CFDS 023 Nikki Harman: From Homelessness To Mindfulness

Clean Food, Dirty Stories

How Nikki Harman went on a journey from being homeless to practicing mindfulness. Plus the best food for mental clarity.

Hi everybody, I'm Barbara Fernandez, the Rocking Raw Chef, here with my Clean Food, Dirty Stories: one to entertain, the other to inspire.

I help people stamp out stress, depression and fatigue over at RockingRawChef.com, and today's title is:

From Homelessness To Mindfulness

In addition to this story, at the end of this episode I'll share with you the best food for mental clarity and focus. This food literally raises our brain function to its maximum and it's really easy to find.

OK enough hints from me, let's get on with the story.

I am super excited to be joined here today for our story by Nikki Harman, who has an amazing story to tell. Not only has she been through quite a lot in her life, but what she does now is super exciting as well. So I really can't wait to dive into it, and so let's do it!

Nikki welcome to the Clean Food, Dirty Stories podcast!

Nikki: Hello! Thank you for having me.

Me: You're very welcome!

Nikki's story

So you've got quite an incredible story and I'm actually quite honored that you're happy to share it with us and everything. I know that your story, I believe your story begins when your parents split up, is that right? And you were about eleven, is that right?

Nikki: Yes, so when I was eleven my parents split up. And at the time just before they split up I was living in a really lovely six-bedroom Victorian house in a nice seaside town. My parents had good jobs and all was going fairly well, but they split up. And because the house we were living in came with the job that my dad had, we lost the house.

Me: Oh!

Losing everything

Nikki: So we lost everything basically. My dad moved to London to go and find work, and my brother, myself and my mom moved into this temporary accommodation, a bed and breakfast.

Me: How old was your brother?

Nikki: My brother was eight.

Me: Sorry?

Nikki: I was eleven and he was seven. So it was from the age of eleven to twelve that we were in this temporary accommodation. For a year before we were rehomed into a council flat, so my brother was seven and eight.

Me: Wow yeah. What did your father do during this time? Did he just like go to London and not look back, or...?

Nikki: He came down when he could. Although he was working most of that time. And I remember only really seeing him every few weeks. Probably every four to six weeks, an occasional day trip down, a Saturday. Most of the time it was just me and my mom and my brother.

Me: And so your mom, she wasn't at the time of the split...She was looking after you? Did she have any other work or a job?

Nikki: No, she didn't work. It kind of broke her, this whole situation. She wound up having quite a significant mental breakdown over it. She became quite distant and disengaged with us. It was just really quite difficult because I remember what it was like just before we moved out saying goodbye.

Packing your life away

We had two beautiful cats and a couple of cockatiels and we had to rehome them. Just packing all of our belongings, packing everything away. Everything in my room, all my toys, my books, my stereo, my tapes, cassette tapes. All my music, all that kind of stuff, it all had to be put away. And I felt like I was packing away a part of me, really.

That was my room, that was just me. So what it must have been like for my mom to pack everything in the house away and not know when next we might see it all.

We were told initially that the law is that temporary accommodation means four to six weeks before you are rehomed. Clearly that doesn't happen now and it didn't happen then. And so we didn't really know how long it would be. It was kind of assumed at the time that it would be a short-term thing. But it became clear very quickly that that wasn't going to be the case. So by the time we moved into this room that had just a bed and two bunk beds in...

Me: That was the B&B?

Nikki: Yes that was in the B&B where we were living, that was where we lived, that was our home. And we were able to use the dining room for breakfast with the other guests, we'd get an evening meal.

Life in a B&B

But the B&B itself was quite run down and the people there I think had sort of a prejudiced attitude towards us, because we were council tenants. We weren't normal paying B&B guests, so they treated us quite differently.

When there were other guests staying, we got better quality food. But if it was just us, it was very much sugar puffs in the morning, a piece of toast. And then in the evening it was often like a tinned stew or tinned something. It wasn't proper cooked, home-cooked food. Tinned potatoes...They would be as cheap as much as they could. We didn't really have much in the way of quality food.

But I was grateful really for having had anything to eat at all, because it was quite the case that we didn't get lunch during the weekends and school holidays because the B&B didn't provide that for us. And my mom didn't have a job, she didn't have money, she didn't have the inclination really to be wanting to do very much in the way of supporting me and my brother. So we'd go quite hungry throughout the days when we were not at school.

