Meet the Mancunian - Talking forest therapy and mindfulness with Natalie Rossiter

Transcript: Meet the Mancunian: Natalie Rossiter (Season 4, Episode 2)

Intro

Welcome to the Meet the Mancunian podcast, Season four. I'm Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe, your friendly host. On the streets and nooks of Manchester, my inspiring Mancunian guests tackle their causes with their grit and passion. They are leaders, worker, bees, and community hosts, and they share their stories to inspire you all through the season.

Grab a brew and listen in to the Meet the Mancunian podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, or any of your favorite podcasting platforms. You can also check out all the episodes on my new website, www.meetthemancunian.co.uk.

Passionate about mindfulness, we hear from Natalie Rossiter, mindfulness and forest therapy coach. In this episode, I'm delighted to introduce my guest, Natalie Rossiter, therapist, mindfulness teacher and nature connection guide.

Episode 2

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thank you so much, Natalie, for talking to me today. I'm looking forward to learning about all the different mindfulness techniques you're offer. And it's of course, it's World Mental Health day that we are recording this episode on so it'll be interesting to hear about that. How are you doing?

Natalie Rossiter: Oh, thank you for having me, Deepa.Yeah, I'm doing really well today. Thank you. Had quite a busy but satisfying day and I even managed a little nap, which is definitely a mental health tip I would recommend to anybody. Well done for getting all my various job titles in there as well as I do lots of things, but they're all linked together, which I'm sure I'll explain in time.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Lovely. To start with, to start with, tell us about your passion for wellbeing and mindfulness. How did that come about?

Natalie Rossiter:  So I was interested in sort of mental health and psychology from a young age, really. We didn't have a psychology GCSE or anything like that at my school, but I just did my own reading. So I suppose it kind of started there and then I kind of had a bit of a break in that it was, you know, like lots of young people figuring out life and what I wanted to do.

And eventually I kind of heard about this training, doing some counsellor training. When I lived in Bath and I went along to an open day, and the rest, as they say is history. I think it came from a kind of just a curiosity about my own wellbeing and understanding myself, and then also wanting to understand others.

And I'd always been somebody who, you know, I could just sit down at a bus stop waiting for a bus and someone would sit next to me and just tell me their life story. And I would listen you know, without judgment. And usually it was fascination and compassion and that sort of just came naturally to me and just happened, all the time that would happen.

So I thought, wow, I'll just turn this into a career. I'll start charging for this. So yeah, people would often come to me with their problems and I guess I just felt compelled. I wanted to help. And so that's why I became a therapist.

And through my training I learnt about mindfulness. Really to support myself. It was very stressful. I was working two jobs whilst doing my training as in my early twenties. So I was just trying to support myself whilst doing some studying. And that was a lot of hard work. And so I needed some stress management techniques and I found mindfulness. I think a lot of people find mindfulness that.

And the mindfulness led onto the nature connection because I would practice being mindful whilst out walking the dog in the morning before going to work. And that was my favourite time of day, you know, just noticing the sun through the trees and things like that. And it all kind of came together from, for myself.

And then I started to encourage other people to use these techniques, and that's really important to me that I wouldn't ever suggest things to people that haven't helped me or that I wouldn't use myself and everyone's different. Not everyone likes the same techniques or they don't work for everybody, but that kind of authenticity of, oh yeah, this isn't just something I've been told through my training to do, or I've read in a textbook or something. This is something I've lived through myself and I use this as well. And I think people really like that approach. They can tell when it's genuine.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Yeah, I think so. And I think that personal experience that you're sharing probably gives people a lot of confidence, especially when they're trying something that they may not be as familiar with. To know that, you know, you're saying that I've tried this myself. It's, I went through a stressful time. Yes. It helped me with that stressful time. So that, that does sound like an interesting way to obviously test out the technique before you shared it with others.

Natalie Rossiter: Exactly.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: So now you said you are in many different areas of mindfulness and well-being. And maybe start with the nature connection guide because, you know I have a guest some seasons ago where we talked about forest bathing as something they would go to get into. And obviously, you said you're actually doing this, so I'd be really interested in that.

And ever since I heard about it, I've been, you know, every time I go for a walk with my family in the woods, I'm just taking in the trees even more, but I'd love to learn from your side.

