I have a tiny garden plot at Heart and Soil Community Gardens near my home. My dear, extraordinary handiest of handymen, Patrick, and I put up a fence around it (the deer and rabbits are rumored to hone in quickly), using large sticks foraged from the neighboring woods to serve as fence posts. We wrapped them with leftover netting salvaged from behind the community garden shed—the only thing missing are shrunken heads skewered to the sticks…my 4×10 bed is home to 6 or so tomato plants, a handful of pepper plants, beets, cucumbers, onions, some basil, lavender, mint, a hunk of sweet potato that until a few weeks ago, was living its best life growing tentacles in my kitchen. I hacked a hunk off, buried it in the ground, and now it’s exploding in leaves. Whether or not the plant will actually bear sweet potatoes remains to be seen but the fact that it’s sprouted leaves is testament to I, Creator.

I’d been neglectful of my garden lately, though, which feels like a metaphor for life, a reflection of my heart (isn’t everything, really?). Other than heading down every other day or so to water, I’ve not done much else to care for it. Fill in the blank with any excuse: it’s too hot, too buggy, there aren’t THAT many weeds, there’s too MANY weeds, it’s a lost cause, who cares? no one else is weeding their gardens, I’m a live-and-let-live kinda chick…

This rainy morning, I went out for a walk with Lucy. I love early Sunday morning walks, literally and I mean literally, no one else is out. Not a soul. It’s Oh, so quiet. No podcast chatter, no music in my ears. Just me and my dog. Our footsteps crunching against ground. Gentle clatter of rain drops on leaves. Birds lacing wind in soft symphony. On our way to Rasmussen Woods, we took a detour to the garden, to see if the recent precipitation had an effect on things. Did it ever. Astonishing, how a thorough, soaking rain coaxes the earth into a luscious sea of green. In just a day or so, I couldn’t tell plant from weed, the foliage in my garden was so thick. Though, really, isn’t a weed simply a stranger in a strange land? A nomad? A wanderer? A traveler taking the road less traveled? 

But for real, things had gotten so out of hand, I wondered if the actual plants I planted would survive or would they succumb to the chaos? And as quickly as the weeds took over, thoughts began popping in my head: Who am I to think that I’m a gardener? I don’t know what I’m doing, these plants will never survive if I’m in charge. It’s such a waste of time…I took several deep breaths. I held those sharp thoughts with the hands of my my soft heart and hushed them quiet with breath. I looped Lucy’s leash to a post. I slipped off my shoes. I uncoiled the fencing. I shimmied between the tomato cages. I dug in. The rain had softened the hard, crusty ground so much that the interlopers slid out of the dirt without effort. But there’s so many of weeds…more quieting breath…as I worked my way down the garden, this act of weeding fell into a rhythm that seeped into the philosophical or the spiritual or something like that.

My sisters and I have been talking at great length lately, about our shared trauma pasts, how each of us, at such tender, vulnerable young ages, developed survival strategies unique to each, to help us through our tangled chaotic home life…how these strategies served a real purpose when we were young—they kept us safe when we had no other means, is the short story—but became fused to us as we got older. It’s curious to note, when such strategies have been in place so long, they become almost as first nature as breathing, and you barely notice them. Except it’s the opposite of breath—it’s more like a suffocation. Like these weeds that I’m pulling out, they begin to take over to the point where your heart and spirit can almost no longer be seen or or felt, there’s so many layers of shit piled up between. At some point, each of us, in our own ways, started to realize that our coping strategies have long outlived their usefulness. Usually, it’s an unsettled feeling that seeps into one’s veins that can grow in intensity the longer it’s ignored. You realize that something needs to change, but change feels almost impossible, the layers of shit are as deep as you are old…Key word: almost.

