Over the years we have hosted many wellbeing days for Salisbury Hospice staff. Thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, we were able to run a similar event for the specially trained volunteers of the Bereavement service, who offer support for family members whose loved ones have been cared for by the hospice.
On a sunny afternoon in April 2025, we gathered on the new benches outside the Oak House, where Salisbury Hospice Team Leader Lorna introduced a self-assessment task. Volunteers rated themselves on qualities including compassion, calm, patience, playfulness and curiosity.
Hazel Hill Trust’s Conservation and Education Coordinator, Charley Miller, then introduced the group to the wood with a guided nature walk. We moved slowly through the wood, identifying tree species and birdsong as we went. We then collected some firewood and made birch kindling bundles before pausing for a tea break.
The highlight for some was the penultimate activity – fire lighting in the Heartwood. Without a match in sight, Charley taught the group to use a fire striker to successfully light a birch bundle and build it into a bigger fire. Those who could be persuaded to leave their fire were introduced to a game called “Meet a Tree”, which involves one person wearing a blindfold and another guiding them with care to a tree. The blindfolded person “meets their tree” by feeling it, smelling it, seeing if they can reach their arms around it, then is carefully guided away. They then remove their blindfold and try to locate their tree. Great fun!
We finished up with a final reflection session, where volunteers shared any progress or changes they felt had happened already as a result of their afternoon at Hazel Hill Wood.
It wasn’t an experience expressible in speech but an experience on a much deeper level that wasn’t dissectable, or even retrievable, but it touched something I can’t access at will, but I know is something absorbed from the sadness of people I visit, and myself, that I believe I can put down, or release into space, but some residue, I’ve begun to recognise, lurks. I didn’t travel alone, but can’t speak for the people I travelled with, though there was consensus of some of what I’ve written within them too, so in saying thank you, it is for what I received from you both as a restorative gift that I didn’t know I needed, but from which I benefitted. I’m sure that the 5 “p’s”, and 8 “c’s” of IFS therapy that we looked at, were a gateway into the spaces that the woodland nurtured.”
Roger Green, Salisbury Hospice Bereavement Service volunteer
“When our volunteers give so much to us and the community, it is wonderful to be able to offer them something in return that nurtures them”
Lorna Bidgood
Team Leader, Family Support Team, Salisbury Hospice