love. There's a couple of things here, Katherine, that I've just thinking about when you're just talking about the parable of the sower because she was a real.. I love the way she used her fiction to really tell very poignant life lessons. And the way she read those through her her narratives, but this whole thing around we..., so many people believe that if your life is smooth and secure, and you're not really having upheaval in your life, that somehow you must be a good person.
Katherine May:
Yeah, yeah, that you've achieved it.
Jackee Holder:
Yes, you've achieved it. And I used to really struggle with that as a coach, because, you know, when I did my coach training, and a lot of different coaching sort of programmes that I've done, and also when I read more recently trained as a therapist, I was I was quite flummoxed by how many of my peers on, you know, whether it's coach training or therapy training, didn't always want to acknowledge the difficulties either that they've been through, or sit with other people's difficulties. It's almost like yes, we're trying to be a coach, we can train to be a therapist. But you know, I haven't got any skeletons in my cupboard. I haven't got any stuff that I need to look at. And whereas I was always having my stuff was always hanging out
Katherine May:
Right on the table. But I I find that really interesting about coaching culture, and obviously there's loads of different kinds of coaches and different you know, personalities going into that, but I, I feel like there is a real risk with some coaching culture, and also kind of writing mentoring cultures as well. I think it comes across in that there is this sense of like the coach themselves trying to project a perfect life in order to make a case for why they can help you know, the next person along and I find that deeply problematic because I don't want to be helped by someone. Who hasn't had problems like, I don't feel like they're going to be able to Intuit what I'm going through, I want to be helped by someone that's been there already and suffered actually.
Jackee Holder:
So here's the thing I found that, like yourself, I'm a prolific reader. And I imagine that lots of people that listen to this podcast, probably love books. And I found that when I, when I used to look at the books on my shelves, the books that would always engage me Katherine, were books where people just told me what had gone on in their lives. They didn't nice it up, they didn't sugarcoat it. They told me about, you know, their mental health, their difficult relationships, their failed marriages, you know, their failures at Parenthood, those were the books where I thought, Oh, my God, I love this person, because you are giving me a real sense of who you are as a human being. And then I would want to follow that person, I would want to listen to that person, I'd want to find out where they're speaking, I'd want to get them, you know, coming when I was sitting on the board of alternatives at St. James's church in Piccadilly, I would be recommending them as a speaker, to come and speak, because they felt whole Do you know what I mean? I could see myself reflected back through the lift experience.
Katherine May:
And actually, everything's very connected with this conversation. But I was I was interviewed by someone the other week, and they were asking me about the return to work. And I found myself saying a very similar thing to you, which was that like, actually, when we all go back, you know, we may go back into offices and things like that, and lots of people need that again. But I really hope that we bring our whole selves back this time, you know, that we have really been trained to bring a part of ourselves. And I think that hits women particularly hard, actually, I think we've been trained to bring like the male, the 1950s, male part of ourselves into the office, which assumes that everything's running like a machine in the background, because there's someone looking after you. And I'm, I'm just interested in hearing people's whole self, whatever context, it's a no, I don't want to keep pretending that I'm something that's actually quite flat, you know, that that hasn't got much depth, it's just success. It's just, you know, being okay,
Jackee Holder:
Well, I find a real difference. Because, you know, when I think about back to a lot of coach training, when we're talking about how do you build, develop trust and rapport, I know that actually what I bring to my work, and I will continue to bring to my work, I believe until my dying day, is grit and grace, they are part of what makes me stand out as a coach, because you know, you will get my grit, and you will get the grace that sits with the grit. And I noticed that that's how I really make very true, authentic connections with people very, very quickly in my work, which means that people can show up truly as they are, they can tell the truth about what they're experiencing, they can talk about what's really, really is going on. And as one of my clients said this afternoon, she actually made me cry. I'm not sure she saw my tears. We were We were finishing it was a final session. And I had said to her, let's think about kind of closing ritual ceremony for us to close the session today. And the work that we've done together. So she decided she'd write a list of all of the things that she was taken away from the coaching. One of the things she said to me was, you know, I just love your creativity, you know, you would have me going out into the garden, you would have me writing about what my body is feeling right now. You would have me speaking out loud a mantra. She said, I just love the depth and the width of your creativity. And then in the middle of all of that she just went, and Jackee, you shine, you shine. Just let your light shine even more. And she made me cry.
