48 Years Marked With An Orange

Yup an orange, the fruit! It has marked a year (or two) I simply could not have imagined!

Two years ago I chose orange as an essential oil to begin engaging children with their senses from smell to touch, from hearing to seeing, from tasting to feeling, and balance. It is such an engaging food!

Little did I realise that it would engage children so deeply and lead them to open up about difficulties in sleeping, a wellbeing concern I could not walk away from. Onwards from there I began an afterschool club, a lunch club, 3 breakfast clubs and a further 3 afterschool clubs before being asked to bring wellbeing into the school day alongside Forest School lessons.

My friend orange led me to be invited to speak at the Botanica conference which led to beautiful engagement with my Aromatherapy peers. A community I never knew would light me up so much and to keep in touch I joined the professional platform of iCan where I was later asked to facilitate a group talking to the work with children and those with special needs.

In late July I launched 5 guides to share the concept with other Aromatherapists at the ECA conference in Bath, UK and now I am converting the guides into an accredited course and will be writing an Aromatherapy course. Teaching / Sharing Knowledge is my deep passion in life and so to be bringing it full circle back to it feels so beautiful. I am days away from stepping into my third year of delivering this work to children for the full academic year (an increase from previous two years due to its success).

I always return to the orange when I need to engage people with their senses. I am so thankful to it supporting my work and has even known amongst the kids as 'the orange of respect!' when I juggle with it the children know that they need to deeply listen.

You may not have heard an orange be spoken of so many times in one article but, it deserves every mention for the joy, ease, and comfort it brings to us.

Signing off with ORANGE in my heart!