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« Back NATURE’S VEIL: HEALING IN LIMINALITY – HOW THE INTERACTION BETWEEN NATURE, ART, AND PHOTOGRAPHY SUPPORTS US TO NAVIGATE TRAUMATIC LOSS, DEATH AND DYING Carolina Herbert PhD, is an arts psychotherapist, supervisor, educator and celebrant with over 20 years experience working with people, organisations and communities in post-conflict and conflict environments. As a singer/songwriter and photographer, Carolina has a passion for how the expressive arts can support us and enable us to be resilient and respond to the complex challenges we face in our world today (The Gower Peninsula, Wales, United Kingdom).
David Moss Rev., is an Interfaith Minister, professional musician/songwriter and artist. David’s immersive landscape paintings capture the beauty of nature in an Edenic form that invites you into a timeless joyful celebration of life (Wiltshire, England, United Kingdom). "Nature's Veil: Healing in Liminality," explores the profound healing power of nature, art, and photography in navigating traumatic loss, death, and dying, as conveyed through a creative dialogue between Carolina Herbert and David Moss. The conversation took place on Bae Cas-wellt, Penrhyn Gŵyr, Cymru (Caswell Bay, Gower Peninsular, Wales). David shares his experience of finding healing through painting after his daughter's death, how he experiences his daughter's presence through painting and nature’s "spirit messengers." The shoreline, for Carolina, becomes a "thin place" for navigating grief, recognizing death not as an end but a continuous journey between realms. The paper emphasizes both indigenous knowledge and Earth's consciousness, drawing from ancient Celtic animism where trees and oceans serve as sacred portals to deeper wisdom and the ongoing presence of loved ones beyond the physical realm. Carolina: What were you feeling when you were painting today? David: The first thing to say is that since we wrote the last article for Ecopoiesis, something absolutely catastrophic has happened. In January 2024, my 13-year-old daughter took her own life. The indescribable impact…there aren’t any words… Painting gradually became a lifeline for me. After the funeral, a friend sent my partner and me to Barbados as she had a house there. We went, and that was when I first painted again. It was such a gentle experience. I found it so healing, my little one was so present, she was just there in every brush stroke, there was so much love present. There was a great big mahogany tree outside where we were staying. I had never seen a mahogany tree before; it was huge. It had a real and powerful presence, yet I painted it as not quite present. Through shock and deep grief, I was in between spaces or even dimensions, whereas the world, represented by the verandah fence appears uncompromisingly solid.
Figure 1. Grandmother Mahogany, Barbados (by David Moss) “If we surrendered to earth’s intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees”. Rainer Maria Rilke [1] Carolina: It’s such a colourful and vibrant painting, so alive. David: Yes, I found myself working with the trees as if I was connecting with the energy of all trees. I felt supported by the vivid energy of nature manifested in them. I was reading once how they are fifth-dimensional beings. Since my daughter’s death, I feel like I have moved into a whole load of other dimensions. Somehow, I am now able to connect with her, where she is, in ways which I can’t fully explain, or make up. It’s like she shines through, even her sense of humour comes through, it’s almost like she is taking the mickey out of me. I was in the sea in Barbados and found myself saying, “Was I a good dad to you?” With perfect comic timing a massive wave came and smacked me on the side of my head and knocked me over. It was just like my beautiful daughter was play-fighting as we did, and she was throwing me across the room, saying, “That’s not even a question!” Carolina: What does it feel like being back painting by the sea? David: Here I am by the sea having painted by and been immersed in the same body of water in Barbados. A huge distance travelled in the grief process, literally and through time and creativity. My daughter loved the sea, she loved Wales, we were then able to come back here the first Easter after her death, which we spent visiting all the places we had been together and called it dragon slaying, confronting the overwhelming pain and grief of visiting places full of so many memories of her. It wasn’t really dragon slaying; it was more like befriending the dragons through her connection with nature. She had an amazing connection with nature, especially animals, birds, and butterflies. Today when I was painting on the beach there was a robin, it's one of my daughter’s signature birds, you noticed it first, then it came and sat beside me on a rock right next to me and looked right at me in the eyes, no more than two metres away, staring head on for several minutes. It felt like a beautiful connection with my daughter as if she came to say hello, looking out for me, even on a beach where robins don’t usually belong. Carolina: Wow! That's so special and magical, how did you feel? David: I felt lighter, thankful, grateful, that wherever she is she is able to send help to me. It makes me feel reassured that she is ok, she is happy. Carolina: Can you share what you have been painting?
