Summer heat is dissipating in a persistent drizzle that feels heavy like sweating off a fever. Yesterday I gathered windblown mulberries from the ground. Now I’m turning them into vinegar. Today I’ll collect nasturtium seeds, make capers out of them. My chili peppers need harvesting too. They’re burning to become something bold and beautiful, like pickles or fermented sauces, things that can be gifted.
I didn’t preserve much this summer. Didn’t forage much either. I was knee-deep neck-deep in living. Every year I underestimate the intensity of summer with three young boys at home. There were moments it felt I was gasping for air, and yet I’m grateful for it all too, for the messes and the mayhem and the “mama!”s constantly chiming. For the spontaneous visits and excursions that flowed into something else without thought or hesitation. Even for the weeds that always needed pulling, for they showed me things too.
Like the day I was unraveling bindweed from my hollyhocks. Bindweed is so aggressive, it climbs anything it touches and suffocates it. No matter what I do, I can’t get rid of this invasive weed. And unlike others, bindweed doesn’t seem to improve the soil. It takes nutrients, gives little back, leaves everything around it impoverished.
As my fingers unwound its tight tendrils from the tall, flower-laden hollyhocks, which had been drug all the way to the ground, I realized…
Bindweed is like that repetitive voice in my head, that harsh critic within. This is what it does to every beautiful thing in my life, to every single thing in bloom, just chokes it out. For decades, I’ve tried to quiet this voice and yet, like bindweed, it keeps returning.
What is it you want? I asked the pile of long, green bindweed strands. Lying on the grass, they no longer seemed menacing. More like helpless, sad, already withering.
We just want to live, they answered, but I could see the irony in it. What is the use of strangling the life out of the very thing you need to thrive?
It was the 1st of August that bindweed became my teacher. The more I sat with it, the more I could sit with myself. Sometimes it took me deep into the soil, following root systems beyond root systems, allowed me to pull them up into the light of day. Other times it meant simply acknowledging its presence, how resilient it was, how scared of not getting its needs met. What do you need right now? I’d ask. Its answers often surprised me. I saw more of myself in it. More of us collectively too.
Today is the 9th of October, and I don’t feel at battle anymore. Not with bindweed, and not with my inner voice. They’re both still here, doing their thing, but I’m no longer abusing them, they’re no longer abusing me. Whatever loops they’re in, I know it isn’t personal, it’s just their way of being acknowledged. I can be with them, and I can tell them when they’ve gone too far.
I laugh at all the tactics I tried before. I laugh at myself for thinking I can control anything when I couldn’t even control my own thoughts. I laugh at how simple it was in the end. All it took was relating to them differently.
9 weeks and 6 days later, I laugh and laugh at how free I am.
xx
