How Can Nature Create a Sense of Belonging?

Kerri ní Dochartaigh and Anita Sethi explore how nature can help heal trauma.

Ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry-Londonderry, on the border of the North and South of Ireland, at the very height of the Troubles. She was brought up on a council estate on the wrong side of town. But for her family, and many others, there was no right side. One parent was Catholic, the other was Protestant. In the space of one year they were forced out of two homes and when she was 11 a homemade petrol bomb was thrown through ní Dochartaigh's bedroom window. Terror was in the very fabric of the city, and for families like hers, the ones who fell between the cracks of identity, it seemed there was no escape. She examines how nature kept her sane and helped her heal; how violence and poverty are never more than a stone's throw from beauty and hope; and how we are, once again, allowing our borders to become hard, and terror to creep back in.

Sethi was on a journey through Northern England when she became the victim of a vicious race-hate crime. After the event she experienced panic attacks and anxiety. A crushing sense of claustrophobia made her long for wide open spaces, to breathe deeply in the great outdoors and to travel freely, without fear. She walked the Pennine Way -- 'the backbone of Britain', a place of borderlands and limestone, of rivers and 'scars', of fells and forces. Although a racist had told her to leave, she felt drawn to further explore the area she regards as her home, to immerse herself deeply in place.

Encompassing issues of identity, nature, place, reclamation and belonging, both authors have written books of hope and beauty, of persistence and resistance.

In conversation with Bristol Ideas director Andrew Kelly.

Kerri ní Dochartaigh's Thin Places is published by Canongate and Anita Sethi's I Belong Here is published by Bloomsbury. Buy copies from Waterstones, our bookselling partners.

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Festival of Ideas: Kerri ní Dochartaigh and Anita Sethi