When I Stopped Searching For My Mother’s Garden, I Made My Own
Fourteen years ago, my husband and I built the house we live in now with our two children and two fur babies on an empty lot gifted to us by his family.
It was a dream come true--and as anyone whose ever dealt with a contractor, or an overly involved family will tell you--a sometimes nightmare. Still and all, we got it done, and for the most part, done well.
That said, everything--and I do mean everything--was more expensive than we’d planned, and even though we worked a couple of side hustles to bring in the cash to pay for it, when the house was finally finished, nestled beautifully on 5,000 square feet of mud, we’d run out of money for a front and back garden.
“At the very least, we need grass,” I’d said. “Even if we have to plant it from seed. And so we put down some grass, a few box-hedges, and a weeping cherry. We kept the mud—well most of it—from coming in and little by little, we worked on the garden, planting or removing a few things each year. When I look at our front garden now, I can hardly believe it was once the perfect setting for a 90’s style mosh pit. More importantly though, I learned one of four simple truths that turned out to be true not only for gardening but for writing and life too.
#1. You can make beauty from mud. If you still don’t believe me, ask a lotus. Then get busy facing that first muddy draft or whatever it is about your life you’ve been trying to avoid.
Most of what I know about gardening, writing, and life, I’ve learned from getting curious with friends and neighbors whose “gardens” I admire, through trial and error, getting dirty, and learning to let go of a lot, including my fear of killing which I invariably do pruning, weeding, planting, and even over-watering. Which brings me to my second truth.
#2. Some seemingly harmless (weeds) or even vital (water!) stuff will kill just by being what it is. So if you want to have a beautiful garden, a beautiful polished draft, or a beautiful life you best get busy getting dirty and refining your skills. You need to learn to kill what won’t serve you and nourish what makes you feel alive, those activities and relationships that keep you moving to the next level.
This year, I’ve been especially grateful for my garden. It’s given me many therapeutic hours to cope with the vestiges of grief following a few years of letting go of people who weren’t aligned with my highest good. Yes, I too practice #’s 1&2. If I wouldn’t do it myself, I certainly wouldn’t ask it of you.
In addition to being therapeutic in and of itself, my garden has also offered me a sense of relief from the confines created by the Corona Virus. So while it’s been the site of a few socially distant gatherings this summer, and it has been really lovely to have people in the garden to share food and wine with after so many months of isolation, I usually experience the real riches gardening has to offer in solitude. Alone, I almost always find a mirror I can hold up to remind me the simple truths I need to live and write better.
Out in my garden, I’m reminded the many ways nature can be ruthless. From there, I remember to cultivate greater self-love and compassion:Why should I be any different?
A couple of weeks ago, some bright yellow flowering plants I’d potted and placed near the back deck steps started to wane. For weeks, they’d been brightly lit beacons of energy and vitality, happy pops of color until they weren’t. I gave them extra food and water, I moved them out of full sun, I pruned and weeded to no avail.
Finally, I cleared a spot with more room for them to spread out but by the time I actually moved them into it, they were nearly dead. I’ve had plants make a comeback before, so I moved them anyway. And when I shimmied them out of the pots, I discovered the problem: They were rootbound.
When a plant is rootbound, it can’t absorb nutrients, soil, or water. Breaking them up isn’t easy; I had to lean my whole self into separating what had become dry and brittle, completely enmeshed. Once I broke up the roots, I trimmed the ends so they could drink and absorb nutrients again. Unfortunately for them, my efforts were too little too late and my plants died shortly thereafter anyway.
Maybe it’s because of all the people I chose to let go. Maybe it’s one of those truths of nature I had to experience to understand but I saw my own journey in those roots. Sent up a prayer to the Gods of Gratitude that for the courage to move forward into the unknown--to leave behind a family history that was intermittently abusive, ever repeating, and always stifling--I am rewarded with freedom on the other side of my grief.
So many of my clients and students abandon their work--feel free to read abandon themselves--because they worry about who they’ll offend by living or speaking their truth. These would-be writers need adequate consideration of what they stand to lose by suppressing the parts of them destined to evolve.
These writers need to ask, am I rootbound too? Practicing artists know that, like nature, their craft will require them to be ruthless, to spread out, to soak up what they need to grow. Art isn’t about pleasing people. It’s not about being nice, and it may not be a walk in the park for the people you love. It isn’t art’s destiny to make others comfortable or stay in the confines of what society deems acceptable. The artists who make us think…the artist’s who evolve our world into the inevitable future…they’re not interested in playing small by catering to public notions of acceptability. They’re not interested in making sure people are comfortable. Are you?
This question brings me to the next simple truth my garden has validated.
#3. Rootbound plants will die. You with me? To live your best life and write your best work, you have to stop trying to be nice. You’ve got to stop cramming yourself into spaces that suffocate and starve you and commit to forging your own way, that’s the price you pay.
After I started this piece, I remembered Alice Walker’s essay, In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens. If you’ve never read it and you want to when you’re finished here, it’s available on-line through a simple Google search. She does a beautiful job detailing the artistic spirit of her ancestors. She claims art—writing in particular—as her birthright. As a black woman writing in the early 1980’s, I understand how powerful a move it was to give herself and her sisters permission to write by saying something like, listen this isn’t new what we’re trying to do, it’s something our mothers and grandmothers did too.
For Walker, the creative spirit is a transferrable skill, passed on through generations but what if your ancestors chose to forsake their highest potential? What if their addictions, or the expectations of those around them, moved them away from rather than toward their own life’s work? That is a kind of legacy too. It’s why what you make of your life and your writing is up to you. It’s why I need you to stop being so damned nice, to stop seeking permission from your mother and your grandmother. It’s why the world needs you to be wholly you.
Moving away from what you’ve always known can be scary. And most people don’t want to hurt the people they love, so they hurt themselves instead. Set your highest intentions. Focus on leaving the legacy that will do the most good for the most people. Set out to save yourself first and you’ll be brought to the fourth truth I came to know in my own garden.
#4 What you create--through both planting and removing--will bring new life, it may not be exactly how you imagined it but before long, I promise, you will experience change for the better.
Years and years of my life I spent searching for my mother’s garden, for my grandmother’s. It was only when I gave up the search, I could create my own.
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e-mail me at clementina@clementinacollective.com with interest.