Natalie Rossiter: Yeah, so the forest therapy came about from sort of through the mindfulness and then doing some mindful walking, kind of learning about walking meditation. It came through that and then taking clients for sessions outside when some people found that they couldn't kind of open up in a, a small space. And that kind of thing. And so I started to feel again through my own experience, oh, there's something in this nature connection. And then, so I just started looking it up and sort of reading and researching around it. I discovered that it's a whole thing and it has this name and, you know, forest bathing is something that's been really well researched.

So it came from Japan as a formal practice. It's global. It's something inherent in all human beings. So there's something called the biophilia principle, which a guy called EO Wilson proposed. And we know it - it just means it's the human beings' innate tendency to want to connect with all living things, you know. So when a child bends down to look at a flower or collects a leaf or a conker or something like that's biophilia, you know, that we want to connect with other living things, animals as well as and so yeah, across the world everyone sort of does forest bathing.

I always say that at the start of my forest bathing sessions, you know, who's done forest bathing before? And either no one or like one person puts their hand up and I say, actually, it's [not true. You've all done it before, but perhaps maybe when you were children. Or anytime when you've walked in the woods and just had a moment of, you know, all looking at the sunlight through the leaves or a really cool mushroom or whatever it might be that you found on your walk.

Essentially that's forest bathing. It's just about immersing yourself in the natural environment for its well-being properties. And let's say that kind of originated in Japan in the eighties, sort of with the rise of technology. The government noticed people were really stressed and they wanted something to kind of help out these stressed office workers, city workers. So they sent them off to the forest on their coaches and they would go off and of course, course it was a government initiative and they'd do these guided walks, they wanted to know if it was effective and so they started researching it. And that's how it's kind of become, you know, a thing with a name and an evidence base which is really exciting.

And the research is, fascinating if you're into that kind of thing. But it just basically proves what we innately know when we go into nature. And we kind of have that mindful time where we're not even necessarily trying to go anywhere. So it's not like, a hike where you're trying to get to a destination or do a certain amount of miles or anything like that.

It's just a different way of being outside. You might not go very far at all. But it's about the depth of experience and just being really present and curious and joyful about what you see and hear, and touch.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That is so true. Sometimes it's just a change of environment from an indoor space to an outdoor space or seeing the sunlight after for a day when you haven't. It's just that I'm fascinated by sunrises and sunsets, so I could totally understand what you're saying. That sounds really, really, really nice.

And what are the other things you're involved in? Do you want to talk about them?

Natalie Rossiter: Yeah, so as I say, they all kind of link together and come from just that sort of intention really to want to support people's wellbeing because there is no one size fits all for that. We need different things at different times. Different people kind of are drawn to different types of approaches and techniques. My main job, I suppose the bread and butter of what I do is counselling, talking therapy, and that can take place online. Or I work from a little therapy summer house in my garden where I see my in-person clients. And that's really nice safe space for people to come and talk about what's on their minds. And so I offer an integrative approach, which basically means I do lots of different trainings and learnings about different ways of understanding human beings basically and what makes us tick and what helps us and all of this.

So again, because everyone's different I will apply different approaches. So perhaps we'll focus on increasing compassion. Maybe we'll be wanting to understand relationship patterns. So we might work with attachment theory. And then I also teach mindfulness, so these can be one-to-one sessions or something I've been wanting to do for a while, which I set up a few months ago as an in-person mindfulness group in my local community.

So I'm based in Salford, not too far from the city centre from Manchester. And yeah, I really wanted a place, especially after the pandemic where people could physically come and practice mindfulness together, but with a focus on mindfulness for modern life. So the kind of practical application of mindfulness.

So we'll talk about an aspect of mindfulness. So for example, tomorrow's session is, judgment and non-judgment. And so we'll, we'll discuss how that comes up in our life what we can do about it from a mindfulness perspective, and do some guided meditation together. And I really love these sessions, just bringing people together.

So I try and offer a variety of things for, you know I suppose a range of types of people, but also a range of budgets as well. This is the problem with the sort of society that we live in. We know there's a mental health crisis, so many people struggling in lots of different ways. But not everyone can afford to come for private therapy. You know, the NHS waiting list is very long and there are loads of fantastic initiatives and charities and things like that, but it's a shame when we have to rely on charities. People who volunteer. And again, they're not always available or accessible, or again, they have long waiting lists and things.

