What the garden teaches us about grief
A reflection on dormant seasons, slow growth, and trusting what lies beneath the soil.
There is a garden bed outside my window that, for most of the winter, looks like nothing at all. Bare soil. A few broken stems. The faintest memory of last summer's bloom. To a passerby, it might look like grief looks to people who have not yet met it - empty, finished, gone.
But I have tended this garden long enough to know what is happening underneath. Roots are deepening. Bulbs are doing the quiet work of becoming. Tiny green tips are gathering courage. The dormancy is not absence. It is preparation.
Grief asks the same kind of trust. We are told, often gently and often with love, to move on, to feel better, to find closure. But grief is not a season we hurry. It is a living tending - of love, of memory, of the part of us that was rearranged when we lost what we lost.
If you are in the dormant season of your grief, I want you to know: the work is happening. The roots are reaching. You do not have to bloom on anyone's timeline but your own.
Wherever you are - tender shoot or wintered ground - you are still growing.
— Janice
