The Trauma Garden: Recovering from Multiple Crises

It was a real garden. An overgrown and neglected space I adopted without intention. Driven by an inner need to physically outwork what I could not express.

I loved digging. Breaking up soil and removing rocks was a deep therapeutic intervention and self care therapy. Hauling and sweating; muscles engaging. Toxins releasing with every tugging exhale. Decompressing the cumulative stress and dangerous tension with a trowel sized weapon.

I preferred not to think too much. My mind needed to rest and recover but my body needed to move. Beneath my skin there were too many traumas. Each cell withholding a detailed record in storage. It eventually showed up in physical dysfunction; unknowingly absorbed into each biological level and system.

My favourite task was weeding. The multiplying shoots that regrew overnight were friends not enemies. They sprung up with vigour and defiance and I appreciated each daily opportunity to remove all the unwanted invaders. Detangling my heart from all the mess. Pulling and yanking out roots and vines that had unknowingly crawled into the corners of our lives. Their repetitive growth occurence empowered me. Slicing and tearing them down returned a sense of choice in all the places where choices were stolen.

Sometimes there was anger and hot tears of disappointment. Agonising replays of tormenting scripts that remained unresolved mixed with shovels of grief.

Arranging stones in lines and borders was an outworked rearrangement of my forever altered interior world.

I sifted through handfuls of soil, engaged with its texture. Each crumbly particle reminded me of my frail humanity and seeming powerlessness to rewrite a broken plot.

The ground silently holds biillions of unspoken secrets and stories. Abundant harvests and countless deaths: sustaining both in a perculiar integrated circular balance. What appears to be barren wilderness wasteland is a diverse biome of hidden fertility. Seeds spring forth with vibrant vitality from devastated endings and buried tombs.

This was my ground zero.

Ruins and rubble where all had imploded in collapse.

In an unlikely corner I gradually moved from raw bleeding wounds into mercy. The continual digging actions were my escape route out of the prison of defeats. The narrative slowly changed with the seasons as the anxious expectations for more tradgedies diminished and a cautious trust scaffolding was rebuilt alongside green beans and fragrant lemongrass. The rows of gravestones became a reconciliation birthplace for hope to emerge, replacing my survival mechanisms and quietening the months of turmoil.

The heart is resilient and the body is designed to miraculously restore itself with patient time, listening, and responding, and gentle validation. To give self permission for the space to press into the fulness of the process enables repair and regeneration.

I intentionally avoid the word "healed" which frequently invokes a misconception of completion rather than a progressive movement on a continium towards wholeness.

We moved a few months ago to forge a new chapter and my original therapy garden has gradually been dismantled. New vegetable beds have replaced my stacks of memorial rocks but a few of my fruit trees remain as confidential witnesses to our private journey. I enjoy a quiet visit and a moment to stand beside the calamansi branches bearing fruit; to breathe in with gratitude and remember how far I have come.

The recovery continues with a new space and dried up flowerbed corners to slowly tend and nurtue back to life. The process repeats but with greater peace and acceptance within. This new barren garden will probably be another level of further restoration. In truth, it will probably be growing me and I am grateful for its quiet coaching!