Gardening and grief

I find many correlations between grief and gardening not the least of which is the obviousness of the life cycle of both humans and plants. You can take a seed, nurture and love it, feed it and protect it, and watch it grow. Just like a human life. You start with a “seed”, you nurture and love, you feed and protect, and you watch it grow. And just like a plant, some human lives are only allowed a season, some several seasons, and some last for decades.

For me personally, the amount of healing I find is gardening is immense. After multiple miscarriages and an almost full term stillbirth, many failed rounds of IVF, and finally getting my tubes removed to negate the chances of any more losses, I find peace in watching my little baby plants grow, in getting my hands into the earth that now holds my daughter’s ashes. Every new leaf, every new shoot, every new flower brings hope and beauty into my dark world of loss.

The creation of life forms that support other life forms that in turn support human life and being part of the circle of life in that way is not only beautiful and hopeful, but worthy. Feeding pollinators that are going extinct is a cause as worthy of praise as raising good humans. I don’t get the privilege to be a parent to a living child. So I plant things to honor my dead child’s life and I “parent” them. I nurture them. I speak love to them as they grow, I feed them. I keep them safe from predators and the environment. I admire and watch them grow into strong, beautiful living things. And that helps my grieving heart in ways that nothing else does. Gardening is as life giving to me in my grief as the air I breathe is. 

~ Written by Katie Hawthorne