Lessons in Resilience from a Half-Dead Garden Plant

I’m honestly not sure when this plant burst into bloom. This will be my second spring season in this home, the first place I’ve lived with a yard of my own, and I have treasured getting to have steady and personal relationships with the plant life that grows on the little plot of land that I’m honored to tend. This plant, in particular, has been challenging though. It gives very mixed signals and often looks like it is all but dead only to begin blossoming just a matter of weeks later. Large sections of the plant have had to be cut back. Not normal pruning, but extensive removals in order to salvage the living parts from being taken down with the sections that seem to be dying. And yet, here it is, offering up sorbet-colored flowers, seemingly out of nowhere, and I am beginning to feel like this plant is here to teach me something about resilience.

I too have had to undergo deep losses in order to preserve my overall wellbeing. An emergency removal of my appendix. Sections of my cervix cut away. Skin cancers removed from my leg and arms and face. I’ve had more biopsies than I can even keep track of at this point.

I told a friend of mine recently, half joking and half serious, that I feel like a science experiment sometimes.

I grew up with an ex-green beret father and, as a result, one of the worst feelings to me is the sense that I am fragile or needy.

I spent much of my childhood trying to prove to my dad how very tough I was. How much I could take without flinching or giving way.

Even years after his death, I would often cast myself into circumstances that tested my limits, both physically and emotionally, and overrode signals from my mind and my body that indicated that I was, in fact, human and subject to both needs and limitations.

It’s strange how, more than fear for my own well-being, my response to most of my health challenges has been shame. As if I am somehow less worthy or valuable because my body has weaknesses, and is, in some ways, more sensitive than others. 

There have been points where I have wanted to withdraw completely. I’ve fantasized about moving out into the middle of the desert, alone, and forsaking community life and connection just to avoid being confronted with the ways I feel different from other people. I would live in my little adobe home and it wouldn’t matter how many scars I accumulated or if I was too damaged to be loveable because it would just be me and the sand and rocks and wind. Maybe the people in the nearest town would tell stories about me, say that I’m a witch, or weave myths about why I was out in the middle of nowhere, all alone. 

Of course, I’m probably far too social of a creature to ever actually become the feral desert recluse in my fantasy, but sometimes it makes me feel better to imagine it. To make myself and all of my struggles into some larger-than-life character from a storybook, if only as a game that I play in my mind in order to feel powerful within circumstances that so often leave me feeling helpless. 

If I exile myself then no one else can reject me. I won’t have to see the look of discomfort or pity when someone notices my scars. Or feel someone pull away when they find that they can’t be in the presence of reminders of their own human fragility or mortality. I would never have to feel like my existence or honesty about my experience is burdensome.

But then I look at this plant in my yard. This scraggly little plant that is half-dead and half bursting with life, that keeps doing its best, trying to hang in there season after season. It doesn’t shrink with shame over the parts of it that are damaged or atrophied. It goes dormant when it must in order to conserve its energy, and then blooms in the places that it can, whenever it can. 

I think it knows something. That even when we’re struggling just to survive, life is still a gift. That even when we’re broken and have suffered great loss, we can still blossom, offer nectar and nourishment to the beings that are able to receive it, and unapologetically share our unique beauty, however unconventional it may be. 

I don’t know if this plant will eventually stabilize, if it will continue to struggle on in this way for years, or if it will some time soon give way to death. It’s a mystery that lives within the core of each of us, but is too uncomfortable to face for most. None of us know how long we have here or what will bring us to our inevitable end. Many of us will make it all the way to our last moment without giving it much thought at all. And maybe those people are the lucky ones.

But I’m finding that, amidst all of my struggles with my body, I’m coming to be more and more at peace with the thing that is perhaps the most true and most universal part of the experience of life, which is its impermanence. And maybe, despite all of the ways my physical being may be fragile, this makes me extraordinarily strong in ways that will transcend the time I have in this particular form. 

I can’t cling to my body or force it to exist beyond its limitations.

But I can infuse my spirit with a strength that will carry it through whatever comes its way, in this lifetime or the next. 

Your Best Will Always Be Enough

Usually at the outset of a new month I have a big burst of energy. There is something about turning the page on the calendar that feels refreshing and uplifting and while I won’t say that none of that new month optimism is present for me at the moment, it would be dishonest of me to pretend that it is not coupled with a great deal of weariness. The cumulative strain and grief of a full year of navigating a pandemic, some recent news from a doctor that was not devastating, but certainly left me shaken, and the uncertainty about what lies ahead for me and for us finds me arriving at this new month with a little less vigor and pep than is typical for me. And I’ve decided that that’s okay.

As someone who, more than anything, wants my legacy to be one of uplifting others who are struggling, I often find myself walking a fine line with what I share with my community here online. I, of course, want my words and images to bring hope, inspiration, and nourishment to anyone who comes across them, but I am also committed to being real and honoring the full spectrum of my/the human experience. If you’ve been following me for any length of time you know that I do not have any interest in bypassing or toxic positivity. 

