In our most recent Sensing Nature paper, we reflect on experiences of sight loss, drawing on the stories shared by participants who had encountered a sudden or more gradual, progressive onset of sight impairment at different stages of their lives.
Disability scholar, Alison Kafer, once wrote:
‘Loss is a topic disabled people are typically reluctant to discuss, and for good reason. Disability is all too often read exclusively in such terms, with bitterness, pity and tragedy being the dominant registers through contemporary US culture understands the experiences of disabled people.’
Our new paper discusses how and why prominent societal expectations and responses can shape and contribute to feelings of loss while navigating new ways of knowing and being in the world. The paper considers the varying significance of nature through such transitions, asking for example:
At what life course stages might nature support or ease the emotional work involved in these transitions?
When is nature’s unpredictability or unevenness too daunting or overwhelming in relation to life’s wider demands and activities?
What forms of social scaffolding help to bridge these challenges?
Here we share a few examples from people who took part in our study.
Reflecting on the challenges of experiencing sudden sight loss when transitioning out of school, one participant in his 20s described himself in ‘a category of nowhere’. He explained that for someone his age, accessing nature was not the primary remit or priority of over-stretched sight support or rehabilitation organisations:
“For example, most of the charities, they support the young or maybe they support the old. They are for children or maybe for elderly people. So I’m in a category of nowhere (laughs). I think I’m in a category of ‘working age’ so they expect me to work. Not going in a garden.”
For this participant, prominent cultural ideals around adulthood and the imperative to be economically productive upon transitioning into ‘working age’, undermined the support available - and his sense of entitlement - to participate in leisure pursuits (nature-related or otherwise), despite the potential emotional gains from doing so.
Another participant discussed the role of nature in supporting her through early retirement with sight loss but emphasised the change in the types of nature she felt comfortable navigating – moving away from gardening and hiking, finding a sense of freedom through sea swimming instead. She explained:
“When I’m out in the sea, it really is just the freedom it gives to me. It allows me to - whereas on the land, I have to watch I don’t trip, I don’t walk into something, I can’t tell when a step’s a step easily, so I’m hesitant, I probably bend over more, in an effort to try and see - whereas, when I’m out in the sea, I just walk in, I know there’ll be nobody in my way like there would be in a swimming pool. And, you know, the odd seal might come up to me and (laughs), and jellyfish, and sting me all over my arms. But it’s just the freedom there really, that I don’t have to worry, as long as I swim parallel to the shore and I make sure I can still touch the bottom, I do feel completely free.
“It’s like floating in the air to me…. So yes, it’s a very important part of my life, really, which probably wouldn’t have been so, had I not had this continual loss of vision. But it, it becomes more important because it’s this freedom. And at the end of the swim, I lie like a star with my arms and my legs out, and I float on my back. And it’s as if something is just holding you up by threads. And the sea, I mean this is obviously on fairly calm days, but the sea just lifts you up and drops you back, and lifts you up and drops you back. And that is quite a magical feeling, it really is…. very enlivening and uplifting, de-stressing and (pause) just beautiful, just really, really beautiful”.
Recalling times when unable to access the sea in this way (for example, as a result of transport, weather or illness), this participant also emphasised the value in taking herself to the sea in her mind; invoking memories and imagination to ‘place’ herself in nature in a way that brought a sense of wellbeing in lieu of physically visiting.
Further reflecting the creative potential of sensory memories, several participants described similar use of imagery, memory and creativity to expand one’s sense of the world at times of potential contraction. For some participants, this involved listening to recorded nature sounds, Clare Balding’s radio ramblings, or even classical music compositions inspired by nature.
Others with partial sight discussed a love of photography and painting, using the opportunity to zoom into and ‘live’ in a favourite scene for a little longer than they might otherwise. Creative writing and poetry were also mentioned as a way of capturing particularly memorable nature pleasures and escapades.
Sensing Nature project advisors, Prof Robin Kearns and Dr Ronan Foley, once wrote that ‘to be fully human is to imagine not only what places can be but also the possibilities for our place within them.’
The narratives shared by the Sensing Nature participants call for a re-imagining of our potential places with(in) nature. They demonstrate the emotional value of transforming our individual and collective imaginations of what life with sight impairment is or can be; challenging the detrimental social responses and stereotypes that often translate the onset of impairment into deep-seated feelings of loss and deficit.
Increasingly we are given advice to seek out nature for wellbeing – the idea that two hours in nature is optimal has particularly captured the public imagination. Yet, placing responsibility on individuals to manage their wellbeing in this way does little to address inequalities in access to – and meaningful experiences within – diverse everyday nature settings.
To genuinely support wellbeing with nature, we need to make space (and time) for a plurality of nature experiences; in part through more inclusive approaches to the design, management and interpretation of such settings, but also through ensuring timely, person-centred scaffolding to forge positive nature connections during more turbulent life stages.
This paper is published in the journal, Social Science and Medicine. If you would like a screen reader-friendly word version of the paper, do get in touch with Sarah Bell via Sarah.Bell@exeter.ac.uk.
