Work Heals
On Wednesday we got home after being gone for over two weeks. The garden I wrote about previously, that Andrew has been working on, was blossoming with the exception of one really big tomato plant. Turns out that sometime in the last week, something in the system broke and the plant wasn't getting any water. It had still grown and had a few ripened tomatoes and many green, but it was obvious at first glance that it was dying. All of the dead branches had wrapped themselves around the healthy ones so tightly that the entire bush seemed unsalvageable.
Knowing that Andrew had worked really hard on this garden, I was determined to bring it back to life. He got the system working again so it was getting water and I took my small pruning shears and slowly clipped away each dead branch. What was interesting though, is that it was really hard to find which branches were dead. They had woven throughout the entire plant obstructing the healthy pieces, and so it took a long time to really get in there and figure out what needed to stay and what needed to go. One branch I was sure was dead turned out to be alive and vibrant, it was just covered in something dead.
As I continue to process the recent mini-trauma in my life, I've been thinking a lot about who I am and who I want to be in the world. With the future wide open, I have a chance to go forward in a different direction but I can't do that without understanding where I really am right now. As my thoughts circle round and round I keep thinking about that tomato plant. There are parts of me, I’m starting to realize, that were alive but you couldn’t tell because they were wrapped so tightly with something that was dead. There were a few things in my life that were restricting me, holding me down, and pushing me back. To remove things like that, it takes time but more importantly than time, it takes work. A lot of people say time heals but it's not always obvious what needs healing, which means time won't heal unless you put in the work.
Seems like a lot of people have been laid off recently and if there is a recession coming then I know we won't be the last. So if you find yourself in a situation where you are trying to figure out your next steps, take a minute first to see where you are right now. Are you fully healthy? Or do you have some dead branches that need to be removed? Give yourself the space to think and feel and talk through any pain. It's the only way to remove those dead pieces, but it's worth it because there may be parts of you that are alive and vibrant and just waiting to be set free.
