Gardening & Writing Amidst my Broken Pieces

I use broken pieces of pottery in my garden to protect new plants or just to add flashes of color around the more neutral browns and greens of earth, succulents, cacti, and grasses waving in the breeze. I call one of my garden spaces my “serenity garden.” There is a Buddha who sits on the repurposed bottom of a clay pot that broke off in one piece. A ceramic angel sits on a round garden tile that somehow broke into three pieces like a blessed puzzle that fits together perfectly.

Gardening grounds me. Earth Day is April 22nd. My friend, Parminder, often reminds me of the healing power of Mother Earth. She reminds me to go outside, take off my shoes, and “ground” my bare feet in the soil.

Writing, like gardening and being barefoot with Mother Earth, can be a reflective, serene, and grounding process for me. Right now, I’m on my bed, writing in my journal. There are five candles lit nearby, one in a tin angel candle holder who has stood vigil during the entire writing of my book.

As I wrote Things My Mama Never Told Me, my teen self was often called upon to share a scary, sad, or traumatic event in her young life. Sometimes she felt afraid or broken, but she told the stories she had secreted away so long ago so that she could heal. As she healed, she knew she could help heal other teen girls.

In working through the editing and publishing processes of the book, the broken pieces of my teen self and my adult self have cut me from time-to-time. The fear and the brokenness has tried to convince me that this project is too overwhelming, that there is no use for broken pieces.

Mother Earth invited me outside on those days to feel the power of her soil on my feet, her wind on my face, and her branches wrapped around my broken parts.

My daughter-in-law, Nicole, reminds me that when we show strength and bravery to the next generations, our children and grandchildren, we show them possibility, self-love, confidence, and tenacity. They will then find the strength to set aside their own fears and more easily see the purpose and intention for their own lives.