Therapeutic landscapes is a concept used to explore how encounters with natural spaces contribute to positive wellbeing. These encounters take place within assemblages, composed of various actants, including material actants, for example, human and other-than-human nature, and conceptual, for example, emotions, memories and identity. It is through the relationships between the actants that the wellbeing benefits occur. However, how do adverse life events effect the relationship between an individual and natural spaces and the subsequent influence on wellbeing?

Using an autoethnographic approach I explored the disruption to my attachment to my natural surroundings due to the long-term adverse life event of being childless not by choice. Involuntary childlessness is a disenfranchised grief, amongst its effects are a loss of identity and a sense of un-belonging in society. In this presentation I consider the role of childlessness grief in shaping my encounters with a moorland landscape and the co-construction of an (un)therapeutic landscape. By exploring the displacement of emotions as properties of the landscape and the haunting of memories in contributing to negative wellbeing from being in a natural space.