How Tending to My Garden Helped Me Tend to My Grief

There’s something therapeutic about putting your hands in soil and removing what doesn’t belong.

It’s not just about planting pretty flowers or pulling weeds — it’s about seeing how time, care, and intention can bring something back to life. And for a while… that’s exactly what I needed.

When I was grieving — tired, stretched, and emotionally bare — I didn’t always have the words. But I had the dirt. The shovel. The silence. And somehow, that was enough.

Grief is a strange thing. It doesn’t follow rules. Some days you can move with grace, and other days it feels like everything good is buried under a mess of things you didn’t choose.

But gardening gave me metaphors I didn’t know I needed:

• You cut back to make room for growth.

• You pull what’s choking your roots.

• You don’t rush the bloom — you water and wait.

• You trust that even what looks dormant can be deeply alive beneath the surface.

And isn’t that just like us?

Plant in Faith. Root in Love.

To plant is to have faith that your garden will bear fruit — even when the forecast says otherwise.

Maybe that’s what God was asking me to do with my dreams, too: To show up, water the vision, and believe.

No garden blooms overnight. But every time I finished a section, cleared out the weeds, or saw something start to bud… it felt like a piece of me was healing, too.

And even now, I don’t always love gardening. It’s messy. It’s hot. I’d still rather pay someone to do it for me, if I’m honest.

But the way I feel when I step back and see what I helped grow?

That part feels like peace.

That part feels like purpose.

That part feels like me — reemerging.