And so, my message for the beginning of this month is a tempered one and draws from a lesson that my father gifted me with when I was in 6th grade. It was a tough year for me. Up until this last year I would have said it was the toughest year of my life. My home life was chaotic and overwhelming that year and for the first time in my academic career, my grades suffered to the point that my report card required a parent’s signature. As I handed the report to my father, my hands shook. I was ashamed and also scared of what his reaction might be.

He reviewed my grades and then looked at me and calmly asked, “Did you do your best?”

I answered “yes” honestly as tears welled up in my eyes and then he placed his giant bear paw hands on my shoulders and said, “Then, I’m proud of you.”

I broke down into sobs of relief and some other feeling that I still can’t quite name.

To know that it was enough, that I was enough, despite the ways I felt I had fallen short, shattered me.

I have thought about that moment so much over the past year and especially in the past handful of months, none of which has looked anything like I would have hoped. 

There have been days where I have been able to create meaning and purpose out of these odd times, but there have also been days where I have struggled to hold myself together or do anything of substance at all. On the days where I’m in the latter experience, I have noticed the voice of my inner bully piping up, telling me I should be doing more, or that I should be handling things better. And then, I remember the question my father asked me and I ask it of myself: Am I doing my best? 

And as long as the answer is yes, I take a deep exhale and begin the practice of releasing myself from the grips of shame and not-enoughness. 

Some days, our best is what we envision it to be. For me that looks like taking good care of my mind and body, showing up in my power and light, and engaging in meaningful work that serves both myself and others. 

But some days, our best just looks like making it through. And whatever that looks like for you, please know that you deserve grace on those days, too.

As I look to this new month ahead, in this wildly strange time, I don’t feel the need to set any big goals or place high expectations on myself. The only thing that I am asking of myself in this moment is that I do my best. And my hope for myself, is that I truly know in my heart that it’s enough, that I am enough. I hope you know that you are, too.

When Spirit Sends in the Snakes

At the time that I was born, my dad had two very large boa constrictors as pets. Their names were Slick and Rambo and they were big enough to eat live chickens. My dad let them roam freely in an atrium in the center of our house that also had a hot tub and there are pictures of me at about 4 years old with one of them draped around my shoulders, my two little hands barely big enough to wrap around its neck. I don’t ever remember being afraid of them in the slightest. 

One evening when I was about 6, my parents were out in the garage looking for something and had left the backdoor open. I walked into the kitchen to see a large black snake, not one of our pets, slithering across the floor, and yelled to my dad that a snake had gotten inside. My mom yelled back from the garage that it was just the vacuum hose that she had left out in the kitchen earlier, but when my dad came in moments later, he took one look at the snake and then looked at me and said, “I didn’t really think you would confuse a vacuum hose for a snake,” and smiled before getting a broom to gently guide the snake back out the back door.

I grew up with a deep respect for snakes, no sense that they were anything to fear, but certainly had an acute awareness of their power and knew that poisonous snakes were absolutely not to be tangled with. It wasn’t until I started studying lore, mythology, and the spiritual symbolism of animals that I started to see snake encounters as messages from Spirit. In some of the traditions I’ve studied, snakes represent transmutation and alchemy, the process of transforming something seemingly mundane into something greater than what it was before. I think of this process often when I’m dealing with hardship in life, and the analogy that comes to mind isn’t the prettiest, but truly, what represents turning hardship into something meaningful and uplifting more than the image of shit being used to fertilize a garden? When I’m really going through it, I often ask myself, “How can I use this moment to create beauty? What gifts are held within this experience? What goodness can I mine out of these circumstances?”

I have asked myself those questions a lot in recent months as the isolation I’ve experienced as a result of the pandemic has pushed me up against all sorts of internal edges. And the thing I keep coming back to is that this period of time to myself would be a wonderful opportunity to write the book I’ve been saying I was going to write for far too many years. 

I even made a proclamation a couple of months ago that I was officially committing to writing my story, little by little, in the months ahead, and got several short pieces out, but eventually dropped out of the flow and let my writing fall to the wayside once again.

Sometimes when we don’t listen to that inner voice, Spirit comes in and sends us messages that are a little more jarring. If we don’t catch it the first time, the messengers will just keep on coming, with increasing intensity until the message is received. This past week, the messengers came in the form of rattlesnakes.

I have lived in Ojai for a little over two and a half years and, before this week, I had come across a rattlesnake only once. A friend of mine and I were walking a fire trail along the foothills overlooking Ojai one evening and were moving quite briskly on our way back because the light was fading very quickly. We heard the rattle before we saw the snake, but once we looked up, we saw that we had startled a rather large rattlesnake which, in response, had reared up and even lunged forward towards us in a defensive maneuver as it shook its rattle to warn us that we had come a little too close too quickly. 

We backed up and it eventually calmed down and slithered off the trail and we made our way back to the car, a little adrenaline-buzzed, but otherwise unscathed. 

