A Beautiful Garden
Guest Prompt Week 3, Day 1 Vicky Prokopi — In life eventually we learn to plant our own gardens instead of waiting for others to bring us flowers. How are you preparing and taking care of your own garden?
An old saying goes like this, “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime. The origin of the saying is debated but the meaning I think fits today’s guest prompt. If we rely on others to bring us flowers, joy, happiness, contentment, or complete us in any way there are going to be more days by far without than days with what we want. Learning to plant and tend our garden is like teaching a man to fish in my opening saying.
Many of us on our journey have found the answer lie inside of us not outside. We work on the traumas and hurt. We do the shadow work and heal. We discover a new trigger and like a detective trace it back to its root cause. It might be an old trauma that we found a new pocket of hurt to deal with or it might be a new one. Dealing with these is weeding and tending our personal garden.
How do we go about planting our personal garden? Every gardener knows the key to any new healthy garden is the quality of the soil. If you try to plant a garden in poor soil it will not take. Building and nurturing rich soil is doing the healing of past traumas and hurt. It is forgiving yourself and others for things that happened in the past. It is realizing this work is yours to do and though you may get help from others like a garden may be started with the help of a roto-tiller you have to do much of the work on your own. Once the base is work is done you need to plant the seeds. Planting the seeds in your new garden is learning to love yourself. Healthily loving yourself is the seeds of a beautiful garden. How beautiful you ask? Imagine a garden you are comfortable being alone in as much as you want. You never get upset or bored being in this garden. Learning to love yourself means time with you is like seeing and smelling the most beautiful roses. Tending the garden gets to be pleasurable, relaxing, and rewarding. In your garden, it will be tended with beautiful and positive self-talk. It will feel peaceful and welcoming because that is how your mind will water it.
Even the best and healthiest garden gets a few weeds in it. Your garden’s weeding will be regular self-care. The basic self-care and even pampering yourself. Pampering yourself will be like adding fertilizer to the soil. It replenishes nutrients so your flowers will grow healthy and more beautiful just like self-care replenishes you and makes you emotionally healthier and your inner beauty shine. The healthy garden will be beautiful for others to see and they will know the hard work that went into it and know you were the one responsible for it. In the case of your garden, people will see it in your relaxed face and unforced smile. They will see it in your peaceful demeanor. They will see it in the comfort you have in setting your boundaries which we will compare to landscaping. They will feel it in the way you talk and display self-love and unconditional love to others. Your garden is going to be beautiful because it is going to be a reflection of your inner beauty and soul.
I have been tending my own garden of late. I recently discovered how neglected it was for many years. In getting ready for a new door that is going to be opening soon, I am going through everything in my house. I am deciding what, if anything, will be going through the door with me. I am finding although the last many years I have done things to take care of me and my garden for many years before that I was not tending it at all and just hiding a very overgrown garden. I am not proud of it. I have been going through and getting rid of things that choked out my garden in the past. It is going to take a while and I might need to ask for help which in the past I was reluctant to do. I will do it to get the overgrowth to be removed. I am, however, committed to doing it and hope to have a new beautiful garden to show off to the world when it is all done.
Peace be with you