by Tanya Stoklosa

Created on: June 01, 2008   Last Updated: June 09, 2008

I remember that hot day in July when the vines of anger were ready to pierce through my skin and wrap themselves around his neck. Oh the madness, the rage, from the thought of hurtful words sown in confrontation, creeping through me like moss on a stone! It wasn't enough that the heat from the day was exhausting, he had to go and add a heated argument, leaving me drained and misunderstood.

With a discontented heart and raging soul, I knelt at the edge of my garden wanting to dive into the earth. Instead, I found my hands drowned in the soil, ripping at every weed in sight. Pulling, yanking, tearing each one by the root, all the while feeling every mad seed ever planted within me, sprouting. Finding their way to my throat, they choked me, much like the thickening weeds of my garden choked all that bloomed.
Still I went on digging up weeds while the soil beneath them drank up the tears that fell from my eyes. Though my body wrenched and twisted, and tired knees pressed against the matted grass, my overwhelming internal angst trampled any physical suffering I might have incurred.
Halfway through my garden I started feeling a release with the pull of each weed. A chance to breathe, a heavy sigh, much like the space I was creating between my flowers, giving way for new air to reach the lungs of their stems. Then a strength arose in me as strong as those stubborn roots that hold themselves to the earth. I had uprooted myself to a place of peace, a calm of unknown origins.
Feeling a bit more grounded, I tilled the earth, barehanded, to the end of my garden. Dirt beneath my fingertips, I massaged the blank canvas of soil between the rows of my blossoms and felt the softening within me.
My father once said, in reference to gardening, "If you have a headache, it'll give you sore knees." But after this day of maddened gardening pleasure, I realized that by taking care of my garden, my garden took care of me. Now I say, in reference to gardening, "If you have a heartache, it'll give you freedom from the pain." And that is how my garden helped me.

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