posted 2 years ago
Gardening is my therapy! You know how in meditation sometimes they say, picture a beach and waves lapping at your feet or something like that? I always picture my garden.
About a year and a half ago, I was having a really bad few weeks before my baby was born with horrible anxiety. I have had anxiety and depression my whole life and have learned many helpful and effective strategies so that my mental health is pretty good nowadays. But none of that was helping. I even took medication prescribed by my doctor and they might as well have been sugar pills. It was February and freezing outside and I finally discovered the only thing that helped in the slightest was being outside walking around in my dead garden. I couldn't do any actual work, being at that stage where I couldn't even see my feet. But just looking at the bare branches, closing my eyes and listening to the wind, and smelling the dead leaves and dirt, it gave me a feeling of calm. It kept me from feeling like i was losing my mind.
I know there are actual physiological/chemical changes that happen to a person's body when they are in the garden or in a nature space. I also think there is something wonderful that happens mentally when one observes the natural world and has a hand in shaping and creating, especially while knowing all along that plant will die someday, those weeds will come back, that wooden bench is going to rot, and I'll have to keep planting, weeding, building. Maybe it strengthens a kind of mental endurance. Or maybe it's knowing that since all earthly things end, there is always hope of future good things to replace the bad, of continual improvement. Knowing that whatever tough thing I'm going through, it will not last.
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