ABSTRACT
How do we help seriously and chronically ill children and adolescents find hope and courage to get through illness and treatment? How do we greet them? What surroundings and activities do we offer them? And how may these greetings, surroundings, and activities facilitate a belief in their own capacity to help themselves? The Outdoor Care Retreat is a cabin bordering the hospital ground created to meet the needs of admitted patients and their families. It is a place where therapists and patients are invited to explore and experience new paths together in natural surroundings, a place with endless possibilities and new beginnings. This chapter hopes to stimulate clinicians to be more aware of the meaning of nature and pleasant surroundings in therapy through stories from practice. The stories show how invitations to actual favorite places may drive trance and thereby facilitate expectations of positive change and therapeutic growth.