Me: So how could...I mean, what I don't understand is how could the owner of a B&B have, you know, children in their home who don't have food. You know? Like when you're on school holidays, you're still in the B&B. They still see you every day, they know you haven't eaten anything. And yet they just don't feed you. I don't understand that.

Nikki: No, I mean occasionally we'd get a jam sandwich.

Me: Yeah. Oh boy.

Being kept out of the way

Nikki: Something like that. But they weren't like that, they weren't those kind of people. They had their own children anyway. So they were sort of preoccupied with them. They didn't really pay too much attention to us. And actually they didn't want us there. During the day we were kind of kept out of the way. Sometimes we'd be allowed to go and play in the garden with their children.

Me: That's what I was going to ask, yeah, if you ever played with their children.

Nikki: Yeah, we did, but not very much.

Me: Did you have to like stay in the room or something?

Nikki: Yeah, we stayed in the room a lot.

Me: Wow.

Nikki: So it just wasn't a very pleasant experience. And given that we were living in a seaside town....My mom, because of the way she was, didn't want us to go onto the beach. To get to this bed and breakfast we had to walk past the beach. And we were never allowed to go and play on the beach in the summer holidays.

Me: Oh that's awful!

So close yet so far from the beach

Nikki: We saw people playing with their sand castles and eating ice cream, and the smell of fish and chips everywhere you went. All these lovely things, and on a hot day just not being able to go on the beach because my mom didn't want us to do that. We would invariably be...we didn't go into town very much because mom didn't want to. But it would be to go into the lauderette to wash our clothes. So we'd sit there and then head back home.

I'll never forget that, just not being able to play on the beach. And then having to go and sit in this room on lovely sunny days, and hear about all the real guests in the B&B going off and doing fun stuff. Where they'd been and what they'd been doing. It was all quite difficult.

Me: I'll bet. And your mom, I think you said, was she like smoking? What did she do? You said she was like smoking all day or something?

Nikki: Yeah, she was a smoker.

Me: So you were in one room with a mom smoking all day. Ewww.

Nikki: Yeah, not nice.

Me: Oh my goodness. And so that lasted a year, yeah?

Nikki: Yeah, so what happened...It was a year long in temporary accommodation.

A cottage for the winter

The council put us in a what was called a winter let from about November to February time. February March time. So we were moved out of the bed and breakfast and into this tiny, tiny dilapidated, rundown cottage which... It just had frost on the inside of the windows. The only sort of heating was a tiny little fire in the lounge.

My brother shared a bed with my mom and then I was in another room. So I was grateful to have my own space. But the sheets were wet from the cold in the house and the condensation.

Me: So did you have to like sleep in your coats or something?

Nikki: Yeah, it was along those lines. Clothes to put on. But my brother got whooping cough that winter as well, which just made it awful for him.

Me: I'll bet.

Nikki: The freezing cold and coughing. We could hear him coughing all night and wheezing, it was terrible.

Life at school

Me: And what about...Did you have...I mean, you were presumably going to school, right? How was it with the other kids at school? Did you make friends with anybody?

Nikki: No, I became quite withdrawn at school because I didn't know how to begin to explain what was happening. A lot of what was going on at the time my mom didn't want us to talk about because she was ashamed. She'd lost everything. As I say, a single mom in a room, we were in this horrible winter let, no money, no home, her mental health was declining. She just didn't want to engage with anyone. And she's always been like that anyway but that compounded it, that exacerbated it at the time.

One of the things she would always tell us was to not talk to other people about what was going on at home. So it was very difficult for me to express how I was feeling. I became very anxious, I was incredibly anxious. Because I just didn't know what to do for the best, and how to make the situation better. I wanted to make things better.

Me: And you said you took on a parental role with your younger brother, is that right?

Nikki: Yeah, very much so. It was all kind of, yeah, just wanting to make sure he was OK and that mom was alright. I'd be kind of quite hyper vigilant about my mom because I'd be worried that she was OK. So at school I'd just have this worry, and because of that, because of my behavior, my friends became quite distant. They didn't understand and I'd try and explain what was going on and how difficult things were.

Homeless even with a roof over your head

And there was that song, you know, The Streets of London? The song about homelessness. One of my friends at the time, who I'm sure didn't really understand how terrible things were for me at home. But she made a very snide remark about that song that we sang one day in our music class. She said, “Well you think you've got it hard. You should see what it's really like for the proper homeless people on the streets. You're not on the streets so you're not homeless”. It was that kind of attitude that they had.