So that's why I run the mindfulness group and why I create resources and share lots of content on social media as well. So I'm kind of trying to reach a kind of broad spectrum of people, and I'm just one person, but I'm on a little mission just in my little corner of the world, you know. I can share some information and I can offer some support and just feels like a meaningful thing to do with my time.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: And I hope the Meet the Mancunian podcast can help you with your mission, so thank you for sharing that with us.

So what impact have you made so far?

Natalie Rossiter: Well, I suppose it's hard to kind of quantify that, but I was reflecting on this question earlier, and I suppose every now and then I have these little moments where I'm reminded of the impact that I make. I find it easy to forget sort of what I do, especially, since I've been a counsellor for 10 years now, so it's just become normalised to me.

But every now and then I will hear from a past client or a present client will say something in a session and I'll have that moment of realisation of how someone's life has been completely changed, not by me, but by the work they have done through engaging, either with counselling or by starting to practice mindfulness regularly or by learning to connect with nature and doing that regularly, whatever it is that I've helped them with and that improvement that's been made. And it's quite humbling to, to realise kind of the impact that you can have sometimes just by doing really basic things like just being kind and listen to someone. I think I can forget the impact that that has, but over 10 years, obviously I've worked with hundreds of clients now, and so I guess that's a pretty good feeling to think, you know, that well, hundreds of people's lives have been improved in some small and in some very big ways. In some ways, you know, you never know for sure, but there's certainly been people who, whose lives have been saved through the work that they've done through coming to therapy.

And so it's really nice for me to remember actually. So thank you for asking me that question, because yeah, it really reminds me that the work I do, which, you know, and some of the work I do is incredibly boring because it's like doing my accounts or you know, all the admin all the behind the scenes stuff that can sometimes seem like a slog, but it's all there to support those things while you are really making an impact.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: So thank you for sharing that. And I think, you know, this is a question. people answer in many different ways. It can be through the impact you make on people's lives through sometimes people share numbers. I leave it open to my guests to share, but I think just because we have this listener base from 40 different countries, it's really nice to bring that in just to showcase why you know, we are talking to you here,

Natalie Rossiter:  I was just gonna share a little story. A client said maybe about a month ago, this client came in and it was his last session actually. And he said, oh, do you know thank you. You've helped me so much. And he was saying, you know, what was different in his life. And that was really nice. And he said, but it's not just me that you've helped. And I wasn't sure what he meant. And he went on to say, you know so many things that you say I kind of, I take away. Sometimes I write them down and then when I meet up with my friends, it was a male client and that felt particularly relevant because the men, obviously there's a lot more stigma around mental health with men in our society. When I go and I meet up with my friends, I tell them all of the things that you have taught me and all of the things that have helped me, and I share that with them and it helps them. and it was just such a lovely moment because that's, again, it's the ripple effect, isn't it? I don't realise, and I was so grateful to him for telling me about it, because it, it might happen all the time where people will share, you know, oh, my therapist said this, or I learned this in a mindfulness class, or I saw this thing on Instagram, or, whatever, and it helped me in this moment.

So it's really nice to know when you have made an impact because yeah, you, well, I put a lot of energy and effort into my work and it's, you know, I don't need constant praise, but it's so nice to know when it is having an impact.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Oh, definitely. It'll be very motivating because, you know, you, you get all that positive energy to take forward to the next session, so that's great.

I guess while we've been talking, you mentioned a lot of the positives. There must be challenges on this journey as well. Are there any challenges that you can share and tell us how you've surpassed them or overcome them?

Natalie Rossiter: There's lots of challenges. I think especially when I first started out, lots of self-doubt. You know, do I know what I'm doing? And all of that, which I think anyone starting any kind of business or project feels that and of course, still crops up, especially when I try something new which is normal. So practicing what I preach, I suppose, with a lot of self-compassion certainly helped a lot and letting myself do things imperfectly and just know what my intention is.

And if my intention is good and I'm doing my best, then that's good enough. I think probably, especially over the last few years, the biggest challenge for me, because I work on my own effectively, is the isolation. You know, I could spend a day with clients working through trauma and that's heavy stuff, and that can be a lot to hold by myself.

