Ways of healing
Weeding at Tenryuji Temple By Gavin Anderson, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
“A woman’s heart always breaks a little in the spring. But spring offers its own ways of healing. Hoe the row a little deeper. Kneel on the ground and dig the roots.”
– Marjorie Holmes
Even when the heartbreak is more than just a little, spring does offer a degree of healing, however inadequate it may seem at the time. After fighting yet another flu-like illness for more than a week, I was dealing with the far more distressing madness of endless bureaucratic tangles related to all the aspects of Matt’s disability “benefits” that changed when Jeff died. When the sun came out on Saturday afternoon, I took a break and made some time to pull a few of the weeds that have taken over many of the flower beds in our York backyard.
My efforts didn’t produce any miraculous results, on either the yard or my psyche, but the combination of working with my hands while listening to an Alexander McCall Smith audiobook did at least provide me with a bit of relief from the noxious combination of sorrow, frustration, exhaustion and bewilderment. I know that as long as I’m able, I’ll keep kneeling on the ground and digging, waiting for a reprieve.
If you’re facing a phase of life that seems to keep smacking you down one way or another, no matter how often you try to get up, I hope you will hoe a little deeper and hang on. Spring will bring healing even as it clouds the skies and muddies the ground with rain. Heartbreak, it would seem, is an almost universal malady, but most of us do survive it. Spring is a pervasive reminder of that fact; both a comfort and a challenge.
This post was first published seven years ago. Now as then, I never catch up with the weeding, but find it immensely therapeutic.
The original post, comments and photo are linked, along with two other related posts, below. These links to related posts, and their thumbnail photos, do not appear in the blog feed; they are only visible when viewing the individual posts by clicking on each one. I have no idea why, nor do I know how they choose the related posts. That’s just the way WordPress does things.
- Posted in: Uncategorized
- Tagged: digging, distraction, gardening, hope, outdoors, resilience, springtime, stamina, tenacity, therapy, weeding, work
Defeat Despair 
Weeds: an endless source of … entertainment?
That’s certainly one way of looking at it. And not a bad one. Right now the weeds in my front flower bed are sporting tiny yellow flowers (not dandelions) so I’m not as annoyed with them as I might be. But I’m still anxious to make time to get rid of them.
Good morning, Julia!
I took this as advice yesterday, and went out to rake a bit of my yard, pull up the old flower stalks in my garden, and start removing overgrown shrubs that I intend to replace.
it was SO much more fun than working on my taxes.
We’re finally expecting rain today, which is greatly needed.
I hope your new yard is offering you just enough of this type of therapy, without getting away from you when you’re busy.
Yes, after being totally blindsided by Matthew’s extended illness last spring, followed by six months of pretty much continual caregiving, the weeds have grown amok and there is plenty of therapy to be had this year! I pray we will have a crisis-free springtime that will allow me to get the outdoor work done, and I certainly have a new feeling of gratitude for having the opportunity to do it.