Katherine May:
Isn't that just lovely?
Jackee Holder:
Yeah, I, you know, I was taken aback by it. I hadn't expected that. But I think this is what happens when you really show up. And I've had a few people, I can see that some people raise their eyebrows on my Instagram. My clients follow me on my Instagram, and they get to know how I'm feeling good, bad and the ugly. .
Katherine May:
But I mean, there's people that raise eyebrows. Like, I mean, obviously, I get that too, you know, and I just think that that's telling me something about you rather than something about me. You know, like if you can't handle hearing me talk about my life as it is rather than some kind of idealised picture of it. Then like, you've got to turn that back to yourself and ask yourself why that makes you so uncomfortable because it is not making me uncomfortable. So I'm fine with it.
Jackee Holder:
And in fact, if we think about it, we're always asking people to really think about the things that contribute to them be more comfortable. I do a lot of work, I coach a lot of GPs, because I work in the NHS. And you know, one of the things that's a reoccurring theme for female and male GPs, is how can they be authentic and real in the work that they're doing?
Katherine May:
Wow, that's a massive question. And what, how does that how does that work? manifest? You know, what? How can they be authentic? Like, what's the answer?
Jackee Holder:
They're asking him questions like, is my work giving me meaning and purpose? How do I need to show up with my patients? What are the kinds of things I need to be challenging? You know, what were what am I doing in terms of my own personal inner work? That helps me to be more of myself? In my work? It's the only thing that I want to do, or is there something more? Right? I mean, it's amazing conversations are big questions. Yeah. And actually, must be fascinating work. Because I imagine for people like GPs, the burden of training is so high, that by the time they get to that actual job, it must be really hard to make any major changes, because you've, you know, you've put years into this. And if that doesn't work for you, somehow, what do you do then?
Jackee Holder:
Well, can I just put it another way to maybe think about? For some people, they arrive at the end of their training, and they decide that actually, this isn't for them, they followed a path that is, has been authorised by what other people's expectations have been, of who they should be, and what they are. And some some, some GPUs are really brave enough to decide that they want to, you know, explore another avenue, some go off into research, some go of into teaching, some go of and work in other medical settings rather than general practice, you know, they can find different places where they can really share their skills and their knowledge. I had one GP who is they are so connected to following their path of becoming a writer. And I have no qualms or doubts about them becoming that writer. I know they will. Just know it. And, you know, that came out of following a spark and have conversation with somebody else, ie their coach, who was able to hold that space and say, yes, you can do this. Yes, you can be this because, you know, I know that I've nurtured that writing self from a little girl of seven years old. My teacher reading Enid Blyton Famous Five and I could not wait to finish that story. After she finished reading it on Friday, I went to the brand new fantastic library. We had in West Norwood where my family lived for over 40 years. Beautiful, beautiful library. And those Liberians took me to a shelf and there were over 30 Enid Blyton books. Well, I nearly fell over with giddy excitement, I was beside myself, when they told me I could take four of those books home, I couldn't believe it. that was a starting place of my love of books. That was the birthplace of me deciding that I wanted to be a writer. And actually, it's making me well up now just even thinking about it.
Katherine May:
Yeah those those kind of clear moments. But, you know, it's interesting that you pass that on. And I mean, libraries are a starting point for so many people. They also it seems to be like a really common story that I hear that they're a place of escape for children who are feeling lost in the world. I don't know if that's true for you or not, but I I do know that they're under threat. And I mean, the hours of my local library have been cut back really severely. And I just, I don't think we fully understand what we give to people when we give them a library it's not just books, in fact, although that would be an incredible thing in and of itself.
Jackee Holder:
I think you're absolutely right. So West Norwood library, the library that I grew up with as a child was an iconic library because it was designed in such a way it had copper. It had slate, it was a 1970s beautiful building. It had light it had a litereum in the middle. It had reading rooms, it had a record room. It had private chalets where you could go in and study on your own. It had a lot and, you know we I mean, there was I don't think there's a library in the whole of London that stands out as a local public life. Here's a West Norwood library did. And when I moved out of the area, they actually closed that library down because Lambeth Council, in their wisdom as they normally do try and sell off a lot of their buildings. But people campaigned, and it was close for several years. Then the route people stole the copper off the roof. So then that all fell in the rain came in on all the books. Anyway, the long short of it, it was bought by the Ritzy Cinema and thankfully, the library came back. And now we've got the library in with the Ritzy Cinema which sometimes is a bit jarring because you've got the Ritzy Cinema you got music playing, you've got babies and buggies. But there is still that place where you can see teenagers, children, elderly, mothers, people of all ages, races, genders all coming together. I lived in East Dulwich in South London for years. And I was a frequent visitor to East Dulwich Library. Well, I'm telling you, I could write a sitcom on that library from the reference. Um, that is no word of a lie.
