Lovably dubbed Mother Nature, Connie Nelson has dedicated her life to reviving the Nature-Child Reunion. Connie's father instilled a love of nature in her from her earliest days. The tradition was continued when upon the birth of her son, her parents appeared at the door with a small tree that he planted in the yard. Over the years he lovingly tended the tree with her son, creating the same bond. Now Connie is committed to getting kids back into nature through a series of books, songs, and lessons with the goal of creating a healthier, smarter generation of nature lovers. Learn how she spreads the "seeds." Learn about The Luckiest People in the World at www.theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com
Find Connie Nelson on Facebook at Nature-Child Reunion
Connie's latest book, "Oakie Dokie's Happy Roots"
TRANSCRIPT
This is Changing the Rules. A podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.
KC Dempster 0:13
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster. And I'm here with Ray Loewe in Wildfire Studios in beautiful downtown Woodbury, New Jersey. And our podcast is about people who take control of their lives, and all of the ways that they can do with the things that they might have to face. And, you know, change is difficult. So we're here to support you.
Ray Loewe 0:40
Yes. And we're actually here at Wildfire Radio and Podcasting Studios at 65. Cooper Street.
KC Dempster 0:47
Fancy
Ray Loewe 0:48
The reason I'm saying this, I'm getting fan mail here now. And I want to encourage this, and we have our engineer totally jealous. Okay, because he's not getting fan mail. And I am. So Taylor it's tough. Come on the air with us next time, and we'll get you fan mail.
KC Dempster 1:05
Right, right.
Ray Loewe 1:06
Okay, so we're here as usual, and we're talking about the luckiest people in the world. And we have another one today. Yes. And, again, reminding everybody, the luckiest people in the world are those people that kind of design their own life. And then they live it under their own terms. And it often doesn't happen easily to do that. And you're gonna see from some of our guests that there's a sequence to it, and and you have to take advantage of opportunities, and you have to be willing to change.
KC Dempster 1:41
Correct, correct. And we call these people the luckiest people in the world. But the clue is that the definition of luck is preparation and opportunity. So if you're preparing, when the opportunity presents itself, you're ready, and you can grab it. And that's really what luck is.
Ray Loewe 2:00
Yeah. But one of the things that again, people need to me, we talked about changing the rules here. And it's great to think about changing the rules and how you'd like to do things. But sooner or later that word change actually comes into play. And you're going to find that when you talk to all of the people we interview here is that they made the change occur. Didn't happen just by snapping their finger.
KC Dempster 2:25
And that's part of the preparation
Ray Loewe 2:27
except in this case Because we have with us Mother Nature. Yes. And you can't fool Mother Nature, because she may snap her fingers and we get a thunderbolt coming down. Yeah, she's gonna cause the change. Yeah. So. So we have imported Connie Nelson. Yes. Okay. Who really is Mother Nature and it's aka Connie Nelson. It's not the other way around in this case, right? That's right. Right. So Connie, say hi to everybody and do it like, like, Mother Nature, would. That's why, you know, you wrote a book about talking to trees and things like that. And we're gonna get into that later because they're, they're significant. But let's start a little bit about you. And in your case, you've probably been closer to Mother Nature all of your life than most people have because of your dad. Right?
Connie Nelson 3:30
Correct. Yes.
Ray Loewe 3:31
So tell us a little bit about your dad the influence that he had in your life, his background a little bit and how all of this stuff just started.
Connie Nelson 3:40
Okay, well, first of all, I'm one of the luckiest people in the world because I grew up happy. And I grew up. Of course, that doesn't mean that storms didn't come. But I grew up with a light inside of me if I think because my my father had me out in nature so much. And we would walk the hills of West Virginia. And he would point out, for instance, a weed he had say, Connie girl, one of these days, cancer, a cure for cancer might be found in that weed. So I learned to love even the weeds and apply that in my life. Because you know, we run into people sometimes that we might kill sort of consider weeds, but I learned to love them too. But yeah, my dad was a was probably he planted the seed inside of me to explore and discover in nature. And then later on that became when I became older and an adult and had my own child that became even more important,
KC Dempster 4:46
right, because what did he do when you had your own child?
Connie Nelson 4:51
Well, it was a tradition to you are he in our family that with the birth of my parents, grandchildren, they would bring a baby Retreat, my dad would bring a baby tree. And of course, my mom would come along, and my dad would plant that tree with the birth of our children. And then when our when, when my son became old enough, two or three years old, they would go out together and tend to that tree that my dad planted for, for my son to grow up with. And so that became a very teachable, a very impressionable moment. And I'll bet you that people that are listening can think of something in their lifetime, and experience outdoors in nature that has stuck with them all throughout their their adult, and they're growing. And that was what really stuck with me.