And so I don't hold it by myself. I make sure I have lots of supervision. I have colleagues, you know, who we don't work in the same business, you know, we're not employees together, but we might do something similar. I make a big effort to meet up with people and get out the house and go in, talk with people who run their own businesses, you know, who do similar things and share kind of that responsibility together because yeah, it's no good feeling isolated.

I can't fix everything for everybody and that's not a helpful way of looking at things. So I think for anyone running a project, a charity, an organisation, a business, being doing it solo is, it's a lot. And so you need to kind of reach out and get support and that's helped me immensely.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Yeah, I think having a circle of support and whatever form or fashion, whether it's formalised, non-formal, informal, I think it's really helpful. Then you have, you know, people who, with common interests, common ways to engage and I guess common ways to listen as well. I'm sure somebody like you would also need a good listener from time to time.

Natalie Rossiter: Exactly, yes. It's no good if I'm just holding everything. So I remember when we did when I did my training, And we were talking about supervision, which is where therapists can talk about their client work.

So a lot, obviously a lot of what we do is confidential, so that can make it tough to talk about as well and, and get that support. You can't kind of let off steam about your day in the same way, you know, I don’t know if you work in marketing or something, you might be able to. So we have supervisors where we can talk, you know, the clients still and their identity is still hidden, but we can talk specifically about the work that we're doing. And so without that, frankly, I think you'd go a bit mad yourself.

And when I was doing my training, someone asked, you know, oh. So like we have a supervisor and the supervisor has a supervisor. Why does it end? My colleague and I remember our tutor just going, ah, with the great supervisor in the sky.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: I like that. The great supervisor in the sky. That's a very, very nice thought.

How can interested people reach out to you and learn more?

Natalie Rossiter: So I spend quite a bit of time hanging out on Instagram, probably more time than I should, but I actually really enjoy it on there. It's a lovely community. So I'm at Natalie Rosser Wellbeing can find me there. I'm on Facebook too. And my website, which is just (https://www.natalierossiterwellbeing.co.uk/). You can find my email address on there and I am very open to people just dropping into my inbox and saying hi and having a chat and looking at the lots of different types of therapies and events and things like that. So lovely for people to get in touch. Because it's just me and my little office here, so it's always nice to hear with people.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That sounds really good. Thank you. And I'll always include your website in my contact information, you know, in the podcast episode show notes.

What advice would you have for people looking to start something similar in another part of the world or another part of the UK? How should they get started?

Natalie Rossiter: Well, I guess what I have done has sort of evolved organically, and actually someone contacted me recently to ask, you know, interested in all these things, what shall I do? So I think you've just got to kind of trust the process and find your own path with it. So I think, just keep learning. So you can't do all of the trainings, you know, all at once, but find something you're interested in, focus on that, study it, practice it. And as I said at the start, practice what you want to teach as well. It's got to come from that authentic place to try and immerse yourself in whatever it is that you are passionate about.

And I think I would say to people to lean into their natural skills. So whilst we can learn things and of course, hone our skills. My journey came from something that was just a part of who I am already. So not forcing something that doesn't really fit, you know, something I feel like I should do or someone else has taught me to do.

So I think if you're passionate about something and you've got some kind of natural ability in it, just keep learning and trust the process. See where it leads. Let things be a bit squiggly and free-flowing. There's no direct sort of line you know, path to success, whatever that might be. And enjoy yourself.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Enjoy the process, I like that very much. Trust the process and enjoy it as well. You know it is going to be ups and downs, but there's going to be joy in this as well. Thank you for sharing.

Natalie Rossiter: Yeah, you never know it's gonna lead on. You know, I didn't set, you know, you know, in five years' time I want to be teaching mindfulness, in another five year’s time I want to be doing forest therapy.

I didn't know that. You know, you kind of just got to go with it and see what comes up and kind of allow yourself to be pleasantly surprised by the twists and turns? And you can be working really hard on something and you don't know whether anyone's listening or you know, whether it's going to have any impact. And you just have to keep going. I think if you believe in it, if it's meaningful to you, and if you can see that you are helping even one person, then you have to be fuelled by that positive experience and just know that good thing take time as well.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That's also so important, right? Having the patience to wait it out for that right time because the right time is so important.