Figure 2. Redcliffe Robin (Carolina Herbert) David: I am working on a painting on the beach working initially from the entire landscape, then I picked up a piece of graphite and did a rough sketch of the rocks. The paper was wet from the sea and rain and there was sand on the papers and the way that the sand interacted with the graphite, was like “ooh I like that” so I transferred this onto the bigger painting I was working from…putting sand on the painting and scratching the graphite over it, it seemed to work well to represent the rocks. Sand is basically ground-up rock as is graphite so I was using the earth elements to give visual representation of these elements. Carolina: Did this painting process support your grieving too?
Figure 3. Rock Sketch, Graphite (by David Moss)
Figure 4. Redcliffe Spring, Caswell Bay (by David Moss) David: Yes, it’s like she is everywhere – she’s in the light and on the breeze, and the rocks provided her a place for the little robin to land and look at me. It took some time to feel held by the earth again. At the beginning me and my partner wanted to follow her when she died, I wanted to go and look after her cause that’s what parents do for their children, but thanks to the incredible kindness and generosity of so many people bringing us to places of beauty and nature it was grounding, starting to bring us back, helping us to realise that it's possible to continue. It's possible to relate to our little daughter in new ways. Like the breeze, she is invisible, but she is very, very present. The trees and the rocks for me are very solid – I particularly relate to the trees because they hold an ancient energy that’s ever present and in form. Eventually, all form dissolves – in the case of rocks, it takes millions of years, in the case of a human it takes a lifetime however long or short that is.
Figure 5. Shoreline, Caswell Bay (by David Moss) The shoreline – today the tide was going out – normally it is coming in and the waves normally end up washing over me and my work. But this was different, as the tide went out it helped me focus on where the sea meets the shore – to consider the relationship of dimensions, the relationship of the water and the sand, all of it infused with light, completely separate entities and yet so unified. As Leonard Cohen says, “you know my love goes with you as your love stays with me, it's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea[2] It's such an ever-evolving reconvening of elements, emotional, spiritual, and physical. Carolina: That's so moving, like a reconfiguration of perspective through that liminal veil. David: Yes, exactly! You have a profound connection with the sea; it’s like you would rather be in it, as if your essence is born from the sea. How has the sea been supporting you through your grief through loss, and death? Carolina: When I was spending so much time traveling on the road, being in various roles over the past year, bringing soul care, therapy, being a celebrant and a death doula, supporting clients, family, and friends in life-death transitions. I walked the shoreline any moment I could, and the shoreline felt like the liminal space between worlds, nature’s equivalent of a place between life and death. I was fortunate to be living on a beach, so literally when I was home, I could walk back and forth along and across the shoreline. It became my non-negotiable ritual; it was calming, reassuring, and grounding. It helped me to stay present with the experience of intense grief and existential crisis, to stay with the experience of being in a liminal state, whilst supporting people in their shock and pain of traumatic loss, whilst supporting my sister in law to die well and as consciously as she wanted, whilst responding to clients in war zones facing unimaginable loss. The shoreline became my lifeline between worlds, my place to be with the unbearable. The ocean I knew was vast enough to hold me and all of what I was experiencing and somehow it knew, and I knew that. I would take photographs of the interaction between the water and the sand, where they meet. It was grounding me into being able to stay present in this world as well as with these other dimensions. It’s constant reassurance reminds me of this poem by Rumi:
Figure 6. Source I (by David Moss) A Garden Beyond Paradise Everything you see has its roots Every wondrous sight will vanish, Why do you weep? The Source is full, by Rumi[3] David: - It's a really strong symbol to be in the land and in the water - it is the liminal space. The shoreline always changes. The space between what we call life and death but there is always a cross over, there is one dimension and the other dimension …were you living in that space?
Figure 7. Walking between worlds (by Carolina Herbert) Carolina: The cross over that you are talking about, the way you saw your daughter through the eyes of the robin - we are so conditioned to think that this is the only reality because of our physical boundaries, but when we see with another way of seeing it opens up another dimension. Am I on the land experiencing the sea, or am I the sea experiencing the land, or am I both, because I am in this world whilst also being with someone about to travel into this other dimension through death. I found myself trying to find your daughter between these realms. I remember drawing an art image of a being who emerged from the ocean who is there as a guide - a guide of transitions between worlds. I like the thought that there is an accompaniment through death, there is the presence of people in this realm and if not there is the presence of beings or a greater dimension that accompanies us as we pass through. We are alone and not alone at the same time. The gentle rhythm of the waves, like the amniotic waters of the womb, offers a primal comfort, helping me remain present amidst the realms of transition. Is death a birth? Is birth a death? What do we surrender before our earthly arrival? What we perceive as an end might actually be a new beginning, a birth into the next realm. My sister, nearing her transition, inspired me to see this truth; she experienced both the agony of parting from her loved ones and a profound bliss and knowing. She painted visions of the beyond, gifting them to your family, to offer solace and reassurance of that other dimension to support us in our grief. The veils between worlds are incredibly thin. In Western culture, we often view death with fear, or as a finite end, rather than a continuation of existence beyond the constructs of time. Perhaps these realms are co-existing, ever-present and evolving.
