Tending to your Self Care Garden
As I get older, I’m realizing that tending to my self care is like tending to my garden.
The aspects of self care range from alone time and relationships to spirituality, food, and movement, with a few more in between.
Finding ways to flourish, stay connected, have good relationships with ourselves and others, and maintain a good life are similar to taking care of a garden.
If this seems like a herculean task, it really isn’t.
It does, however, require commitment and awareness for at least an hour or so every week.
Generally I don’t compartmentalize, because everything is intimately connected to living a happy life full of vitality.
But, in tending to ourselves, it can be useful to see things as separate parts of the whole.
For the past few years, this has been something I’m aware of in a deeper way.
Perhaps it’s my deeper connection to nature and the cycles as I connect to growing plants and herbs more, and perhaps it’s also because this is not something we have learned to do for ourselves and is new to most of us.
Tending to our self care is something that hasn’t been passed down to us from our ancestors - especially women.
No one has taught us that weeding out our life, relationships, and ways we interact with the world around us is just as important as weeding out the garden.
As I begin to clean up my internal, and external, garden, I am seeing these similarities pretty clearly.
photo by Michelle Raponi
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Putting these tools to practice in our daily life can help us to be present with where we are and allow us the reflect
Honestly, maintaining a garden requires some work so that it flourishes and feels abundant and lush. (“Rich” is the word I like :) )
In a garden there is weeding, boundaries, planting seeds, nurturing and nourishing the seeds so that grow and flourish and can show the beauty to all who pass by. All of this adds to its stunning vitality.
*It all starts with weeding. Which is a continuous task, especially when the sun is hot and things like to grow in dry unkempt, and oftentimes, unhealthy, soil.
The task and of pulling out/letting go of what isn’t going to help it to flourish and the responsibility of maintaining this is important.
Like weeding a garden outside, when we weed our internal gardens, letting go of old habits, ideas, and ways of relating and being in the world, we see what needs to be done to bring health and vitality back into the garden of our lives, and the self care we need in the present time.
Maintaining a clear, uncluttered space, either in our minds or in our schedules, we ensure future growth and vitality.
I call this composting the old to make fertile soil for the new.
If done with intention, it can ensure our personal well being; not only for our bodies, but also for our mind and spirit.
*As we weed out the old, boundaries that may have broken down, disappeared, or weakened, become visible.
Boundaries are like a container that holds space for ourselves.
Boundaries are needed.
They are important for our edges, growth, and partnerships of all kinds.
Boundaries are interesting in a garden. There are soft boundaries, where the grass ends, and hard boundaries, like bricks or boulders.
Each has there own unique energetics surrounding them.
Soft boundaries are more like what we allow in our energy field and whet we don’t.
Hard boundaries are more like who we allow to hug us.
The difference is subtle, but can have profound significance for us.
As we learn to keep our boundaries strong and flexible, they can be super empowering.
We can play in them, decide what we want to let in, how much we let in, and what we’re not allowing in on any given day.
*Planting seeds after we have weeded and set some boundaries, is about grounding into life.
Rooting into our rhythms, our moon cycle, for growth, establishing roots, grounding into life, finding ways to support our bodies that feel really good and natural.
Taking proper time for ourselves, learning to support ourselves.
All of this rooting down for our self care rhythms benefits our growth in life, in the community, and to anyone we encounter everyday.
*Next comes feeding the newly planted seeds.
Taking action on what we’d like to see grow out of our old compost provides the nourishment, sustenance, and the energy needed so we may support our inner world as well as our our world.
*Receiving nurturing, help, and encouragement is another part of our self care garden.
Allowing others to help us, support us, like the sun rain and air supports the plants.
this is probably the most difficult part of tending to our self care gardens.
We all carry so much shame and guilt about how we treat ourselves. Yet, if we don’t care for ourselves, no one else will. Or can.
No one knows what we need like we do.
Your own body is a rich source of embodied guidance.
Lastly, our Self Care Garden requires that we allow the old to die out…
Yes, this is hard. (I admit, I’m a clinger until there’s no more rain in the barrel kind of clinger…)
But, old ways of being we continue to utilize, ways we have been told to present ourselves in the worls, and old support systems, may no longer be as useful to us as they were when we were five or sixteen, or even 35!
Everything shifts and changes as we get older. But we don’t have to stay in our same patterns that aren’t useful or supportive to us in the present time of our lives.
As we can see, Our Self Care Garden has potential to be full, rich, unique and self sufficient, while also bringing us the support, and beauty we’d like to have in the world.
The tools are there to implement to support inner growth, physical vitality, and anything in between to flourish.
BEING CONSCIOUS of this process is part of our growing awareness and deep connection to our Inner Wise Woman Voice.
We can use them to CREATE NEW POTENTIALITIES in our lives.
What gardening “tools” will you be implementing into your life this year?
What is calling you to look at, shift, and compost to make room for the new?
What do you want to flourish this year?
I’d love to know in the comments below!
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For more information and more tips on living more in your power, following your rhythms, Tend to your self care, and trusting your voice inside, subscribe to my email list where we dive a bit deeper every month with herbs and flower essences, and Wise Woman self care to assist your journey :) .