Katherine May:
I always want to be made like a writer in residence of a library like any library would do. I always really happy that they smell right.
Jackee Holder:
But you can see people literally getting quiet space. If you think about lockdown. You think about what a lot of people have experienced during lockdown. Well, the libraries were the escape places for many people from environments that were not conducive to them having quiet space. The Liberians used to hustle me out at eight o'clock, standing over me as I packed my bags. Like Don't you want to go home? No, I've actually had some breathing space here
Katherine May:
From all those brothers and sisters.
Jackee Holder:
Yeah, but I mean, that was that was definitely when I was a child. But that carried on in my adulthood, right, I would go to libraries to work on designing programmes, writing books, all kinds of manners of things, I would take breathing space in my local library, because at home, I would find that I'd get very distracted very easily. Even though I had to study, when I was in the library, I went into a different mode. And because the reference rooms were relatively quiet, some people still find it hard to kind of just be quiet. But actually, I would find that the quietness was very conducive to me working really well. So I think libraries are sanctuaries for many people. And just to bring this up to date, on my Instagram, on Saturday, I went down to protest of my local library in South Norwood, where I now live, because Croydon Council are threatening to close. They're threatening four libraries, and they're going to close two, this is what they want to do. And we're all campaigning in the local areas to try and save the libraries. really fabulous libraries. So many local people, are gonna not benefit from if they're not there.
Katherine May:
We'll be back with more from Jackee holder in a moment. But I just wanted to let you know that I'll be releasing some new dates for my writing courses soon, as well as some brand new online workshops for people who want to explore the concept of wintering a little more. If you'd like to be the first to know, go to katherine-may.com/newsletters, and click the link that's right for you. I promise not to spam you. And I'll keep your information safe. And now back to Jackee holder.
Katherine May:
So tell me a little bit about you during the pandemic because cut off from libraries, presumably, as I've been I found that really hard to and I mean, did your work stay the same during the pandemic? Was it very different? What What's it been like for you?
Jackee Holder:
I would describe my time during the pandemic as being completely fertile. Of Me continuously working, gaining so much joy from the work that I was able to do. It was like the pandemic was the door that I've been waiting to open so that I could do my work with a wider audience in a way that made sense. So let's look I'll give you an example. I got commissioned to do a big piece of work with an organisation that works with women who work with women who experience sexual violence. I got to do self care, coaching sessions, health and wellbeing sessions with all of their teams. I cannot tell you the depth that we went to in that work And how I was able to feed in writing with fabulous trees, my new deck of inner and outer nature cards, which some of the teams told me that this was the best deck of cards that they have come across, in working with women, because they do a lot of restorative work with women. And the fact that I've pulled together like questions that are inspired by nature, to use to reflect on yourself and to take into your journal, they said that that was the best piece of work that they've got for themselves and for the women that they've been working with. So what I found was that I was able to take into my work that it's almost like the best of who I am in terms of my work and what I stand for as a coach, which is bringing in the self care, the journaling, the nature and the restorative practices that are all a combination of coaching of being an interfaith minister, of being a writer of being a creative writer of being a walker, of being in nature, everything this synthesised together.
Katherine May:
It feels to me like you're kind of primed for a pandemic, it's almost like your your ideal habitat, because you're there like a first aid kit ready to help in loads of different ways.
Jackee Holder:
Oh you might just give me my next project. Yeah, a first aid kit, there was a wonderful poet, her name is Julie, I can't remember her surname, but she did have a first aid kit, which included lots of poems for sort of nurturing your, your, your health, your your wellbeing your spirit and your soul. I'll never forget it, because she died shortly after she created this first aid kit. But I think we need something like that. So yeah, I guess all of the sort of resources that I create are first aid kits.
Katherine May:
Ready to ready to unpack. But do you think that it could ever replace human contact? Because it seems to me that what you give Most of all, is yourself present in the room with somebody else? Or in the Zoom Room? As we've become used to?