Ray Loewe 5:44
Now your dad was either part or all Native American. Is that true?
Connie Nelson 5:48
He was he was about half Cherokee.
Ray Loewe 5:52
So did this have an incfluence On all this,
Connie Nelson 5:56
I'm sure it probably did. Because he had a real symbiotic relationship with nature. I mean, he watched the weather he planted by the weather by the moon's by the old Farmer's Almanac, if you remember that, yeah. And so he had, and he would raise herbs, a lot of like, echinacea for instance, which comes from purple coneflower, he would raise all these things.
KC Dempster 6:23
Right, right. So he he was at one with nature if you want, if you will. I mean, that sounds
Connie Nelson 6:28
that's a good way of putting it. Yeah,
KC Dempster 6:30
it sounds a little cliche, but sometimes the cliches are cliches because they're true. Okay.
Connie Nelson 6:36
Yeah. The web of life. Yeah. So now,
Ray Loewe 6:39
we have you figured out now we know the roots of Mother Nature. And, and so you went on to become a teacher, right? And that's primarily what you consider yourself to be, I believe?
Connie Nelson 6:52
Well, I'm a nature educator. I never actually had a job where I taught in the classroom, although my degree I have a degree in education. But I applied that degree to creating nature, outdoor education programs for organizations, and corporations and schools, whoever would ask me,
Ray Loewe 7:14
and you've done some things for McDonald's, and you've done some things for the Boy Scouts.
Connie Nelson 7:18
I've worked at. Yeah, yeah. created, developed, created and developed a very in depth outdoor educational program, K through five across the STEM curriculum for the Boy Scouts of America. And but I have also done campaigns with McDonald's, some school programs with Walmart. And the thing with me is I'm not in this mission. My mission is the nature child reunion, guys, but I'll tell you, I'm not in this. For the income, I'm in it for the outcome.
Ray Loewe 7:48
Well, let's get some income to help you with the outcome.
Connie Nelson 7:54
A little income to help with the outcome.
Ray Loewe 7:56
Okay, so when we were talking earlier, you we're talking about your sweet spot for people that you want to educate as at four to eight year old group, right?
Connie Nelson 8:10
Children is, is, as I say, so many times when I'm speaking, children are born with an innate sense of wonder for nature. And so it's up to us as we nurture them and help them grow up healthy, strong and smart. It's up to us not to program that out of them. But to keep you in a sense of wonder for nature fresh and alive during that impressionable age, which there's a lot of gravy before four and a lot of gravy after eight. But I would say four to eight is the sweet spot.
Ray Loewe 8:42
And what we want to do is keep them off those cell phones, right?
KC Dempster 8:46
And other devices.
Ray Loewe 8:49
All right, yeah.
So you and your process of doing this have created a whole lot of characters. Now. Now hold the story here for a minute because you don't want to jump the gun on these too good, they're too good to get out there. But and you have a book that's come out and what's the name of your book that just came out?
Connie Nelson 9:07
This is the softcover and I have the hardcover behind me. This is half Oakie Dokie's Happy Roots. Oakie Dokie is a young little sprout. He's an oak tree. And he discovers the six roots of growing up happy in this book and shares that with with children. And he also learns a very important concept that will help us be happy as we grow up. And that's called forgiveness. So that's Yeah, that's that's the the gist of this book. And it's all about connecting kids with nature. And my mission, like I said, is a nature child reunion. So this is one of the books one book of many more to come. That, that, that do that.
Ray Loewe 9:53
Okay, so hold that thought we're gonna come back to that. But one of the things that I think makes you unique is you have to In your natural your nature experiences and you've related concepts of life to characters found in nature. And then you created characters to make these things meaningful. So for example, talk to me about never say can't.
