Why I’m building something that outlasts me
There’s one kind of planting that means more to me than any other. Not the commercial rows that get harvested inside a working lifetime, but the big parkland trees — the ones still standing two or three hundred years after the men who put them in the ground are long forgotten. I never used to see the connection between that and Stronger After the Storm. Now I can’t unsee it.
Stronger After The Storm podcast logo in navy blue with a red cracked heart and red pulse line running through middle left to right.
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A Different Kind of Planting
Most of my forestry work is good, honest, hard graft, and I’m proud of every bit of it. But there’s a particular pleasure in the amenity planting — the big specimen trees destined for a parkland or an estate, not a commercial block. Every time I pass one of those huge old trees now, fully grown, I think about the day it went in. Two or three men, much like the ones I work with, digging the hole, watering it in, caring for a sapling they knew they’d never see mature. Grown for people who’d never know their names.
Wanting Something That Would Outlast Me
For a long time I’d wanted to start something alongside the forestry — something with that same quiet logic behind it. Help people in a way that kept going long after I was done doing it myself. I just hadn’t found the shape of it yet.
Then it hit me one day: I already had the story. The heart attack, and everything that came after it. If I told it honestly, maybe other men could see themselves in it and find some comfort there. So I started Stronger After the Storm. It felt awkward at first, the way any new venture does when you’re the only one who knows it exists. I just had to make a start and trust it would land somewhere, with someone.
It did. Not in huge numbers — I won’t pretend otherwise — but enough. Someone telling me they saw themselves in something I’d put out, that they felt able to talk to me because I’d already said it first. That’s when I knew there was something worth building here. The same as any sapling: you put it in the ground, you tend it, and you hope.
Recovery isn’t only the clinical side of things — the checks, the medication, the rehab work that the NHS, the British Heart Foundation and the American Heart Association all do such good work on. That side matters, and I’d never tell anyone to skip it. But there’s another side too — the human one, talking to somebody who’s actually been through it — and that’s the gap I wanted Stronger After the Storm to sit in.
Come find me, drop me a line, get involved .
If the head noise is still a bit loud, this is a good place to start:
The Moment It Clicked
I remember exactly when it properly landed. I was out planting last winter, kneeling down with a young tree in my hands, and it hit me: this is the same thing. I’m doing this for people who don’t even know they’re searching yet — people who haven’t found me, or anyone like me, and are still carrying it alone.
“I’m doing this for people who don’t even know they’re searching yet.”
My forestry work is limited to where I can physically be — the Borders, East Lothian, one hillside or one estate at a time. Stronger After the Storm doesn’t have that limit. It’s a way of reaching people I’ll never meet, for years after I’ve put the forestry tools down altogether.
Building a Life Worth Living
I really do feel like I’m building a life worth living here — and helping other men build theirs too. The same way a sapling planted today might give someone real pleasure fifty or a hundred years from now, long after the man who planted it is gone.
Listen and Read
You can catch this episode in the player above or over on YouTube. If this one struck a chord, you might also want to read Why Support Matters, Helping Others Without Losing Yourself, and One Year Stronger — three insights that circle the same ground from different angles.
Final Thought
If any of this makes sense to you — a sense that you’ve got more to give than your day job allows, or you’re just wondering what your own version of planting a tree might be — get involved.
The 7-Day Mind Reset Plan is a good place to start finding some clarity.
If you got something from this, even something small, share it with someone who might need to hear it. I’m glad you’re here.