You will never regret going outside

Recently a reel stopped me in my tracks. It was the Irish philosopher John Moriarty, in an interview with Tommy Tiernan, saying this:

"Unless there's wildness around you, something terrible happens to the wildness inside of you."

In the reel he says it in Irish too: scaoil amach é agus bí saor. Let it out, and be free. I didn't know the phrase before. Now I want to keep it beside everything.

I met Moriarty in a very modern-day way, scrolling on my phone, and only recently. But the idea wasn't new to me. I'd been living it for years without having words for it.

The years I can't remember in detail

I have almost no specific memories of the early childhood years with my boys. No single day I can replay for you. What I remember is the shape of the days: spending whole ones just trying to get out of the house. When the timing collapsed, a nap schedule, a bad night, whatever it was, we'd almost give up on going out at all. Sometimes the local shop was my outing.

And I knew better. Cognitively I knew that if we put a winter onesie on over the pyjamas, pulled on rubber boots and went out looking like the worst versions of ourselves, we could get two blocks over to the Stadtgärtnerei and sit on a mat. Eat snacks. Roam around. Even if we just sat there, when we came back a couple of hours later I did a much better job of tidying the house, and I didn't carry that burning weight of knowing the day was a failure because we hadn't gone outside.

Why inside gets so heavy

I think it's the tasks. In a domestic setting, especially if you are dysregulated, you are constantly pinging from one half-done task to another, working through a mental to-do list. Every parent will know it. It's bottomless, it's endless, it's repetitive.

Some of my tidying was an attempt to get a handle on things, because I do have a real need to feel well in my surroundings. But those tasks are never-ending, so it was a fool's errand. And none of them were memorable. Not one.

What I know now about my nervous system

Before I went back to work as a two-time mother, I hadn't even thought about my nervous system. Now I think about it all the time, especially in relation to spending time in nature. Being outside is so important for completing the stress cycle. For children, time spent outside is in-built creativity, in-built curiosity.

I think being near water is huge for sensory-seeking people regulating, and it's definitely true for me. We have a lake and a river nearby. From the house we can see mountains, but when we go down to the lake and see them across the water, there's a sense of time immemorial, visually represented. It makes you feel like your worries can't be that big.

The Friday I booked a campsite

This still works on me now that the boys are older. I recently started a new job, and at the end of a very intense, computer-laden week I suddenly had the urge to book a campsite on the Friday and leave. It was a hot summer day at the end of the school year. I picked my sons up from school after lunch, and my eldest complained: he didn't want to go anywhere, he wanted to take it easy, he wanted to chill. I understood it.

But by the time we made it to the campsite an hour away and did the simplest of tasks, setting up the tent, they were running around the site, exploring the simplicity, the closeness, the groundingness and the beauty of our particular spot overlooking the Rhine. He was tired, but actually the very thing he needed was to be outside. It took me straight back down to where I needed to be. It was exactly the antidote to the heady, migrainey week I'd had.

A certain kind of mothering wildness

Sometimes it builds up in you. It could be injustices at work. It could be lack of sleep. It could be the effort of staying patient with your child. If you want to complete the cycle, get out in nature and bring them out with you. Don't overlook it as one of the simplest coping mechanisms there is. It has definitely helped me.

The children carry it too. My kids are older now, and screens and other distractions play a bigger role, which is something I want to resist. I want being outside to stay part of how we live. It can be roaming the Swiss mountains, where we do almost all of our holidays. It can be the shared garden, the playground, the lake.

A couple of weeks ago we dropped our son at his week-long scout camp, and they did so much chanting in a circle to kick off the proceedings that I knew it was going to be a good week for him. A challenge, but a good week. He was going to be able to let his full inner wildness out, in contrast with the school system.

Out there, kids can look a little bit wild, and it's not the worst thing in the world. I actually find it freeing.

You don't have to be impressive

This isn't a call to become an outdoor family in the Instagram sense. I live in Switzerland, and I know the niggling background feeling of not capitalising on mountains that are theoretically two hours away. Maybe we're just not a family that needs to be doing something impressive every weekend.

It doesn't have to be filmed. It doesn't have to be aesthetic. It's just a nudge that it might help, that's all.

Where the mat comes in

I'll be honest about where my product sits in this, because it's a small place, and that's the point. A mat is what let me sit two blocks from home while the boys ate snacks and roamed. It makes it easier to get out the door on a bad morning. I still carry one to the playground so I can put it next to the sandpit and just exist nearby, which they largely allow me to do.

You will never regret it

When you're a runner, they say, you will find it very hard to go for a run, but you will never regret a run. When you're a parent, it's the same with going outside, in any capacity. For the kids, but also for yourself.

If this way of thinking about family life speaks to you, the newsletter is where I write more of it. That's the one thing I'll point you to.

What Moriarty actually says

For anyone who wants the whole thought, not just my carrying of it, this is the reel, word for word. It is cut from Tommy Tiernan's interview with John Moriarty at his home in Connemara, and the full conversation is worth every minute.

"Unless there's wildness around you, something terrible happens to the wildness inside of you. And if the wildness inside of you dies, I think you're finished. In Connemara they say: scaoil amach é agus bí saor. Wilderness outside and wilderness inside, wildness outside and a bit of wildness inside. It's just that you're not dominated and overwhelmed by who you sociologically are.

I don't just think about those mountains and those hills. I think with them. You have a sense that you're sitting among them and you're thinking with them and you're dreaming with them, and they are dreaming with you. And I don't think it's a fantasy. You're actually dreaming their dream with them. Where I am is intimately connected with who I am."