Earthed wasn’t the book that I was expecting, but it was all the more powerful for that. I think that I was expecting more of a story of a family moving to a country smallholding than I was this deeply personal mental health journey, despite this appearing in the blurb. In the end, though I missed the detailed struggles of a lifestyle change that has appealed to me for some time, I was deeply moved by the honesty of the author’s personal struggle to earth herself.

There is a tendency toward dishonesty in our culture when it comes to the way we present ourselves to the outside world, maybe even the way we live our inner lives as well. There is so much apparent perfection out there that we find it hard to reconcile our own messiness and don’t want to lower our guard, letting it leak out. Rebecca Schiller has laid herself bare to the reader of Earthed with the courage of an elder who has knowledge and experience to impart.

Truthful storytelling, which can occur across many genres, is my favourite writing. When an author is willing to open up their honest inner life we all benefit from an insight that is not normally available to us. We can reflect on our own inner life to better understand ourselves, but our understanding of the world around us is obtained by observing the outer presentation of the people and things we come into contact with. So, if those representations are false our understanding is flawed.

Rebecca Schiller is at times painfully honest as she reveals her inner reflections and works through the dismantling and rebuilding of who she is and where she fits. Along the way she uses historic threads of research and imagination to connect herself to a larger whole that helps her make sense of a small life in a vast universe. She lays bare her relationship with her husband, children and wider family opening up the wounds inflicted by the gap between intention and action, exposing the power of communication.

In a culture of competition, we fear that vulnerability will be exploited, but it is when we overcome that fear to reveal our true selves that we are finally able to soar. It is in this context that we should embrace and celebrate those who allow themselves to be seen and in doing so better understand and reveal ourselves. Earthed is a book about moving to a rural smallholding and a book about a traumatic mental health journey, but it is also a tool that we can all use to reflect, connect and gradually bloom.

I do not know when or why, but one day I started following Rebecca Schiller on Instagram. I have always been drawn to people who garden, who move to the countryside for that smallholding experience, because at times I have toyed with that idea myself. I have mentioned before that I am incredibly curious about people’s lives.



Of course, I know that Instagram is a highlight reel for many of us, but something about her account always felt to me always more like “kindred” rather than just a random person to follow. So when I saw she had a book coming out, I requested it on Netgalley as soon as I saw it.


Now, I expected a story of her moving to the country, finding it a bit hard and how they overcame it together as a family. And yes this book is about that in a way, but it is also not that at all, because Rebecca has a story (or a multitude of stories) to tell about her move, what she feels is a mental health problem, you could say her unravelling, the stories she found in the land she inhabits and beyond, and the slow unveiling of a diagnosis and hopeful embarking on a way forward. (These are not spoilers.)


I grew up in the countryside and my grandmother had a huge allotment, I often joke I grew up somewhere between cabbages and runner beans as most of our life was spent on that allotment. So I have no illusion about the hard work it is to grow your own food and then like Rebecca must balance it with a career, a family, livestock and that nagging feeling of “What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I like this?”.


Writing about this book is a bit of a challenge if I am honest. Not because I did not love the book, heck, I love it a lot. So much. It is hard because I am trying hard to not make this about me, about how I felt while reading the book, what it made me think and contemplate. Staying with Rebecca’s story is so hard because a lot of it felt like mine. I read on Twitter this morning: “A story is not a mirror but a door.” And Earthed felt to me like a door. But talking about the door is for another day. Another time.


An aspect I loved is that Rebecca shared in so much detail how her brain works. How she will focus on something so much it becomes its own story; the brain leads to ever more detail about people and stories and it can be overwhelming but also incredibly calming. I just got her. Got all the stories. Got what she is saying.

I also loved that idea she contemplates a lot: that a smallholding is more than just a place where you grow food and keep a bit of livestock. It is land and that land has always been there, people have lived on it, passed through it, vegetation was there and then was changed, mostly by humans. A house is also a place where – especially in the UK – people have lived before us and that curiosity as to who they are and what they have been like is something I never knew other people thought about as well. In as much detail as I do.

Nature is naturally the biggest theme in this book, it is called Earthed after all. The earth, the garden, the land kept Rebecca tethered when she felt the ground was slipping underneath here and this not just in the proverbial sense. Growing flowers and food. Stepping outside to hug an oak when life inside gets too much. Marvelling at the flowers. Noticing. Observing. But never being quite still, just enought to keep going. I don’t think I have ever read a more beautiful metaphor for life.

The structure of the book may feel experimental to some as we switch between memoir and narrative elements, yet, I don’t think this book could be any other way, since it would otherwise fail to convey the reality in which the author found herself in.


I am going to grow some dahlias this year and when I look at them, I will think of this book and the door and be grateful it had been a book I did not know I needed to read, finding its way to me through just following someone on Instagram at some point.

A n intimate look at the life emotions mental health of the author.When she and her family move out of the city to a home plot of land to grow their own food raise chicks a peaceful life.All should be well but the author is having serious mental health problems getting more stressed acting out,I give her husband credit for being able to cope with her acting out.Finally there is an answer she discovers for her issues but it takes quite awhile,A book that is not about living farm to table but living through a year of emotional storm.I found it very interesting very involving & glad the author for her&=her family sake is healing.#netgalley #earthed

This book was not at all what I was expecting -- a book about homesteading and finding yourself in the country life -- but was instead almost entirely about the author's mental health. I understand that's a pressing issue and one that will be a draw for many people, but the people who will pick up this book based on its description are not those people. There is a lot of value in this book, but it definitely needs a total makeover on the book description...

I think that the publishers should make it more obvious in the blurb that this book focuses almost totally on the author's mental health - I expected a lot more about the actual work of running a Kentish smallholding, so as an avid reader of nature-writing, 'Earthed' wasn't as satisfying a read as I'd hoped it would be. At times it's even exhausting, an endless snowfall of paragraphs about the author's internal crisis - though it is elegantly written, and I'm sure readers with more of an interest in this kind of topic will find much to love about the book (I was reminded quite strikingly of Clover Stroud's writing, and I note that she has provided a quote for the book).

'Earthed' is quite experimental in some ways; a memoir of a breakdown interspersed with fragments on gardening and crop-growing, imaginings of women from the past, and poetry. I wasn't taken with the fictional account of the nameless civil servant, though the historical fiction had more appeal, and I'd love to see Schiller take this further with a historical novel on women in agriculture (following in the footsteps of authors like Melissa Harrison).

So - a book of a sharp edges and tender moments, not quite what I was expecting or looking for as it turns out, but no doubt one that will resonate with many readers (particularly, I imagine, women struggling to run families and manage their own mental health).

(With thanks to NetGalley and Elliott & Thompson for this ebook in exchange for an honest review)

Schiller’s dream was to move to the country and live off the land, but when that dream becomes reality, she discovers that this will not be easy. As the list of things she needs with continues to grow, she becomes overwhelmed and wonders if the move was a mistake. With emotions running high, Rebecca turns to her garden, to nature for solace and makes a connection to the women who have lived there before her. Just when she feels as if she has her feet under her, she gets some life changing news and Covid 19 sweeps the planet. She must once more reach out to nature, to her home and the very earth underneath her to find a sense of peace. This memoir is a must read; we are all so overwhelmed living in this time of global pandemics and political unrest, we need to return to nature, to a world we have all but forgotten to heal, both physically and mentally