Figure 8. Primal sound (by Carolina Herbert) It calls me back to an indigenous way of seeing. I am so touched, David, that the painting you have done of Redcliffe Spring is the actual place of my ancestors. After many years of living overseas, the universe has brought me back ‘home’ in a full circle, to my ancestral lands and Celtic roots. In Celtic culture, there is a harmony with nature. The ancient Celts were animists and they honoured the forces of nature, saw the world as inhabited by many spirits, and saw the Divine manifesting in all aspects of the natural world. The spirits of watery places were honoured as givers of life and as links between the physical realm and the other world. In Celtic beliefs, the shoreline and certain liminal spaces like hills, forests, and especially coastlines, were considered to be places where the veil between the mortal world and the Otherworld was thin. These "thin places" allowed for easier interaction or glimpses between the worlds of the living and the dead, or the realm of the fae (mythical beings) [4].
Figure 9. There is light between (by Carolina Herbert) There is so much harmony in this way of being. So, from this place of course, the robin is a spirit messenger, the rocks, the shoreline, the ocean are all speaking to us. Rather than me being disconnected from this indigenous wisdom, nature re-embodies this awakening back into remembrance. My photography is helping me to remember. I have been taking so many images of the interaction between the ocean and the shore, the way the golden light ignites water and sand weaves its iridescence through both. David: Like you were trying to capture the light beneath the surface. Carolina: Yes! I got in the water and was trying to capture the way light was refracting beneath the meniscus of the water, like the dance between. I was searching for something beyond my physical sight. How can photography reveal what we can’t see? How can it open up the multidimensional space and bypass the limitations of my own seeing and knowing? To reveal a greater mystery between. It reminds me of Veda Austin’s work, where she is trying to learn the hieroglyphic language of the water and understand what it is saying to us. She is trying to reveal the unseen other dimensions, the consciousness of the water. The water in the ocean is H2O and salt, billions of years old, made from stars, comets, and mysteries. Even the scientists don’t know how water actually forms - it still remains a mystery. What consciousness and wisdom exist in the water? You talked about the trees as being these 5th-dimensional sentinel beings, then what is the ocean? 70% of the Earth is the ocean, a body of water that matches the amount of water in us. Underneath the mantle of the Earth, they have discovered even a greater ocean. What is this water planet, this great being, telling me, telling us from its wisdom? For me, it's the constant reassurance of its presence, its consistency, even if it is stormy or calm, the huge tidal forces, it always returns, it is unconditional in its seeing and knowing of what I am experiencing. There is no judgement nor expectation, as Veda Austin cites. “Water is transparent, it knows no color, creed, or religion. Water does not judge, nor does it label, it will enter the body of an ant as easily as it will enter the body of a king, or a homeless person, or a tree, or a dragonfly. Water is our constant companion, from the moment we are conceived, it is always with us, even upon death, it is water that evaporates from the physical rising upwards into the Heavens.” [5] It's ok, you can be with life and death, for they co-exist at the same time. So it's a deep reassurance. David: Wow - I never thought of the Earth as a lump of water flying through the universe, billions of years old, I thought of it more like a rock. 70% of water, with some help from gravity, to hold it together. It feels impossible, beyond imagination. The incredible grandeur of focusing on this perspective. It's awe-inspiring. And now, as I watch the ocean, it is wooing me, as if calling me to see another way of seeing, beyond my own humanness and suffering. How we see this world and respond to these times is so challenging. Carolina: Yes, the planet is an expression of consciousness. Where there is no consciousness, we find ourselves in separation and suffering. We are all born into a separation. What is this consciousness? Is it love? What is it - when we try to define it, it is limited. Maybe, it is found in the imagination, the arts, in the body, and in the heart, in relationship with each other and nature. For you, the ancient trees, for me, the ocean's vast embrace, both serve as sacred gateways to a deeper consciousness, deeper space, a different way of knowing. You are the wild wave, curling over me, A vast embrace of the boundless sea. You are the bright yellow, trumpet of spring, The daffodil's sudden, insistent ring. You are the bird's song before the dawn breaks, A hushed, rising chorus, the quiet earth awakes. You are the light tearing through the storm's gray, A sudden