Jackee Holder:
And are you are you asking whether we should go back to in person?
Katherine May:
Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's, you know, you know, we've been talking about toolkits, you know, creating a toolkit, but I, I wonder if a lot of the power of all of this lies in actually being able to work with other people. And that kind of push and shove, really of ideas that comes when we're, when we're in person,
Jackee Holder:
I think we're going to need a combination of both. Because I there are so many things that I don't get to do that I would do if I was in a room with people. Yeah. And most of all, you know, you can see the full body response of people, you can feel their energies in different ways that we, we probably don't feel them in quite the same way on the virtual experience. And at the same time, what has been incredibly powerful to watch, and to be a part of with the virtual world is the recognition that one, you have the ability to connect with larger groups of people who would probably find it all hard to sometimes be in the same room with you as yourself. If you're working, or you're living in a different country, there is something so powerful about that, that you can all be in the same space. So I think what we're really getting to harness now is how can we create a more sacred space when we are in person? And when we're on or teams, or whatever? portal
Katherine May:
Yeah, whatever, whatever, proprietry brand of eh...
Jackee Holder:
Absolutely whatever you're using.
Katherine May:
I had a really interesting experience with that recently, actually, I, I attended a weekend retreat with the Zen peacemakers, which is for anyone that hasn't come across them, a Zen Buddhist organisation who have a kind of mission to bear witness to some of the biggest events of suffering in world history. Yeah. So they, every year they run a retreat to Auschwitz, where they spend a weekend bearing witness to the suffering there. They run regular retreats on Native American land to bear witness to the suffering of displaced peoples. And I attended one of their bearing witness to slavery, or sorry, to the history of race in America. So it kind of you know, is rooted in slavery, but we're talking about all of the different ways that white supremacy is kind of unfolded, over time there. And I was really, I was really unsure about it in for loads of reasons. You know, I'm not a Buddhist For a start, so I kind of felt like that. That'd be Really intrusive of me being there? But also Yeah, how much connection can you make over zoom. And it was it was actually it was extraordinary the the connection and the sacred space that they created. And I mean that they, they had different people, you know, presenting to us talking to us about their experiences, which made it really immediate and really personal. But one of the things they did is they took us into smaller rooms for their way of counsel sessions, which are these sessions where you where people can speak and you just listen to them, you don't reply, you don't you know, that was that was really that became really intimate because she developed a relationship with a small group of people over the weekend. But the grand finale, I suppose, which is the end of all of their retreats is that they run a ritual, where essentially, they feed the hungry ghosts, this this Buddhist idea of the hungry ghost, which is an unrested soul, but they're eternally hungry. And so so we held this ritual to feed them. And it was, it was incredibly moving and incredibly beautiful. And I actually wouldn't have been there without zoom, there's no way out of attended, it's, you know, I couldn't have done because it's in America, and it's far away. And I've kind of seen it as none of my business, because it's really my job to bear witness to the stuff that's happened in the UK, you know, there's plenty of that to bear witness do without bearing witnesses to, you know, other people's stuff. And sorry, anyway, that's a long rambling way of saying that actually, it really changed my mind about how it's possible to really, really create a purposeful and prayerful community online. And it was it was really beautiful.
Jackee Holder:
So I really appreciate you sharing that example. Because now you've given me an inroad to kind of just widen the lens of what I have been doing on some of those sessions. So if you imagine on one session, I put up this huge fibrin image of a banyan tree. Yeah. And then I invited all of the women to think of two women that they have appreciated in their lives, who has on some way inspired and motivated, or done something that has allowed them to flourish or thrive, that woman could be alive, that woman could be dead. So you know, it could equally be Octavia Butler, because of just her writing, to, you know, your friend who lives you know, a couple of miles away. And what we did we we use this sort of tradition from the Yoruba tradition, from Nigeria, of what we called pouring libation. Now, I grew up in a black Pentecostal Christian family. And we kind of went to church every Sunday, but I have this very, very strong memory of when I was a little girl, I'd gone to a wedding, we were always at weddings with Mom and Dad, you know, you went back to the reception hall, and they're all the tables there. And just before you eat, someone would take a bottle of rum or a bottle of vodka, they would unscrew the the top, and then we pour water onto the floor of the hall. Now, I remember that as a child, you know, I didn't know what it was, I didn't know what it meant. Fast forward into, you know, my late 20s, early 30s, as I began to explore more of my cultural heritage and background, I realised that there was a connection between that custom and the pouring of water onto the land or onto the earth as a way of honouring the land saying thank you to the land. For some, some cultures and communities, it was a way of honouring the ancestors who had gone before them. So they would pour water onto the land and call on the names of those who had gone before them as a way of remembering them and calling on their spirits. Now that tradition survived. People may not have talked about it.
