My life changed spectacularly. This has happened a few times throughout my life. In 2020, it happened when the world changed. I noticed things and people were leaving, being taken, or I was feeling the urge to purge them.
One area of my life had been my Achilles heal. I would go and do and stuff my own needs and ignore my own self care until BOOM!
The boom may be exhaustion, illness or explosive anger. When things slowed down, so did I and with less clutter and things that no longer served me – things came into focus.
2020 was a gift because I chose to accept the change, slow down, purge and get grounded. I started a journey inside by going outside. I started a garden project that often took me into the early morning under the moon. I didn’t listen to music and tended to my work and my inner dialogue.
During this time I also spent a lot of time with my best friend who also worked on her garden. We would catch up and process our realizations, sadness, pain, suffering, blocks and shame.
As we laughed and cried, our yards became beautiful works of art. Just like the weeds in our garden, the more we tended our core shame, the more clarity we gained. We also lost a lot of weight. It’s as though all the accumulated stress, shame and clutter is something we carried with us physically. As we pulled the weeds and planted, we were also planting seeds of a new thought pattern.
We were already very close but this period of coming together catapulted us into a new dimension and we experienced exponential growth as a result of our vulnerability and sharing with one another. We saw each other dirty, tired, snot dripping babbling, dancing wildly, joyful and peaceful sometimes all in one day!
Like our gardens the hard work is behind us. We both had 15 years of accumulated overgrowth and we both dedicated a year restoring them. I worked full time during this period and no more was the critic troll within telling me I’m too busy for me! As a parent of three, I also noticed no one was looking for mom for fear they would be asked to help!
The garden grounded me and the vulnerability to share my inner workings with my soul sister healed me. We healed together.
This year we were able to see in practice all that we had learned. Same stuff. Same partners. Same life. Yet our reactions to our life are radically different.
Just today life was piling up so I went into the garden and toiled until I felt grounded. I was able to plug back into life’s demands with a calm presence. This calmness has transformed my relationships. My sister and I also healed. My husband and I are digging into core issues and growing. My children have done a 180.
Thank you Mother Earth for the gift of digging into all parts of myself and learning to love them all. Thank you for discernment to learn sometimes a weed just needs to be pulled and a plant needs to be pruned. Someone said to me “you made a miracle out of a mess” referring to my garden to which I smiled and felt “just like my life!”
Find what grounds you. It may transform your life and make self care a priority as it did for me. The anger is gone. I feel sad and when I do I express my feelings instead of my fractured self dispersing anger. Anger sits atop fear. Dig into the fear and feel! It’s a wonderful liberating gift!