And it made me then think 'well no-one believes me. Maybe I am just making all this up. Maybe it isn't as bad as I think it is'. But actually I knew that things were terrible.

I was declining at school, my grades were dropping, my concentration was terrible. As I said, I was always very anxious and worried that something terrible was going to happen.

No dad and no money

Me: And where was your dad during all this time. Because presumably he was working in London so he must have had some money, right?

Nikki: Yeah, he had some money, some of it was going to Mum. But obviously he was paying rent on wherever he was living at the time and doing whatever. And my mom, I think because she smoked and she drank...

The thing is that she would deny this vehemently now if she were sat here next to me. And I've confronted her about it in the past but she seems to remember that she didn't drink because we had no money. But I can remember her, I can specifically remember her drinking a lot and smoking a lot. So where that money was going I don't know.

I had no contact with him really because, you know, mobile phones hadn't been invented, we didn't have a phone. We had the phone at the B&B when we were staying there. And in the winter let there was a phone box down the road that we went to on a Wednesday evening. He would phone us at seven o'clock, phone this phone box number and we would speak to him. But mostly it was my mom wanting to speak to him. So we got a little bit of time to chat then, but he didn't really know the main things that were going on at the time because I didn't want to worry him. I kind of just held it all in, really.

Things start to get better at first

Me: And then how did it start to get better? Because I mean eventually I know that you got out of...you got into the council flat. And then after the winter let was that much better? Or how was that different?

Nikki: Well after the winter let we moved back into the bed and breakfast again for about another four months.

Me: A different one, yeah?

Nikki: Back into the same one.

Me: The same one? Oh!

Nikki: The same place. Bar one week where they'd been booked so we stayed in the bed and breakfast next door which was lovely. The loveliest people there who cared for us and they were genuinely interested in what we were doing. And it was so sad to then have to go back next door after that. But yeah we were there until June eighty-seven.

And then we moved to this beautiful, lovely, I say council flat. But it was like a Victorian building with beautiful views over the sea and large rooms everywhere. A very spacious flat. It was like the best sort of place you can imagine after being stuck in a B&B and a winter let to be able to have our own bedroom and our own space and all that kind of stuff.

Me: Did the food situation get better at that point?

Nikki: Not initially because Mum still didn't work. She was pleased that we were out of the bed and breakfast, but at that point the divorce started to come through. And so she was still going through her issues and she took quite a decline in her depression and her depressed state. I became increasingly worried about her.

A harrowing trip home from school

Me: Were you afraid that she might, you know, take her own life or something?

Nikki: Well she did try once when she picked us up from school in her car.

Me: With you in the car?

Nikki: With us in the car, yeah. She would often be smelling of alcohol when she picked us up and sometimes she would be taking temazepan. So sometimes she would be quite drowsy at the wheel. I can remember having to kind of steer the car back on the road because she was kind of swerving a bit in and out.

Me; That must have been scary.

Nikki: It was very scary. But one particular day she was very agitated and upset about something. And when we drove back she took us on a different route to the way back home. We were going up some country roads and there was a coach in front of us. And she started putting her foot down and speeding up trying to get closer to this coach. She then just announced, “How would you like to go to heaven, kids?”

Me: Oh wow.

Nikki: And we both started screaming. I sat in the front and my brother was in the back.

Me: How old were you then?

Nikki: I was twelve at that point and my brother was eight. And I was turning to face my mom and holding my brother's hand in the back seat to try and reassure him. Putting my hand on my mom's arm to try and stop her, and shouting at her to stop and slow down. Just asking her to kind of know that we loved her, we didn't want to die, we wanted to help her and other people wanted to help her.

Trying to think like an adult

I can distinctly remember trying to think, 'What would an adult say if they were in this car now? What would an adult do to fix this problem?' That's what I remember thinking at the time, what would they do. So I was trying to knock the car out of gear to see if I couldn't do that... I was just pulling at her frantically, and something made her slow down.

Me: Wow.

Nikki: We headed back home, back into town. But she blamed us, that at that point it was all our fault that she was still alive because she wanted to die. Saying she'd never forgive us and all this kind of stuff that was just pointless.

Me: Well and it made it doubly hard for you, right?

Nikki: It did, but I just felt so worried for my mom. And when we got back, she then said, “Don't tell anybody that this happened. If you tell anybody, then you'll get taken away from me”.

Me: Well you would, yeah.

Nikki: I didn't, I didn't say anything.

