I’m Charlotte and I’m 39. I’m French, but I’ve lived in England for almost 15 years. I previously studied Law in France and the UK for nine years and began working as a M&A Senior Paralegal. However, I decided to leave Law before qualifying as a solicitor, instead pursuing a career as a Financial Crime Consultant investigating money laundering and terrorist financing in the UK and other jurisdictions.
As I was self-employed, I had the time to explore lots of my other interests. I was a freelance photographer, and I also love yoga, so I decided to go to Costa Rica to train as a yoga teacher. I went there on holiday just before lockdown. I was only planning to be there for ten days, but because of the Coronavirus situation in Europe I ended up staying there. I shared my skills as a yoga teacher in exchange for free accommodation and I was the happiest I’d ever been.
I liked going surfing early in the morning, usually getting up at 5am to make the most of the sunrise. Getting on my quad and putting my helmet on, I was making my way to the beach when everything changed. I flew over the quad bike and was tumbling, and then the quad hit me and broke my spine.
I was in so much pain. I was rushed to hospital and there I discovered that the crash had shattered the bone in my back to pieces. I couldn’t feel my legs and after two surgeries, I found out I had suffered an L2 incomplete spinal injury. I felt so depressed.
After a month in hospital in Costa Rica, I was flown back to the UK in April 2021. I spent another month at the Royal London Hospital, before being transferred to the London Spinal Cord Injury Centre at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore in May 2021.
I was in isolation for seven days because of Coronavirus restrictions. My depression worsened, but the nurses noticed and as soon as they could, they encouraged me to go out into Horatio’s Garden.
I hadn’t been outside very much at all in over two months. When I first went out to the garden, I thought ‘oh wow, this is such a big difference to the previous hospital that I was in, where everything was grey and there was no garden whatsoever.’ The way the garden is designed is just so perfect for what we need. Once you’re there, you can see the trees, you can see the flowers, you can touch them. You can hear the birds. I think it was the first time in a while that I smiled, so that instantly made a big difference to my experience as a newly injured patient.
Once I was out of isolation, I used the garden every day! Whenever I wasn’t in physio, at the gym, or with doctors, I was in the garden. I would have all the meals I could in the garden in the sun, or in the pods during the evenings. On weekends, my friends would come and sit with me and admire this beautiful space. They were amazing, especially as I couldn’t see my family as they don’t live in the UK.
All the volunteers were so kind, and they were always up for a chat, or offering cakes and biscuits. It puts everyone, including the nurses, doctors, and physios in a better mood. We all just loved seeing people out and about in the garden.
I signed up for my first gardening activity with Head Gardener Ashley and we went from there. Ashley was super nice; he explained a bit about the garden and a bit about the greenhouse too. I’d never done a great deal with plants before, but I loved the garden and all the creative workshops there.
I particularly loved growing cherry tomatoes with Ashley. We started with a plant that was almost dead. It had two really sad leaves and nothing else. We tried to just consistently spray it with water once a week and eventually, we helped it come back to life.
I think that they can always come back and if they can be that resilient, then so can we! It’s just amazing what nature can do. It’s very inspiring and I think it helps all of us to try and makes us able to push through difficulties. It gave me hope and it also helped me mentally and physically. The way you hold a leaf, or the way you touch a plant, you have to be really careful. They’re soft and fragile. It was therapeutic and just nice to escape. I forgot about my worries.
I began repotting my tomato plants and as I did, it got me thinking about the bigger pots giving the small plants room to grow. There were parallels between my life and the life of my plants, which encouraged me to think positively about the future.
I began believing that I would be able to walk, and it was nice to be told that I would too. All of that was down to what I did in Occupational Therapy and my work in the garden. I used to love my wheelchair skills training with my hilarious OT Brittany and the garden was the perfect place for that. We always put on a bit of a show to give those around us something to laugh about!
I was only moving one foot and leg when I arrived at the spinal centre. By the time I was discharged on 21 July 2021, I was walking again. I could only walk 80 steps with two crutches, so at first it was really difficult.
Then I became a beneficiary of a charity called Millimetres 2 Mountains and having their support meant so much to me. In April 2023, we went up Snowden and that was really, really, really big. It was so painful and so hard, but it didn’t put me off. In August 2023, a smaller team of us went up Scafell Pike and I hope to climb more mountains soon.
Meanwhile, I also started surfing again. I went back to Costa Rica in 2023, travelling alone despite the challenges and surfed with the National Champion of Adaptive Surfing out there.
I returned and continued surfing again this year, but the metal in my spine broke whilst I was there. So, I had to come home and have surgery again in early 2024 and now I’m just waiting. I was supposed to climb more mountains this year and do more things, but now I’m just slowing down. I can still walk, so I’m very, very, very lucky.
In the future, I might even move back to France and open a retreat centre for all, but particularly to help people recover from spinal injuries using yoga and surfing as rehabilitation.
If I had to say something to the newly injured Charlotte three years ago, I would tell her ‘You did it. You got this really bad injury, but you didn’t stop trying to push forward and walk again. You did it. I’d be pretty proud – if you did that, you can pretty much do anything.’
I’m so glad I didn’t give up and Horatio’s Garden helped me so much. It gave me something to do and I’ve continued gardening too. The healing power of nature is so important.
