I am Brenda Desborough and I am working to develop “Natural Directions” as a social enterprise aimed at supporting Children & Families through major life transitions, helping in particular women to access their own natural abilities, resources, instinctive sense of well being and cultural preferences. I am combining the provision of and training in massage, which includes the safe everyday use of essential oils and other simple remedies and self awareness techniques drawn from the fields of narrative therapy and biographical storytelling to promote health, relaxation and safety during periods of socio - physiological change. (See “Mothering the Mother” Klaus, Kennell & Klaus, 1993). “Natural Directions” will work complementary to mainstream health provision, seek alliances with the local Children’s centres and services, working towards encouraging a breastfeeding & active birth approach and the sensible, balanced and economic use of all available resources and the minimisation of trauma. The Celebrating Cultural Diversity Network support offered via the LEGI pilot has helped me to further clarify my vision, identify suitable mentors and moral support & encouragement, alongside facts that helps me consolidate the legal aspect of this new social enterprise.

I would like to be considered for the Start Up Enterprise Grant and spend the £780 to co-ordinate the opportunity for a professionally accredited local Doula Training, delivered by “Natural Birth” , enabling a group of motivated women including myself to actively explore how to better support women from all ages & cultural background through their pregnancy & birth, especially teenage and first time mothers. The  completion of this training enables my membership of "Doula UK" and  other useful networking & marketing opportunities.   For further information or to book a 1:1 aromatherapy massage session you can contact me on 01424 755358 /07838286410 or e-mail me via brenda@naturaldirections.co.uk   I trained originally as a primary school teacher, then after the birth of my own children I became part of a team which developed and delivered one of the first Adult Literacy Schemes, part of Croydon Adult Education Service.  In this context I noticed how long term unnecessary problems can be created when change becomes traumatic and stories go unheard. I began to develop a narrative style of working with people and later managed the Ashburton Project, featured on BBC 1 in 1988, which pioneered equal opportunities provision in AE for students with learning and, at a later stage, other disabilities. I moved to Croydon College to work in a dual role as a staff/student counsellor and lecturer in the School of Health & Community Studies, training social care staff at all levels. The college population was ethnically highly diverse with a large proportion of women students. Much of my work, in both roles, involved supporting women through transitions. In 1994 I completed an MSc in Life Course Development at Birkbeck, London University, on the basis of this work. Between 1998 and 2003 I travelled several times to New Zealand, looking at cross- cultural initiatives to improve the health and education of the Maori population,  and was introduced to  Maori  and other indigenous cosmologies and practces of  the southern hemisphere, all of which are based on a narrative perspective on life. In the UK I trained in complementary bodywork therapies and completed diplomas in Anatomy, Physiology & Massage, Aromatherapy, advanced certificates in aromatic acupressure, Indian Head massage and product blending and took further training in narrative practice and biographical storytelling.  My special study for my massage qualification is based on the Navajo “Blessingway- ceremony. I hold qualified teacher status and am a full member of The Aromatherapy & Allied Practitioners Association. I am currently preparing a proposal to work on an MPhil/ PhD on the Body in Transition which will help me to consolidate my research to complete my book: “The Tahutakawa and the Rose” A Women’s journey for which I am seeking a publisher. In my MPhil/ PhD I am seeking to explore the relationship between a woman’s transition to motherhood and her transition to elder hood by distance study at Lampeter University.