About a week ago, I came upon another rattlesnake in almost the exact same section of that trail. I was by myself and had just spent several hours roaming around in the upper hills so my energy was very mellow and I walking at a gentle pace. I saw the snake when it was about 15 feet in front of me and proceeded to walk forward, cautiously, giving it a wide berth. I’m not sure if it was trying to go undetected or simply just unbothered by me, but it never moved a muscle. I stood there admiring it for a few minutes and then continued on towards the trailhead.

Then, over this past weekend, I went hiking with a friend and on our way down the mountain, we came around a switchback to find a rattlesnake making its way across the trail into some brush. My friend made his way through that part of the trail ahead of me and when he neared that area the rattlesnake sounded its alarm, but continued moving away from us deeper into the brush.

At the time I thought that it was quite unusual to see two rattlesnakes in a single week, and then last night, as another friend of mine and I were making our way back down a different trail with her dog, we apparently caught another rattlesnake off guard on a narrow section of trail with low shrubs all around. The previous two encounters hadn’t phased me particularly because I saw each of those snakes before I was anywhere near them, but the one last night definitely shook me momentarily as I couldn’t immediately pinpoint where the sounds was coming from, even though I knew what was making it and that it was quite a bit closer than I would have liked for it to be. 

When I have unusual encounters with animals, I typically make a mental note of whatever I sense the message to be about and then get on with my business, but sometimes the messages are so intense and clear that no mental note is necessary. The run in with the rattlesnake last night felt like someone clapping their hands right in front of my face. A wake up call of sorts. And as I was showering off the sweat and trail dust and letting the ringing of that unmistakable sound begin to settle from my nervous system, I knew, without question, what message that snake was meant to give me. 

Writing this book isn’t a choice. It’s something that has to come through me. 

That little voice inside of me has been saying so for quite some time. And even though I’ve heard it and known that it needed to be honored, my actual response has amounted to a “yeah yeah yeah”.

I wasn’t listening. Not really. 

So Spirit sent in the snakes. And not some little grass snakes or gopher snakes or other sweet-natured serpents, but fiery, fierce rattlers, singing their shrill song, telling me it’s time to create. To transmute my struggles into something that can offer healing, to myself, and hopefully to others as well. To use this time wisely by making a gift out of circumstances that I never would have asked for.

So here I am. Starting clumsily, but starting nonetheless. 

I’m listening.

I’m writing.

And if Spirit happens to be listening as well, I hope it knows that no additional venomous snakes are necessary. Message received and very much noted.

Part of Everything

I’ve never been good at smalltalk. I blame my father for that. 

After my mother moved out of our house just shortly before I turned seven, my sister and I started accompanying my father to work on occasions when he couldn’t find a babysitter. He was an emergency room doctor and often worked back-to-back shifts at emergency rooms all over the Houston metropolitan area.

My sister and I would stay in his on call room, eating vending machine food and watching TV from the hospital bed, while he worked. Sometimes we would play in the hospital hallways and distract the nurses. We just had to make sure that my father never caught us since, depending on his mood, his reaction could range from amusement to contempt.

Sometimes the drives between one hospital and the next took hours. Anyone who’s ever driven from one side of Houston to the other knows that it’s a sprawling beast of a city.

My dad was often exhausted from a combination of workaholism and sleep apnea and, since my sister pretty much always fell asleep a matter of minutes into any long drive, it became my job to sit up front and keep him from falling asleep at the wheel. 

Maybe it was because he was essentially trusting me to keep all of us alive, but on these drives, he never treated me like a kid. I was the copilot, a fellow soldier, and his confidant. 

We would sometimes listen to music or books on tape, but mostly we would just talk about anything and everything.

Death was something that came up a lot.

I remember him asking me what I thought happened after we die and how, when I told him I thought we were like gas being released from a jar, that we become part of everything, extending infinitely into space, he smiled softly and nodded, eyes still fixed on the road, calm as could be, almost as if he were daydreaming.

When he told me that he wanted to choose how he went, that he never wanted to be old or bed-ridden and that one day, he would choose when it was his time and go, I understood what he was saying and accepted it.

I don’t remember feeling any fear or sadness. It seemed like a fair choice and one that was his to make.

And I can’t say now that I feel differently, except that I’m not sure his plan accounted for the possibility that our birth and death and everything in between may be guided by forces so much bigger than we could ever wrap our minds around. And that to try to tamper with or control the very essence of our existence, the energies that cause our hearts to beat and our spirits to be drawn to everything that they are, might be absolutely futile.

That perhaps there are some things we are destined to go through in one form or another, for the growth and evolution of our souls. And that if we try to bypass these parts of our journey, we will only find ourselves rerouted again and again back to that same part of the path until we have the courage to walk down it.

I can’t know if this is true for certain, but it feels true from the depths of my being.

And I’m not  sure where he is right now. My father, in and of himself, was quite the force of nature.

Sometimes I think he’s everywhere at once, permeating every swath of existence.

Sometimes I think he’s living another life. Revisiting everything he loved and everything he wasn’t yet ready to meet in his last one.

I hope this time he feels like he can face it. 

Whatever it is.

I guess that’s something I hope for all of us.