What if Feeling Like Yourself Again Didn’t Mean Hours of Therapy

How twenty minutes in your garden can help you return to yourself
By Kendall Marie Platt for Confidence Magazine

What if feeling like yourself again didn’t mean hours of therapy, journaling and meditation- but 20 minutes in your garden. I was burnt out, constantly crying and didn’t know what was wrong. With my hands in the soil it all became clear.

I’d just moved into a new house and the garden was wild.  I added ‘sort the garden’ to my very long to-do list and put a pin in it until the weather improved. 

With a highly stressful job in forensic science, where my senior was making my life a living hell, I was crying most days.  When my husband asked me what was wrong I tearfully told him I didn’t know. I’d spent my entire life shoving my emotions deep down inside and now they were choosing to show themselves in the most dramatic fashion and it scared the shit out of me. I was the strong one, the one everyone depended on. I didn’t have time to be sad or worried.

Inside I was flatlining, bone achingly depleted despite plastering a happy face on and forcing myself to continue. No one else had any idea how I was feeling.

I would wake in the night sweating and my mind racing, lying awake for hours ruminating on things that had happened, not only that day but sometimes months in the past.

I felt like I was going through the motions but missing out on my life. There had to be something more than work, laundry and giving every last inch of me to other people.

I decided what I needed was to be busier. So I started a jewellery selling business on the side of my full time job. And whilst I loved exercising my creativity and connecting with other women. It only helped me to run from what I was desperately trying to avoid. Myself.

Once Spring rolled around I knew I had to get out there before the house was completely subsumed by the plants that wouldn’t stop growing!

As I pruned, cleared and dug, the strangest thing happened. For the first time ever in my life, my mind was quiet.  I could feel my stresses melting away and the things I was worried about took a back seat as I focused on what was in front of me.

Instead of the garden being something to be done, it became the daily reset my nervous system and my mind were desperately craving.

As I continued to garden, creating a regular rhythm of 20 minute gardening sessions all year round, peace, joy and presence became the norm. Not only something I felt when I was on holiday or at the spa with my phone shut away in a locker.

I had unknowingly stumbled across the thing that would save me, that enabled me to return to myself.

Try this the next time you feel overwhelmed, stressed or anxious. This activity can be done at any time of the year.

Head out into your garden and note where you are feeling on a scale of 1-10. Where 1 is very anxious, stressed, low in mood and energy and 10 is strong, free, alive and happy.

Take a trowel or garden fork, choose a section of your garden and set a timer for 20 minutes.

Weed and clear your chosen section for 20 minutes. As you pull the weeds up and throw them into a bucket, focus on your senses.  Notice the sensations in your body, can you describe them?  Can you relate them to a feeling? Allow your body to move however it wants to let those feelings flow through you and be released into the soil.

Once your 20 minutes are up, check in with where you are on the scale again.

Do come and find me online and let me know how you got on.

What would change if you finally allowed yourself to be held by your garden?  Come and create your Seasonal Sanctuary so that you can finally feel light, alive, present and come back to yourself.

Pull Out Quotes

“ For the first time in my life, my mind was quiet — the garden held me when nothing else could.”
“ What if feeling like yourself again didn’t mean hours of therapy, but twenty minutes in your garden?”