Would it help to know that your tender young, perfectly perfect, righteous spirit is always, always with you? That it will never forsake you, no matter how severe the neglect or overgrown chaos (it’s the world that forsakes, never your heart)? No matter what the world or anyone or your very own brain tries to tell you? No matter how long it’s been abandoned, your divine spirit is always, always there, right there you left it—days, or weeks, or months, or decades ago? Would it help to know that clues are always here to guide you back to spirit? Like the rain falling onto the hard, cracked, parched landscape, are like tears sliding down your own scorched and weary skin, that tears are the rain your body and mind need to nourish, hydrate, soothe you into growth? But, the bitch is, rain like tears don’t come from nowhere. They need vulnerability and turbulence—a divine effort—to shake them loose. It will require serious effort to find your way through the weeds, back to your heart. It’s dirty, messy work. You will step on thistles with tender feet and grab stinging nettles with bare hands and your dog will start digging in a neighbor’s garden plot and upset a marigold plant which interrupts your work, and you will step on a small beet plant and squish the life right out of it, and the rain will frizz your hair to Einstein proportions, and you will sweat and you will cry and you will wipe mud across your face and suck a bug up your nose and become a buffet for mosquitos, and you will take a step back and look at your handiwork and all your best efforts will feel futile as all fuck, because for all that hard work, it’ll look like nothing has changed much, and you will think, what the hell is the point of any of this? Would it help to know that this is all necessary, that you are on the right path even when it feels like you’re entirely lost, as long as you stop every now and then, to infuse those weedy thoughts that keep trying to distract you with all the grace and love you can possibly offer, the act of which will wind its way into your own tender heart.

Would it help to know that you don’t have to do this alone? That, at any point, you can stop what you’re doing, call bullshit on everything, and reach out. Would it help to hear that yes, that’s one of the most terrifying things in the world to do—ask for help—especially if you’ve put in a lot of time doing the exact opposite. Especially if asking for help feels like the worst possible thing you could ever do—because then everyone will now know that you are not the strong, capable, independent person you’ve presented to the world for far too long. You will have to admit that gig isn’t working any more, even though it’s the only gig you’ve known since you you emerged from the womb. Then what?

Would it help to know that you will be assaulted on the daily by the outside world, even by people you love and trust, all day, every day. And you will do the same, on occasion. There is nothing you can do about that; we are imperfect humans who will make mistakes along the way. You will be assaulted by your very own brain on the daily as well, telling you that you’re wrong, or that it’s not worth it, that it’s not safe to plunge into to such dark, unfamiliar spaces. Would it help to know that in spite of the onslaught, there are very good people who can and are beyond willing to help, too? But you cannot find them by staying tightly balled up like a fist. You have to let one finger go. You just have to. Just one, is all.

Would it help to know that your brain is not your enemy? It’s only job is to keep you safe. But it does it’s job too well some days, especially when it joins forces with the outside world. Your heart’s harder job is to tell those forces to fuck right the fuck off and keep digging. Keep on breathing. Keep pulling out those weeds with false roots, even as your body trembles, even as your brain tells you otherwise, even as each and every 30-trillion cell of you quakes in fear because you’re digging your way back to a place that you had forgotten was even in you, if you ever even knew it at all, and who knows what you’ll find?

Focus, instead, on your heartbeat drumming in your chest. Your breath uniting your insides with outside world around you with each inhale and exhale, knitting all your parts closer together. Feel rain, feel salty sweat drenching skin, cool mud squishing between toes, birdsong filling ears, all senses anchoring you securely in place, right here right now. Keep repeating to yourself: my heart is never, ever, ever wrong. my heart is never, ever, ever wrong. my heart is never, ever wrong.

I stopped weeding for a moment to catch my breath. I untangled Lucy from the neighbor’s plot before she excavated anything else. I wiped tears and sweat from my face. I turned back and looked at my garden and even though there are still more weeds than actual planty plants, I noticed a couple of two-inch jalapeño peppers dangling from a tiny pepper plant. Oh, the resilience of gardens and hearts, and the holy work of gently tending each, of which is never done. xo.