ignition, turning night into day. The clouds ablaze, painted with a swift hand, Igniting all colors across vast skies and land. You are the aching absence, a space between breath, The hollow echo of what is lost to death. You are the pulse in my heart that goes on, Remembering, remembering, from dusk until dawn. You arrive in the deep, soft cradle of dreams, Where memories, like spirals, flow out in winding streams. The great ocean, vast, sufficient for all, Our tears, our fierce love, answering your call. You have taught me of dying, a surrender, a grace, That love knows no ending, no separated place. You have taught me acceptance, a gentle, strong hand, And forgiveness, the softest, most giving command. Though you are not here to witness spring's gentle birth, You are here, in me, in everything, woven into the earth. By Carolina in loving memory of Ali and Heli And for all reading this, a concluding poem by Maria Popova as a prayer for your own connectedness with nature, your own homecoming as a medicine for what griefs and losses you are having to endure: Forgiveness by Maria Popova[6] May the tide never tire of its tender toil how over and over it forgives the Moon the daily exile and returns to turn mountains into sand as if to say, you too can have this homecoming you too possess this elemental power of turning the stone in the heart into golden dust.
Figure 10. Shoreline traces For more information about Carolina’s work, please visit www.alkimiasoul.com To see more of David’s paintings: www.davidmossarts.gallery For work connected with protecting children by changing cultures in schools towards kindness: www.kindwaves.org.uk Notes: [1] Rilke, R. M., Barrows, A., & Macy, J. (1996). Rilke's book of hours: Love poems to God. Riverhead Books. [2] Cohen, L (1967). “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” from Songs of Leonard Cohen, New York: Columbia Records. [3] A garden beyond Paradise: The mystical poetry of Rumi, Translated by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva (2000).. [4] Wood, J. (2000). Introduction. In Squire, C. (ed.), The mythology of the British Islands: An introduction to Celtic myth, legend, poetry and romance (pp. 12–13). London & Ware: UCL & Wordsworth Editions Ltd. [5] Austin, V (1921). The secret intelligence of water: Macroscopic evidence of water responding to human consciousness. Lifestyle Entrepreneurs Press. [6] Popova, M (2025) Forgiveness cited from https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/01/17/forgiveness/ Reference for citations Herbert, C. and Moss, D. (2025). Nature's veil: Healing in liminality – how the interaction between nature, art, and photography supports us to navigate traumatic loss, death, and dying. Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice, 6(2). [open access internet journal]. – URL: http://en.ecopoiesis.ru (d/m/y) |
In accordance with the Law of the Russian Federation on the Mass Media, the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) on September 22, 2020, the web-based publication - The peer-reviewed scientific online journal "Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice" was registered (registration number El No. FS77-79134).
“Ecopoiesis: Eco-Human Theory and Practice” is the international multidisciplinary Journal focused on building an eco-human paradigm, disseminating eco-human knowledge and technology based on the alliance of ecology, humanities and the arts. Our journal aims to be a vibrant forum of theories and practices aimed at harmonizing the relations of mankind and the natural world in the interests of sustainable development, the creation of Eco-Humanity as a new community of human beings and more-than-human world. The human being is an ecological being, not separate from the world. The Ecopoiesis journal is based on that premise and aims to develop a body of theory and practice within that framework.
The Journal promotes dialogue and cooperation between ecologists, philosophers, doctors, educators, psychologists, artists, musicians, designers, social activists, business representatives in the name of eco-human values, human health and well-being, in close connection with concern for the environment. The Journal supports the development and implementation of new environmentally-friendly concepts, technologies and practices in the various fields of health and public life, education and social work.
One of the priority tasks of the Journal is to demonstrate and support the significant role of the arts in their alliance with ecology and the humanities for the restoration and development of constructive relations with nature, raising environmental awareness and promoting nature-friendly lifestyles.
The Journal publishes articles describing new eco-human concepts and practices, technologies and applied research data at the intersection of humanities, ecology and the arts, as well as interviews and conference reports related to the emerging eco-human field. It encourages artwork, music and other creative products related to eco-human practices and the new global community of Eco-Humanity.