Back on solid ground

But I do remember getting out of the car and touching the ground with my hands. I had to have the front and the back of my hands on the ground because I felt like I'd gone to jelly at that point. The adrenalin had worn off and I was in shock. I just needed contact with the ground to know that I was safe. And then we went off into the garden and she went upstairs and it was never mentioned again. And, you know, again, trying to get my head round all of that with her...

Me: Wow.

Nikki: She denies that it ever happened, she doesn't remember it. Well she does, I'm sure she must have some recollection of that time in her life. But so she was very depressed.

And then going into that flat, although it was great because we had our own space, it just increased our isolation. Because what happened was that she just locked herself away. And because it was coming up to the summer holidays again in eighty-seven, she just hid herself away and me and my brother were in the same situation. Looking after ourselves, and no food in the cupboards. Only what was packed from when we were living in our house, so we were basically helping ourselves.

Foraging for food

This might sound really disgusting, but we'd be really, really hungry and be raiding the cupboards and finding chocolate powder. We'd just eat spoonfuls of dried cocoa powder, chocolate powder. And golden syrup, mixing it with golden syrup to make like a yucky paste just to get something into us. We'd have cereal in the mornings and in the evenings a very basic meal that Mum might come out and make. But she often kind of forgot about us because she was in her own world of depression.

Things were very difficult for a long, long time and slowly things improved. Slowly things got better for her and subsequently got better for us. She got herself a job...

Me: And how do you think things got better? Like was there any specific thing that started to happen? Or was it just like time healing things?

Nikki: I think possibly the fact that there were people...she was on someone's radar. I think one of the local church groups had found her and were trying to connect with her and make contact with her and just try to help her through her darkest days. And I do remember them coming round to see her and she wasn't that bothered by them particularly. But there was somebody there for her to talk to and that was the most important thing that she needed at that time, was an adult.

Me: An adult, yeah.

Nikki: And it was the most important thing for me and my brother because that meant that someone else was there to share our burden.

Me: Oh yeah definitely, you didn't have to be the adult anymore, yeah. Wow.

A slow recovery with people to talk to

Nikki: So it was just a very slow, gradual process. And then she met somebody and things got better from that perspective. You know, her self-esteem improved and she came out of her depression and got on an even footing. But it was over a very long period of time, it took a good...I'd say it took a good twelve to eighteen months for her to get herself on an even keel.

Me: Well still though compared to some people that...I mean I know it wouldn't...it didn't feel quick to you, but if I hear twelve to eighteen months, like there are a lot of people that stay in the situation she was in for years and years. So it's a blessing that at least, you know, as horrible as it was, at least she did get out of it eventually, right?

Nikki: She did. My mom's a very complex character and I'm not in contact with her anymore because of just the way she's behaved and treated me. And it's a very complex relationship that I have with her, but she never really wanted me. That was the basic...I kind of grew up with that knowledge that she wished I'd never been born. She would often say that to me. And she would often say, “I can't wait till you're eighteen so you can leave home” or “I wish you'd never been born”. You know, those kind of things would come up quite a lot.

Trying to do the right thing

But I've always tried to do the right thing. I've always tried to be there and to be the model child that she wanted me to be. I was never good enough for her in her eyes, things like that. It was never going to work.

My mom has taught me to be a good parent but by knowing the right way to do stuff rather than the wrong way to care for your children.

Me: Yeah. For sure.

Starting a business

What prompted you to start your business? Was it one incident in particular?

Nikki: Well I'd started meditating twenty years ago after I qualified as a nurse. And I found that meditation worked really well for stress and for coping with everything that was going on. As a nurse in a busy hospital you see all sorts of things that affected me. I was quite affected by some of the things and I found that meditation was a really good tool. And when I was going through the difficult period with my husband before the divorce, before I made the decision to end the marriage I was trying to save it. Using meditation as a method of trying to keep my sanity and work through things.

And I decided one of the outlets of doing that was writing a course to teach adults how to meditate. That's when I began. I started having groups of people round to teach my four-week course as an introduction into mindfulness and meditation and then it developed from there.

My motivator for me when the marriage ended in 2014 was to put my energies into the business and into helping others go through difficult periods in their life by using meditation and mindfulness as a tool.