Natalie Rossiter: The patience. That is definitely something I've had to learn.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: An opportunity for you to talk about anything I haven't not had a chance to ask you before I go to my signature questions.

Natalie Rossiter: I think we've covered absolutely loads. But just to remind people that I have a calendar of year-round events. So I think the next one, the next few things coming up is got a winter wellbeing workshop, which is a ‘pay as you feel’ thing and will be recorded as well.

So I know a lot of people struggle in winter, so if you're listening and interested in mental health, your own and others then just, yeah, check out, see what's coming up and it'd be lovely to connect with people.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Thanks for sharing that. And it sounds like a timely need with less sunlight around. I always say that one of the reasons I feel worse in winter is because I'm not seeing much sunlight. When you're walking your dogs in the morning or the evening, it's all dark, isn't it? It does make a difference.

So now I come to my signature questions, which I ask all my guests.

And my first one is, can you describe the Mancunian spirit in a word or a phrase?

Natalie Rossiter: Mm, I think Mancunian, well, I guess I'm thinking of the image of the bee and the worker bee, so industrious. Which can be a benefit and also a downside perhaps, but industrious I think kind of, yeah, salt of the earth sort of people. Sometimes rough. We can be a bit rougher on the edges, but hearts of gold, honest.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That's a lot of different answers, I just wanted one, so I'm going to go  with industrious. I think that's a good one.

Can you share a Mancunian who inspires you and tell us why? And they could be living or dead.

Natalie Rossiter: Yes. Well that's convenient because I suppose the first one that came to mind is probably not very original, but she does inspire me often when I think of her is Emmeline Pankhurst. Probably other guests have mentioned her, but I don't mind that. I think that kind of just fierce spirit and unrelenting spirit and, and living your values, knowing what's right and not giving up. And yeah, bringing people together in that way, that courage that she had and that she inspired in others.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: Actually it's very interesting because these are new questions that I've introduced.

What's the most important life lesson you've learned?

Natalie Rossiter: I think probably it is to trust the process. And I'm kind of smiling and sort of wanting to roll my eyes as well as I say it because when I did my training, people used to tell me this all of the time. Just trust the process. But I was in my early twenties and I was in such a rush to do everything and wanted to know how everything would turn out and do everything right all the time and all of that stuff.

And people just told me to trust the process and I found it really irritating as a piece of advice. But now, so I'm 35 now and I'm like yeah, I would, I now give people that annoying advice myself.  Even on my last holiday, we went to Greece earlier this year, and I was in a shop and I saw it had ‘trust the process’ written on this t-shirt, and I just had to have it.

And it was like an inside joke to myself, you know, that me 10 years ago would've been like, oh for god sake, I hate that t-shirt. But it's really true. You've just got to go with it. There are no guarantees. You've just got to keep the faith and keep going.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That is also such a relevant point you brought up because you know, it's the right place, right time, and context is everything. As you said the same T-shirt, if you had seen it, maybe in your twenties, you would've just said, no way. So this is really true and it's very relatable for anybody because as we, grow in years and wisdom, we have different levels of maturity that come in.

If you could have one superpower, what would that be?

Natalie Rossiter: Mm… one superpower.I was going to say to remove suffering, like with the click of our fingers. But actually, I don't know if that would be it, because whilst that's really tempting, sometimes we learn a lot and grow through our suffering. So maybe not. I think actually what I would love to be able to do and for anyone to be able to do is to kind of, teleport themselves somewhere, to be with the people they love, whether they're in another country or many miles away.

If I could just, you know, teleport myself down to London to be with my best friend or you know, to be back on the beach in Greece or something like that. That would be fantastic. You know, I think it's those missing connections. Sometimes we want to be somewhere and we can't just be there. That would be so great if I could do that.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: That does sound wonderful. I'm going home to India for three and a half years. It's the longest I've been away and if I could go tomorrow by teleporting myself, even better today, I would love that. To be able to see family and friends in person and just to be able to hold each other sometimes. You can do a little bit over Zoom and other things, but it's not quite the same.

Natalie Rossiter:  Yeah. It'd be so amazing just to clear your fingers and go over and have a cup of tea, you know, even if this superpower apparently lasted for half an hour or something. It would be a very precious half an hour.