Katherine May:
And it's, it's surviving in a different form. And it's kind of morphing as well, I think.
Jackee Holder:
Absolutely. And we took them on to the zoom portal. And that's how we opened up some of the work that we did. And women describe that as being so soul nurturing, so empowering, you know, to name those women to call forth those women. And it really deepened the intimacy, the trust, the safety, the openness, and then we would also go into groups, and they would do more, we do something, what we call thinking pairs, where one woman would talk about something that was important significant to her right now, and the other woman would simply Listen, she wouldn't give you advice, she would tell her what to do, she would hold and bear witness to what she had to say, when they came back.
Katherine May:
And it's actually such a rare experience that just to be listened to, isn't it? It's really you don't realise what a rare quality is until someone's listening?
Jackee Holder:
Absolutely and you know, I think about all of this, you know, when you ask that question about being in person or in a virtual room, I love this quote from she's the African American trekker, she set up a group for African Americans who go out trekking Her name is Rue Mapp, what a fantastic name for somebody who likes trekking Rue Mapp, She says when I'm, when I am in nature, the trees don't know what colour I am. The birds don't know what gender I am. The flowers don't know how much money I have in my bank account. The moment I read that, quote, I thought, oh my god Rue you've just you've just captured it. Because that's what happened tp me when I connected with the trees. I needed something external to me where I could see myself reflected back. And I could recognise myself as the whole self that wasn't about the qualifications wasn't about how much money I had in the bank wasn't about status wasn't about power wasn't about ego wasn't about my postcode wasn't about the kind of house I lived in, it was about Jackee in her wholeness that knew who she was without all of those things.
Katherine May:
Yeah. And actually, I mean, I feel a little bit like we sometimes have to fight for that neutrality in nature, you know that right for everyone to be there, maybe neutrality is the wrong word like equality, that levelling. Because so much of the way nature's spoken about in this country. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because I think actually like when when you read nature writing in America, there's this sense that you know, that only the kind of Native American people can talk about having you know, that that long standing rootedness in the land, and everyone else is a newcomer, which I think is quite reasonable. But in this country, class becomes strongly connected to your right to be in nature, because you own it a little bit, or you have this, what sounds like an ancestral connection, but it's actually like long standing, ownership and exclusion of other people. And that translates as whiteness to and it translates to maleness quite often. Yeah. And I think, you know, we really have to work to assert the right of everybody to come new to it like for the first time, and that that relationship is just as profound and just as necessary, and that you have every right whoever you are.
Jackee Holder:
Well absolutely unless demystify some of this. So, let's think about the word Windrush generation. The Windrush was a shipping vessel that sailed from the Caribbean 1948 and bought some of the first major wave of African Caribbean immigrants into the UK. And so it was from 1948, that you saw a real influx into who were invited, by the way to the UK to come and work. And if you think about if I go back, and I think about many of the Windrush generations who came in the 40s, or 50s, or 60s and the 70s, many of them came from places, islands and countries that was deeply seated in nature. My mum grew up in a house where when she opened up her back door, it led straight on to the beach and straight into the sea. It took me till 1999 when my mum and dad sold the family home in the UK and went back to live in Barbados, where they were both born and to retire. It was when we went on holiday to settle mum and dad down that one day we went down to the sea. I thought my mum was actually going to sit on the beach, my mum paddled into the water and went out into the deep we all stood. We were like "what" My mom could swim. We had no idea that our mom was a strong, brilliant swimmer. She never went in the water in the UK, even though... We had no idea. So there was this 60 year old woman swimming out into the water was her children stood on this, the beach front looking at like with their mouths wide open. And that's the truth. And then we'd go down to the sea every morning with mum and all of her friends that she went to school with primary school. She'd toddle of she'd swim out. they'd all be in the deep waters, eating oranges peeling grape fruits, and just chatting away. What's me and my sisters, belly flopped. And so a lot of African Caribbean people have a deep connection to nature. They grew up around it. If I talk about houses in the 1970s, I can tell you about great big, massive cheese plants, rubber plants, spider plants all over the walls. Do you know what I Katherine May In green spaces.