Getting out of your comfort zone

So I wrote a book called The Gem In The Dust which is about just sort of finding your light within you through whatever difficult period you're having to be able to... Imagine you're sitting in a ragged old sofa and you've got comfortable. You've found your groove in the sofa. And you have to make that choice one day. Whether or not to stay in that groove or to stand up and be uncomfortable for a while and push yourself out of your comfort zone to find out what's really going to work for you. Because you can sit and pretend all you like that your life is good, that your life is happy. But you know that somewhere inside you there's something not quite right. Or eating away at you slowly. Or making you depressed, or anxious or worried or fearful of change. Ultimately you can't ignore that.

So The Gem In The Dust is about just being able to find that within you. That power within you to make changes in your life for the positive, for the good. And so I wrote the book and wrote a six-week course to go with it and now teach people that as well.

Me: So is the book and the course...those are available from your website, right?

Nikki: The book hasn't been published yet, I'm still looking for an author. I can teach the course and I've got my manuscript and I've kind of put it on a back burner for a little while. But I do need to get going with pushing it again and either self publishing or go down a publisher route. Because I want it to work, I want to get it published and I want to reach out to these people.

Giving herself therapy by helping others

So that was enabling me and kind of giving myself therapy throughout the whole sorry tale really of going through that period in my life. That's how the business started.

Me: And then now you said that you're doing really amazing things with children, can you say a little bit about that?

Nikki: Yeah, I love working with children. I became a Connected Kids tutor and trainer. Connected Kids is founded by this amazing woman called Lorraine Murray who started teaching the courses about twelve years ago. There are three levels and I did the first level which was just a one-day introduction into teaching kids meditation and loved it.

I realized that my true passion was working with kids to teach them how to connect with themselves, how to regulate their emotions, how to understand their own world within them and make sense of the world around them and make empathic connections with others. And Lorraine Murray calls us the Peace Pioneers, you know, the people trying to generate peace and harmony and balance into our own world with kids as well. I then went off and became a tutor and then did the trainer module so I now teach adults how to teach children meditation through the Connected Kids courses.

Nursing and mindfulness

And through my work as a nurse I'm incredibly passionate again about making mindfulness part of the clinical toolkit that we as healthcare professionals can use with children in hospitals and hospices and wherever. I did the introduction course, the Connected Kids introductory course specifically for healthcare workers who work with children in the clinical setting. So I'm hoping to get that running, get that off the ground quite soon. I'm just waiting for someone to take me up on it so that I can start teaching it. Because it does work, I've seen amazing results from teaching kids how to meditate and how to use mindfulness in their lives.

Me: Yeah, I mean I think...one of the things that...another thing that really struck me with your story was some of the reasons why you wanted to share this story. And I would love if you would share those because I think it's really important.

Nikki: My passion is about helping kids to develop resilience. To learn to be more emotionally connected to themselves and those around them. And to teach adults how to make that connection with their kids or the children that they work with.

Being open about mental health issues

Me: But I mean you've also got reasons for sharing your personal story, right? I think you said something about breaking down barriers and addressing the sense of shame that comes... Do you want to say anything around that?

Nikki: Yeah, I'm quite open about discussing these things. Because the more it's buried, the more mental ill health is hidden away, the more difficult it becomes to deal with it. And the more difficult it becomes to address it. I want to break down those barriers to reduce that stigma of mental illness. And to accept that it's OK to have a mental health problem. It's not something to be ashamed of. And the more you reach out and access help, the better your chances of recovering and getting treatment are for the problems that you've got. So the worst thing that anybody can do is to pull the shutters down and hide away and pretend that there's nothing wrong.

Me: For sure.

Where to find Nikki

And so where can people go to find out more about you and what you're doing? I mean I'll put the links below obviously but it would be good if you could mention where they can find you.

Nikki: Sure, well my website is inner space project dot com. And I'm also on Facebook, so it's Facebook dot com forward slash inner space project. I'm on Twitter as at the mindful nurse. So they've got those places they can find me and my website will have all the information about the courses I'm doing. I've got my blog as well which I write on which is inner orange dot blogspot dot com. That has a lot of my personal story on there and how it relates to meditation and mindfulness and wellbeing. But there's also a lot of information about meditation and mindfulness as well. And videos that I put up on there from time to time that you can watch too. So yeah, those are places you can find me.

Me: Super! OK.

Nikki's Food For Thought campaign

Oh and there's one last thing that we didn't actually mention, which was you're involved with something called food for thought?

