Of gardens and birthdays and jumping...
Before I head into a post about gardening and birthdays, I want to let you know about a short crash course in creative writing I’m facilitating this coming Saturday at the Norval Foundation.
On 4 November I’ll be giving a three-hour crash course in creative writing as part of the Foundation’s two-day Art Book Fair. Tickets are available here and include entrance to the fair for the whole weekend. You’ll dive into the basics of creative writing, including characterisation, finding your writing voice, narrative structure, and world-building, AND get to check out some amazing speakers and art at the fair.
I really probably should’ve said something earlier, but it’s been a big month of birthdays (including mine, special shout out to fellow Scorpios in the house) and spring gardening and big career decisions, all of which I’ve still found no way of talking about here. It’s so weird.
After years of sharing every intimate thought and detail of my life and learning as Dorothy Black, I’ve found myself holding a container better for the vital inner work happening for myself, which means I share less of it while it’s in process.
Because it’s all inner work, isn’t it? Birthdays and gardening and big career decisions…
When we moved into this house – I’d always wanted a little garden and this one came with a very cute garden out front and back – I came up close and personal with just how much physical effort, consideration, and quiet, constant determination keeping a garden would take. Not gonna lie; it was a bit of a shock to the system.
Clearing out beds of creepers, keeping the bamboo hedges under control, finding which flowers to grow for butterflies and bees, the constant, painstaking attention to the small patch of grass so that we have a soft bed to lie on is … a lot of work. But the rewards are many.
The silence gives me time to just be. I learn to notice and respect and listen. I learn to allow and wait; I learn also when to exert force and cut away. I learn the value of composting, of time, of rest, of not fiddling … of allowing and trust and seasons. Above all, I’m reminded always of abundance and the unfailing force of life to thrive wherever it can.
It’s no wonder that gardens and gardening are used as metaphors for tending to the soul. Nurturing the soil and tending to the plants is the inner work made visible. It’s a lot of work, but the rewards are many.
So, with spring and birthdays and storytelling, I’ve been doing a lot of gardening.
And as this summer rolls around, I’m reminded of how all my hard work in previous seasons is bearing fruit, so to speak. The grass patch that was a patchy, bamboo-infested and clover-covered minefield last year was a soft picnic spot for my birthday this weekend; the demons I decided to expel this time last year have been seen and welcomed and allowed to vent themselves; I am getting older and loving what the gift of time adds to my life and awareness.
Above all, I am finally coming to a place where I learn patience because I am learning to trust and have faith. Not in a god-daddy or a god-mommy, but in life itself and in the unseen flow that quietly directs me if I am willing to listen and surrender.
Anyway. All this to say: I may be quiet here, but there’s a lot of brewing – including my next book which I’m extremely excited to share with you.
Until then, I’ll leave you with a prayer that Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes in her small book The Faithful Gardner: A Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die…
Refuse to fall down
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
lift your heart toward heaven,
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled,
and it will be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you
from lifting your heart
toward heaven –
only you.
It is in the middle of misery
that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.