A Passing Storm

As promised last week, I thought I ought to tell you what inspired this life changing upheaval for my family and me. I’m also throwing in an ancillary promise. Next week, I’ll start hitting on actual farm things—the what we know, don’t know, and what we are doing and planning. In the meantime, here are some final sentimental meanderings that have been swishing around my head, imploring to be put on paper.

Most people can recollect some pleasantry about gardening or plants, be it of their grandmother picking beans in her housecoat while drinking her morning coffee or eating their dad’s home grown tomato sandwiches. For me, my adoration for growing things did not flourish until my adulthood. Sure, I can recount some youthful memories that fall in a similar vein and bring me warmth, but truthfully, none of them have been motivators for me.

Rather, it was once Tom and I owned our own home my infatuation began to grow. I dabbled in gardening at the couple of rentals we inhabited prior, my interest and knowledge gradually simmering into a light boil. There was something about being homeowners, though, and something about that house that lit my passion on fire.

That house, which I still affectionately call our Happy House, nearly begged us to homestead. One of the few homes in our neighborhood with a double lot, it came with a garden, a number of mature perennials—rhododendrons, azaleas, various spirea, strawberries, and raspberries—as well as a chicken coop. If I was going to do that space any justice, I had to learn how to take care of it, and learned I did. I jumped in head first and my passion and commitment to permaculture, gardening, and homesteading rose like sourdough bread.

It wasn’t until the birth of my second child, my son, that I truly knew what salvation the garden could provide me. A few months after his birth, darkness began to slowly creep into my pores, infiltrating the deepest corners of my mind and soul. Post partum depression wrung out my consciousness like a dirty old rag. I still loved my kids deeply and fiercely, perhaps to a fault, as I felt there was no conceivable way I was good enough for them.

PPD punched holes through my self-worth like hail on a thatch roof. That roof, peppered with holes, hung over me as it rained for months on end. It was as if I only had one bucket to catch a dozen leaks, running from one to the next, trying to catch the drips before they reached the floor and ruined it. The more I ran, the louder and faster the drips would get. I eventually started missing entire streams, which poured all over the life I worked so hard for and threatened to wash it all away. I was drowning one drop at a time.

These were unfortunately the scariest, darkest days of my life. I felt like I was watching myself from a third vantage point, like I was on the roof during this storm, screaming down to my physical self, but the dripping, all those damn drops, just drowned out the sound of my voice. I was a prisoner within myself, but didn’t feel like I was even in there at all. I was just a shell going through the motions on a perpetually rainy day.

There were two main things that kept me going. The love of my children gave me purpose and strength, and the garden, well, the garden slowly healed me.

When going through PPD, the biggest struggle was stopping my own intrusive thoughts, silencing the ever-present dripping in my mind. Working outside somehow allowed me to get outside of my own head, too. Feeling the breeze on my face, hearing the birds chirp and my kids' laughter, and rhythmically clipping stems, thinning seedlings, pulling weeds, awarded me the ability to be present. Time in the garden became my therapy, and as the months went by, the storm clouds started to part and dappled sunlight began to penetrate my life again. This may sound dramatic, and tears well in my eyes as I type this out, but gardening may very well have saved my life.

My bucket began to fill up with beautiful flowers and fruitful harvests instead of clouded, stormy rainwater. I felt like myself again, but with greater vision. With no doubt in my mind, I had found my calling, and it became my mission to spend as much time as I could in my remaining days cultivating and serving this calling.

So now here I am, at Two Marlin Farm, making it happen. I steep in gratitude as we plan our new gardens, create seeding schedules, and calculate how much compost we need in the Spring. I’m thankful for finding and embracing an outlet that helped me get through those times and I hope these words encourage anyone struggling in a similar way to do the same. That’s in part why I’ve written this, why I’ve chosen to embrace the discomfort of vulnerability. I hope to inspire strength.

Get outside, folks.

It can really fill up your bucket.