About the Speaker Series
Healing with Nature started off as a collaborative effort of individuals in Cleveland County focused on community connectedness, health, and wellness from the personal to the planetary. Since then, Healing with Nature has expanded into a program of MHA, which now hosts events each year around Earth Day in Cleveland County. These events focus on wellness and healing of our local community, from the natural environment we live in to the overall well-being of our individual community members.
To accomplish this goal, the group organizes to bring a special guest to Cleveland County to work with various groups around the theme of “Healing with Nature”, with events wrapping up through Earth Day service projects around the county. Previous guest’s to Cleveland County have included world class authors, speakers and instructors such as adventurer Jon Turk and Poet Mary Ellen Lough, who have conducted workshops with several groups throughout the county including youth at the Boys and Girls Club, groups with Phoenix Counseling, Adventure House, and Early College High School.
The Mental Health Association in Cleveland County (MHA) serves as a partner and the fiscal sponsor for the Healing with Nature events. An independent 501c3 nonprofit, MHA has existed in Cleveland County for more than 50 years to promote mental health, advocate for, and support individuals and families affected by mental illness.
Understanding that mental health is about more than “mental illness”, MHA supports Healing with Nature events each year as we recognize the importance of community connectedness and the healing power of nature in the promotion of mental health for everyone in Cleveland County.
Past Healing with Nature Speaker Events
2022 Speaker Event: Jon Turk
Healing with Nature brought back 2017 speaker, Jon Turk for our annual Earth Day Speaker Series. Jon Turk returned to Cleveland County talk about the connection between mental wellness and nature as well as talk about his newest book, Tracking Lions, Myth, and Wilderness in Samburu.
2019 Speaker Event: Chip Thomas
For the third annual Speaker Series, Healing with Nature invited artist Chip Thomas. He joined us on April 26 at Graham Elementary School where we held a potluck dinner, listed to local music, and listened to Chip’s presentation titled “Community as a Journey. “ Chip Thomas is a native of North Carolina. His life direction changed when he attended a small, alternative Quaker school in the mountains of North Carolina (the Arthur Morgan School). He is a photographer, public artist, activist and physician who has been working between Monument Valley and The Grand Canyon in the Navajo nation since 1987. He coordinates the Painted Desert Project – a community building effort which manifests as a constellation of murals across western Navajo Nation painted by artists from all over the world.
Thomas’ own public artwork consists of enlarged black and white photographs pasted on structures along the roadside on the Navajo nation. His motivation is to reflect back to the people in his community the love and elements of the culture they’ve shared with him over the years. He sees this work as an evolving dialog with his community.
Thomas is a member of the Justseeds Artists Co-operative, an international cooperative of 30 socially engaged artists scattered between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. You can find his large scale photographs pasted in the northern Arizona desert. He’s done projects with the Peoples Climate March, 350.org and NPR.
From November 1992 to August 1993 Thomas participated with 3 intrepid cyclists who ventured 11,800 miles from the northernmost point on the African continent to the southernmost point. This effort won them a Guinness World Record for the fastest crossing of the African continent.
To learn more about Chip Thomas and his work visit his website here: https://jetsonorama.net/
2018 Speaker Event: Mary Ellen Lough
In 2018, Healing with Nature invited poet Mary Ellen Lough and lead talks around Cleveland County titled “Rewilding the Soul Through Poetry.” Mary Ellen is a Poetic Medicine facilitator & single mother living with five children in an old farmhouse in southern Appalachia. She is also a world traveler, community organizer, activist, gardener, musician and writer. Mary Ellen teaches poetry as a practice of wholeness and path of integration everywhere from the VA hospital, homeless shelters, substance abuse centers, birth centers, public schools, universities, and conferences, to an old converted barn out in the mountains where a small group of people gather around a woodstove with tea in winter.
2017 Speaker Event: Jon Turk
During our very first Earth Day Speaker Series, Healing with Nature invited Jon Turk to share his story. Through a series of events from Thursday, April 20 through Saturday April, 22, 2017, Jon spoke to audiences around Cleveland County at locations such as the Adventure House, Boys and Girls Club, and even helped local environment restoration efforts across the county.