Oh, I hope you have a wonderful visit when you get to go.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe:  Thank you.

Is there a funny story you'd like to share with listeners?

Natalie Rossiter: So I decided to go for a walk in the park. I was wanting to kind of put some notes together for a talk that I'm giving at the Manchester Mindfulness Festival. So this is both work and Manchester-related. And I, yeah, wanted to get the creative juices flowing.

So I went for a walk in this park. It was a lovely, sunny afternoon, and I was headed towards these benches and I sat down and I could see these lads, I guess around 14 or something that were stood next to this young poplar tree. And there was something. I was like, what's going on here with these guys? Why are they stood there next to this tree in this way? [There was just something a bit off about the situation.

So anyway, I sit down, I get my notes out, start doing that, and I kind of got like half an eye on these boys. And then, yeah, they start pulling the branches off the tree and I'm thinking, oh, What am I going to do now?

Like, I’m so connected to nature. It's so important to me. I can't just sit here and watch them do this, but also like my inner child was like, oh my God, they're bullies. You can't go over there and talk to these boys. But I had to. So I got up and I thought, okay, I'm going to be mindful about it and not like yell at them.

I suppose in my judgmental mind, you know, thinking what these scalley lads doing, you know, trashing the streets. Yeah, these stupid kids. But anyway, I went over to talk to them and told them, please don't do this. Of course, you know, they're just kind of like laughing to themselves. But to be fair, they weren't too bad and they didn't understand that the tree was alive. That it was a living thing. So I was explaining that to them and they made me think, oh, bloody hell. They're teaching in schools. Like if, you know, you got to 14, you don't know a tree is alive. But anyway, they didn't know. And so now they do.

And I kind of said, well, you know, you can continue to destroy this. Or which is really unkind or maybe you're better than that. I don't know. That's a choice that you can make. And so I just walked away and thought, I'm going to leave it. That my heart was being out of my chest. I'm thinking, oh God, they're going to come and steal my phone. Or like, I don't know, something like just, or something awful was going to happen because of it.

I sat back down and like, at least tried to look calm and carried on with my notes, and they kind of run off and I was carry on doing my work. And then they came back like a few minutes later and I'd got like engrossed in my notes again and they came with these branches that they'd ripped off, but that they collected up into like a kind of bouquet and then put them in front of me went, oh, we, we brought you a present and then down and I said, oh beautiful. And then like, run off snickering, but like, in a nice way rather than like an aggressive way. And it was such a bizarre and random little interaction with some teenage boys, but it kind of actually was quite useful cause I think I might include it in my talk, which is about conversations.

I mean, who knows what they will take from that interaction? Couldn't possibly say, but you know, it's something that could have, like if I yelled at or something, I guess it could have gone very differently. Or if I'd said nothing that could have gone differently as well. So I was quite happy with the outcome. You know, who knows what I'll say they will actually take from that. But it was kind of sweet how it ended.

Deepa Thomas-Sutcliffe: No I really like it because it shows that even, you know, sometimes just speaking up. one voice can make a difference, isn't it? It is very sweet. And while it's not the funniest story, it is a very sweet story, so I I'll definitely include it. I love it.

Thank you so much, Natalie. It's been a real pleasure and I've learned a little bit about mindfulness and forest therapy. And the next time I go out to nature again, I'm going to have a little think about biophilia because I'm definitely fascinated by different things. And maybe it's my inner child or my outer child, I can't say. But it was, it was really nice to talk to you. Thank you for that.

Natalie Rossiter: Thank you for having me on. It's been a real pleasure.

Outro

Natalie, thank you for talking to me and my listeners. I really enjoyed learning about forest therapy today.

Dear listener, thank you so much for listening to the second episode of the Meet the Mancunian Podcast, Season Four. I hope this episode & the podcast itself encourages you to follow your passions, inspired by the amazing Mancunian guests who feature here. Tune in every Tuesday for a new episode or log onto www.meetthemancunian.co.uk to listen to all the episodes and learn more about my podcasting story.

Next week, on Tuesday, 6 December 2022, the Meet the Mancunian talks to Yvonne Hope about homelessness.

Please do leave a review or a voice message on my website www.meetthemancunian.co.uk. It takes only a few minutes. Thank you.