Connie Nelson 10:22
Okay? Be happy to. First let me say, though, that I'm that my mission is to reconnect children with the marvelous intelligence of nature. And to do that by creating and nurturing nature connections that they can relate to. And these characters that you're talking about, help a child to connect with all the marvelous, marvelous intelligence and wisdom that's found in nature. So Antonio Ant Never Says, Can't. Let me tell you about this little ant. When he looks at a big job ahead of him, he does not start thinking of all the ways and reasons why he cannot do that job. And says, you know, carry 1000s times more their weight and their load than then their size. So, Antonio never looks at that big load over there and says, Well, I can't carry that, you know, he just does it. So he has a can do attitude. And so through Antonio Ant, and the episeed I call them episeeds about Antonio, and every episeed is an episode that plants a very powerful seed of learning in the child's heart, mind, spirit, the whole child. And so Antonio Ant is just one of those characters that I use to teach children. I can do attitude, and never look at a job and say, I'm too little to do that. Because size you know, is is irrelevant when it comes to doing a lot of a lot of important jobs. Cool.
Ray Loewe 12:01
I love this Episeed thing. We're going to change our podcast we have episodes on our podcast Connie. I don't know which one you're up in like Episode 62 or three or something like that. We're going to change over to episeeds. And you're going to be planted my garden somewhere.
Connie Nelson 12:18
Do I get a licensing fee for that?
Ray Loewe 12:20
So anyway, you know,
KC Dempster 12:25
you've left him speechless.
Ray Loewe 12:28
Let's go on. We talked about Antonio Ant you get too many good ones of this. You have another one here. I bought a cocoon and a butterfly. Okay. Talk to me about that one.
Connie Nelson 12:40
Have you ever seen a cocoon?
Ray Loewe 12:42
Yes.
Connie Nelson 12:43
It's not very pretty, really. attractive but look what comes out of it, you know, a beautiful butterfly. And so I take that all my episodes take something in nature and transform it into a life lesson in lessons across the STEM curriculum, but in this case, a little prissy girl named Chrissy she's all wrapped up in her cocoon of self and she cannot see or appreciate the needs of others at all she can see is herself. So she finds herself in the presence of the Bark Buddy Trees, which are my characters that become the voice of the nature child reunion to the children. And she she runs into Pinkie Dogwood, who's the springtime member of the Bark Buddy Trees. The band, it's a musical roots. They do musical rootines r-o-o-t, but anyway, so she runs into Pinkie Dogwood. And Pinkie realizes that Chrissy has a real problem. She's in a tiny little cocoon of self. And a cocoon is a very lonely place because there's only room for one in that tiny space. And she's all about herself. So Pinkie Dogwood shares with her about the metamorphosis the wonderous through time lapse photography, the metamorphosis of cocoon to butterfly and how much more fun it is to come out of your little cocoon of self to fly and see and appreciate the needs of others. And she teaches or through this this lesson. Chrissy learns a very important concept that she's never really practiced, it's called sharing. So that's just one way and then all of my episeeds have musical rootines and songs for the children to be interactive, do you know actions with the songs and so this one's all about coming out of the cocoon of self and flying and so that's Christy's Life lesson. That's that's something that she learned that will change her life.
Ray Loewe 14:53
Well, so I'm gonna hit you with about four more and so we don't run out of time. Give me The short version of geese formations.
Connie Nelson 15:03
Oh, Gus Goose's Good Sense. Okay. So what formation? Do the geese fly in a V? Exactly? C stands for victory. And what how did they do this? Okay, so you have a lead goose that's flying in the front, he's drafting the other geese, making it easier on them. He's blazing the trail. When he gets tired, though what happens? He falls back. Another goose that's been taking advantage of the draft moves up into the lead position and takes over. So through this lesson, I teach a little boy, that he he doesn't really know the value of teamwork. He just he wants to win. But at any cost. He doesn't believe in being a part of the team. He wants to be the star of the show all the time. So I use that to teach him a lesson about teamwork, about V is for victory through teamwork. And I'll also even spread that across the curriculum to history and bring in something that little boys are usually interested in a lot of times is sports. And I share the lesson about how Jackie Robinson blazed the trail for African Americans in sports and famous baseball player. And so this gets the kids I bring in all of their senses. Not just you know, when you're in a classroom, they're you're just really not getting as much. Well, you can but it's it's not like learning outdoors. I say all the time, I think outside the box. But I don't even use a box. I just think outside.
Ray Loewe 16:48
And I can see where you you know, you can look up in the sky, you can see the V's, and there's a lesson there where you can you can you can look at the ground, you can see the ants and there's a lesson there. And and there's, you gave me so many of them but but talk about helping your neighbors and the aspen trees because I that's what I even think about.