Nikki: Yes, Food For Thought is a campaign that I've started in the run up to the summer holidays. Based on again my own personal experience of homelessness where we just sort of... Just seeing the rise in the number of families that are accessing food banks and the 3-day emergency food parcels. They're really in food crisis... This goes up over the summer holidays because kids aren't getting their free school meals. And they're often missing meals as a result. Or families are working extra hard because they've got to pay childcare costs. So things like that. They're turning more to food banks than ever before.

So the Food For Thought campaign is about raising that awareness and asking people just to donate something to put into their local food bank the next time they go shopping. Or to find their local churches who will be... most around the country do some sort of food collection for food banks.

Finding a Food Bank near you

Me: And so what's the best link? I'll link to Food Bank in the notes, but what would the url be for that?

Nikki: Well there's the Trussell Trust which is a charity that do food banks. They've got four hundred and twenty food banks around the country. So that's one of them.

Me: OK so people could just Google 'food banks', right? With their locality and then they would find the nearest food bank.

Nikki: Food banks. That's right.

Me: OK so that's probably the easiest way.

Super! Well thank you so much for being here to share your story Nikki, I really appreciate it.

Nikki: Thank you for listening.

Me: You're very welcome. I mean I think what you're doing now is very amazing. I think it's so important to help kids be more resilient and self-confident and, you know, it's good for everybody really. But it's particularly nice for children.

Thank you thank you! Bye for now!

Nikki: You're welcome.

The best food for mental clarity

So, I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that I'd share with you the best food for mental clarity. And that food is dark, leafy greens!

The reason I mention dark, leafy greens is because they contain a lot of a particular element that is really important in many a food for mental clarity. That element is chlorophyll.

Chlorophyll is said by some to be the 'blood' of plants. Because it's the green power that plants get by basically absorbing sunlight. So by taking in chlorophyll, you're literally taking in the energy of the sun.

You can find chlorophyll not only in dark leafy greens, but also in superfoods like blue-green algae, spirulina, chlorella and wheatgrass, all of which have a very concentrated level of nutrients that really ramp up the oxygen levels in the body. They therefore are excellent foods to keep our minds sharp, focused and clear, so if you're faced with difficult decisions for example, these foods can literally help you focus.

Many other benefits of chlorophyll

Now I think you won't be surprised when I tell you that chlorophyll is good for so many things, it's ridiculous. I mean, if you've ever Googled 'help with' followed by any kind of health ailment or condition, chances are you've seen dark leafy greens listed as one of the foods to eat, because of their levels of chlorophyll. They're good for just about everything from arthritis, toxicity, cancer, digestive issues, oral health and more. I'll link to an article in the show notes that goes into more detail if you'd like to read more.

How you eat leafy greens for more chlorophyll

As to how you eat these lovely green leaves, well salad is the obvious answer...but of course you can also blend a handful of spinach, kale, chard or other mild greens with some fruit to make a green smoothie. It doesn't have to taste green, and this is a great way to get greens into people who otherwise wouldn't eat them.

I've got lots of recipes that use greens in my 5-Minute recipe ebooks, which I'll link to in the show notes as well.

Have YOU got a story to share?

Which brings us to the end of this week's story. I hope you enjoyed it!

And of course if you've got a true story to share (and you'd like to know what food could have saved the day or enhanced your particular situation), I'd love to hear from you!

Got a question, or a comment?

Got a question, or a comment? Pop a note below in the comments, that would be awesome. You can also subscribe to the podcast to listen 'on the go' in iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn.

I hope you have an amazing day. Thank you so much for being here with me to share in my Clean Food, Dirty Stories. Bye for now!

RESOURCES

More about chlorophyll here: https://www.organicfacts.net/health-benefits/other/health-benefits-of-chlorophyll.html

5-Minute Mains and other recipe ebooks: https://rockingrawchef.com/5-minute-recipes/

To find your local Food Bank (in the UK): https://www.trusselltrust.org/get-help/find-a-foodbank/

About Nikki Harman

Nikki Harman is a mindfulness coach, Connected Kids™ children's mindfulness tutor and trainer, and registered general nurse (RGN) working part time in the NHS. Specialising in working with children, Nikki has worked successfully with her clients. She also teaches adults to explore how to move out of their comfort zone to achieve a goal or dream. Her blog is based on professional information, mixed with personal experience. Nikki has written a course for healthcare professionals who work with children in the clinical environment to teach mindfulness techniques as part of their toolkit.

www.innerspaceproject.com

www.innerorange.blogspot.com

Twitter https://twitter.com/themindfulnurse

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/innerspaceproject/