About Kate Harris

About Kate Harris

Kate Harris

Kate is an artist and writer with a background as an Occupational Therapist within the NHS. Kate has worked in a range of different settings with people experiencing various types of mental health challenges. Among her specialist areas are self-esteem issues; stress/anxiety management; and helping people to cope in times of change.

Her life has been characterised by ups and downs and this lived experience informs her art and writing.

With a vast variety of experience both personal and professional life, Kate has combined this into a book of hope and inspiration, Fly Home to your Heart, for anyone feeling stuck, losing hope or needing to make changes in their lives.

About Fly Home to your Heart

My book is a circular journey; my own, described within the universal life cycle of birds. During the Pandemic, I found peace, space and time to do something I had always felt drawn to, my creativity. I decided to stop, take a sabbatical and focus on painting and writing.

I had been involved in a Journal Group for several years, where I learned to focus and find more flow on a regular basis. During the last 4 years, I had written my memoir. I had the drive to pour everything into a timeline and remember the details. The emotions, people, places and events of my life. It was a wonderful release to write it all out.

I had captured timelines and illustrated them with weather symbols many years ago. Now I was older and could observe and look at the whole view, not just my own. This expansive perspective enabled me to lift outside of myself, to find the perfect container for my artistic and poetic outpourings.

I decided to create a book similar to the poetry books I had loved as a child. Montages of story, poetry and illustrations. I have loved many forms of creative arts: textiles, pottery, painting, poetic forms and writing. I would link these parts of me into a collage, perhaps a treasury of expression.

Alongside this, an idea formed from a feeling of child-like awe in the beauty of birds, the silence of mechanical noise and the vast clear sky. In the natural peace, birds were heard so clearly, delighting my ears daily from the wood below our home. I had time to watch them whilst I was writing, as they flocked to the feeders outside my window. Many more ventured forth including goldfinches and woodpeckers. The glory of their colours excited the peace and quiet. I studied their plumage and habits.

They inspired the metaphor to hold my book’s structure. I would write my journey within their life cycle from nest, egg, fledgling, to soar and fly in the sky onto distant lands and return home to create their own nest. A round trip, repeated yearly, faster than our human cycle in a beautiful form.

So, I immersed myself in exploring their diversity, noting any similarities to my own and others’ experiences. There are themes of transitions, losses, challenges, relationships, happiness, joy and inspiration. Losing your direction and finding your way home again. All linked hand to a wing in our similarities of spiralling flights during our lives.

It felt transformational, as I wrote my way through the years. I began to feel the freedom within myself, rather than outside. I found the quill of inspiration and had to share this process within the book. Not as a guide or coaching book, a few questions from situations that are universal in all of our lives. Pauses for thought, to sit still, not run away perhaps, but ponder on which path to take next?

If you are too busy to stop and catch your breath; pressurised, feeling stuck in a place of tension, or are afraid to be yourself, my book could spark a sense of curiosity, to step out from the shadows, show your colours, not hide them away.

Maybe you can explore how to fly home to your heart.