Connie Nelson 17:08
You know, I mean, trees, that's the worldwide, they have their own worldwide web. And it's, it's a lot of it's underground trees. I never struggle with the concept of talking trees and communicating trees, because we know that they do trees communicate through through hormones through chemicals, on the wind through their root systems. And the aspen trees are a very great lesson for kids about community and helping in your community and serving community service. Because if there's, let's say that there's a huge forest of aspen trees, it could be 100 miles across. And some of the aspen trees in one part of the forest are suffering from a drought. The other trees in the part of the forest may have been getting rain. So they've been getting nurtured by the water. And they'll share their water through their root systems, to their all of their Aspen Tree Friends down the road or down through the forest, you know, maybe 100 miles away, they share through their root systems.
KC Dempster 18:18
That is absolutely great.
Connie Nelson 18:20
There's a very powerful lesson there for children.
KC Dempster 18:22
It really is. And I had never heard that story before either. And I just, I'm in awe.
Ray Loewe 18:28
I don't really know what's on, you know, I have a list of these, we're not going to have time to do them. But let's go to your book for a minute. Your book just came out. And it's targeted for this 4-8 market. Is that right? With with gravy spelling over on either side? And add? What's the name of the book again?
Connie Nelson 18:51
Oakie Dokie's Happy Roots. It's all about growing up happy.
Ray Loewe 18:56
Okay, well, we certainly don't want to do that. Right. Well, you know, that's so important. And again, you know that that's one of the criteria of our luckiest people in the world, though luckiest people in the world know how to be happy. Okay, so, you know, maybe we all need to read this book. Okay,
Connie Nelson 19:13
It would be good for everybody to read. Yes. Because we all struggle with certain. And as I go through the book, I interact with the children with prompts and little questions. Like, for instance, when was the last time you know, you said thank you to someone? Or can you think of someone that you need to say thank you to more often that's, that's one of the roots. Respect is one of those roots. And that means, you know, appreciating what others do and thanking them for it. Cool.
Ray Loewe 19:43
So, you know, unfortunately, we're about out of time. So do you have any last comments that you want to make before we have to break off?
Connie Nelson 19:52
Well, I would just like to say, think of somebody think of a child in your life, that you could plant a seed Plant a seed, maybe read this book with them, take them outdoors, you know, look for a special leaf or a special rock, just anything to get them outdoors. And, and let's reconnect children with nature so that they can grow up healthy, happy. And smart. Studies show that kids spend time out outdoors or even score higher academically. So let's just get the kids out there to grow up happy, healthy and strong.
Ray Loewe 20:31
Well, cool. We will post in our podcast notes, the name of the book, and where you can get it and you have Facebook pages, and we'll give them some references to that. And you're going to show
Connie Nelson 20:44
I have a website to that's going to be go live this coming Friday. So
Ray Loewe 20:48
we'll call we'll get that from you. And we'll put it up there. Okay, so,
Connie Nelson 20:53
guys so much for this opportunity. It's it's just been a pleasure. And I'd love to come back and plant more seeds sometimes.
Ray Loewe 21:01
I'm gonna go on plant and Aspen tree. I mean, absolutely incredible thinking. So you have a great day. And thanks for being with us. And KC on tone for today. It's time to sign often. And we have an extra message to sign off today. Right?
KC Dempster 21:16
That's correct. I want to thank everybody for listening to Changing the Rules. And to give you the wonderful news that I am retiring after many, many, many, many years of working with Ray, it's not a reflection on him. It's just that it's time for me to do things that I want to do, and not have to worry about meeting somebody else's calendar. So I'm looking forward to it. And I have a feeling that in the in the words of was it Michael Corleone "Every time I think I'm out, they drag me back in."
Ray Loewe 21:53
Yeah, you'll be dragged back. And so so let me tell you what we're going to be doing here. So KC was almost unreplaceable. Almost. Okay. So what we are doing for the next four months is we have a guest host coming in for each of the four months. And the guest host is going to help us link to an incredibly new network of fascinating and motivating and interesting people. So KC, I, you know, put your ego down a little bit. But But you were placed by a team. Okay, that's true. And stay tuned, because I think you're going to find that the podcast is growing, it's going to take on a new dimension. And whether she knows it or not, she'll be back as a guest host. We just haven't set the date yet. And then we'll come back and we'll get some even more interesting people. So stay tuned to us and KC, congratulations on your retirement. And she'll be bored. She'll be back.
KC Dempster 22:53
I'm not going to be bored, but I might be back
Ray Loewe 22:57
bye everybody.
Kris Parsons 23:00
Thank you for listening to Changing The rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us next week for our next exciting topic on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.