Jackee Holder:
Green spaces. They nurtured what they knew. But often it wasn't visible to other people. And I walk you know, everyone who knows him on Instagram knows that, you know, I used to be a runner. Now I'm a walker. I walk the Thames path from Battersea, I've walked from Battersea, as far as Kew Gardens. I haven't got to Hampton Court yet. I'm going to do that one day. And sometimes I can walk along that Thames path. And I will only see one person that looks like me. And some days I see none. And that tells you I mean, it's the pandemic has made green spaces more accessible to more people, because more people now have taken to nature because it was a one space that we could go into, once we were in lockdown.
Katherine May:
Yeah. And let's hope that invitation stays open. Actually, I have to tell you a story back in regards to your story about your mum that it brought to my mind, which I completely forgotten about on a very similar tip. Because I swim in the sea all the time. And I always say that when you swim in the sea, you see the world from a different angle, and you hear different things. And, you know, this, this intimate space opens up. And in the middle of last summer, I was swimming out, you know, just a little bit away from the shore. And I was all on my own. And I suddenly had these people swimming up behind me. And it was a young man who looked to be of Indian origin with his mum with someone who was clearly his mum. And she was an older woman, but she was swimming along and he was coaching her. He was like, do this, you know, like a keep, don't put your head up too high, because you're hurt your neck like dip your head down that extreme. And she turned around to him like mid mid stroke and said, I do know how to swim you know. I did this all through my childhood. I just don't swim here. And I thought, Oh wow, you were telling me the story of your mum, I thought well that was really similar. And it was just so beautiful. Because you so rarely see a man and his mother swimming together. And I got a little hint of their interior life just because they swam past me it was the most beautiful thing. I loved it.
Jackee Holder:
It's beautiful, just capturing that that image is, as you say it, actually. So it's really, really lovely. And you know, I just think of there's so many quotes that have kind of helped me because that was really powerful. me seeing my mum do that. And I remember when we went to my dad's grave in the cemetery one day, and I you know, I had this, I don't know what I was thinking, I was thinking I could I could turn over the soil and, you know, just plants and flowers. And I put this I don't know, this axe or whatever it was into the soil, will it bounce back, maybe hit me in the head, nearly knocked me out. My mom was standing on the side and she literally took this pickaxe from my hand, plunged into the earth pulled the soil up again. Did it again. And before we knew it, the ground was Turned. And we just stood there. was like "Oh my god, this woman". She's just like this super woman. But you know, that's something she did as a child.
Katherine May:
Yeah, her body remembers how to do it
Jackee Holder:
Her body remembered. And I guess this is for me what going out into nature does what why I love the trees because trees remind me of the resilience. Ernest Hemingway says, the world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. Now, that's been my mantra for years. Because, you know, we often think that life has sent us something that, you know, has changed the direction we're going in. It's uprooted our lives. You know, that for so many people. You know, this is you they're thinking why did this happen to me? But actually when we when we get still, when we listen. When we look at the lessons, we look at what has grown in the new place. We realise that we're strong at the broken places and my mum experienced a mental breakdown when she was pregnant with my younger sisters. I mean she's come through so much. And you know I look at her and I can see that she she has grown so much through that. And as a woman in her late 80s My mom is She's hilarious. You know, she's a woman whose voice and her own skin. And I think that's what us are seeking.
Katherine May:
There is so much to be said about humour within all of this. And you know how often we ignore How funny people are. The people who suffered the most are often the funniest people. And they often have immense humour. Listen, that is a perfect place to stop. But I'm going to ruin the perfect rhythm of this by asking you one final question. Which is only because I have a note to ask you something that you intimated to me in an email, which is about the story of an elder tree and the way that you're connected to it through your name. And I can't let you go without you telling me that.
Jackee Holder:
So when I was in my mid 30s, I think it was around, I decided that I wanted to change my name, so that I would take on a name, the name of my an ancestral name, and African name, a name that I felt would have more meaning to women that I had become. That was also kind of spearheaded by the fact that I'm in a 1960s born. And everywhere in the 1960s is a Jacqueline or Jackie, though the name Jackie was very, very common. And I wanted to have something that wasn't I didn't want to have a common name anymore. And years before I changed the spelling of my name from J A C K I E, I'm actually a Jacqueline, but I changed it from J A C K I E Jackie to J A C K double E after an African American actress. And that was quite good, because people would often say, you know, this unusual spelling of the name, Jackee. But I was still not feeling like I had fully embodied my name. And I had been on some training. It was a spiritual year, one year course. And I had mentioned this to the person who was leading the programme, and they said, Oh, yeah, you should definitely get rid of the name Holder. Because that really symbolises you holding on to things. And I don't know why. But I just had a bit of a gut reaction to that. I didn't take kindly to the way she said it. And I don't know, it's almost like I thought, No, I don't want to get named the rid of the name Holder. And I didn't know why. But I just noticed I had this response. Anyway, fast forward a couple of years, I had agreed to meet a friend out for lunch one day, and we'd gone to this little park in Brixton, in South London. And I had headed under and I sat under this very, it was kind of a quite a short tree. And I thought if I sit under that tree that's really gonna shelter me from the hot hot sun. And it was a really, really hot day. So we sat under this tree where the great lunch chatting away. And when I got up, there was a sign next to the tree. And on it, it said, This tree is called an elder tree. And in the Middle Ages, it was rumoured that women persecuted would turn themselves into elder trees. No he said, witches persecuted would turn themselves into elder trees. Well, of course that you know, In a right. I just had, I don't know why, again, I don't know why I just had to write it down. And I did. I wrote it down on a little index card. And it sat on my desk at my mum's and then I was writing my first book, Soul Purpose. And I used to go to the same library that I mentioned earlier, East Dulwich library. And around the same time, I got really interested in trees as well. And I started noticing more. But on this particular day, I'd gone to the library and the seat that I normally sit in was taken I was a bit put off, I was like "Oh that's my Seat, that's where I normally write". So I had to look around to find another seat, so I did find another seat, settled in got on with my writing. I decided I would take a break. And so I lent back and I turned behind me and it was in the reference library and there was this big thick book sitting on the shelf and it said this is a book of names. Well it actually said surnames, I thought it said names. So I thought I'm gonna look up the word Jackee, when I open the book, I realised it was a book of surnames. So I thought, Oh, let me look up the name Holder. And let me just see what that you know the name Holder means. So I turned to the pages and there was Holder. And this is what I read. The name Holder is given to people who lived close to elder trees.
Katherine May:
Wow. That's just lovely. And it's a beautifully Witchy connection as well which makes it even better.
Jackee Holder:
It does, it does. And that was that that's the story. of how I became connected to the elder tree.
Katherine May:
And how you chose to keep your name as well, which was just such a perfect, perfect thing to do. it's been so lovely to talk to you. I feel like we've covered like all the good things in life, you know, like libraries and trees and swimming mothers.
Jackee Holder:
Swimming mothers! it's great. It's so lovely to talk to you. It's been like sitting around a campfire, having you know, one of those conversations, that's just so heartwarming.
Katherine May:
I could do with more of them at the moment is really been lovely. And I feel like I've learned such a lot in this short time. So thank you.
Katherine May:
And that's all from us today. Thank you so much to Jackee holder for ending our series on a brilliant note. Writing with fabulous trees is available in all good bookstores, or directly from jackeeholder.com. And you can follow Jackee on Instagram or Twitter. Links are in the show notes. And that's all from the wintering sessions for now. Thank you so much for listening and for all your lovely comments and of course to my brilliant guests, but most of all to the producer Buddy Peace who also compose the theme music, and to Meghan Hutchins, for making sure that everything hangs together. I hope to see you for a new season soon but Bye for now. The Wintering Sessions is produced by Buddy Peace. You can buy wintering the power of rest and retreat in difficult times. In all good bookshops.

Show Notes

This week Katherine chats to Jackee Holder, coach and author of 'Writing With Fabulous Trees', among many more.

Hear Jackee expand too on her introvert / extrovert sides, rituals and body prayers, seasons and trees and nature metaphors, having skeletons on full display rather than in the closet, Enid Blyton, 'pouring libation', her superhero mother with hidden sea skills and a huge amount more in what Jackee herself refers to as a 'campfire chat'. A lovely and perfectly fitting finalé to season 2 of The Wintering Sessions!