I'm Not Doing It All By Myself
Reminders from my garden and my 7-year-old self. Plus: announcing my next yoga series, Practice Not Perfect!
On Saturday morning, I arrive at the Tucson Village Farm on a clear sunny February day in the desert, the earth still cool from the evening and the air crisp. I’ve been volunteering here every week or so for about a year, exchanging my time and labor for what feels like a much greater return, the knowledge of the farm manager, Alex, and the comfort and connection that arises from watching the land transform and bear fruit throughout the seasons, knowing how many different organisms that helped to make it possible.
On this particular day, we’re breaking down rows for spring planting — weeding, tilling with the broad fork, adding compost — and soon I’m kneeling in the dirt trying to untangle thick and stubborn snarls of sorghum root that have become married to the irrigation lines. I ask to borrow someone’s knife, which makes quick work of the job, but upon finishing it I realize I have no idea how to close the knife. It seems like it should be easier than it is, so I know I’m doing it wrong. Alex shows me how. And this sort of exchange — encountering a problem, coming up with a plan, trying to figure it out on my own, then finally asking for help — happens over and over again many times before the morning is over.
Within three hours, 10 people have prepared two farm rows for planting. We leave with the reminder that, while some bring weed-hacking skills, and others a hard-earned intuition from decades of growing food, we all get to enjoy spicy arugula for days — and the promise of tomatoes so soon we can taste them.
For many years back in D.C., I kept a garden plot at the Ledroit Park Community Garden and loved it. Some of my favorite moments were when my friend Pat and I would divide and conquer for a day’s work, often alongside other gardeners, as we weeded, prepped the soil, sow, watered, and weeded some more. Coming here to the TVF in Tucson has illuminated for me that while there are certain things I love about keeping a garden on my own, I more deeply enjoy the act of coming together with others to do it. Trying to grow veggies in my own yard feels isolating to me, almost wrong in a way, like there is still so much for me to learn and the Earth is gently nudging me to continue to humble myself to the broader community of knowledge and the help of other people to do it well.
It’s a lesson that I needed to take to heart over the last year. On occasion, when I have felt particularly stuck in a pattern of experience or emotion, I’ve turned to a practice of inner child journaling. The best way I know to explain this is that I imagine that the assignment is to emulate a persona narrator (a term from the pages of the Writer’s Studio method) that is something like this:
First-person PN is Kelly at 7 years old, imparting her specific wisdom and perspective on this situation. She is deeply honest about her needs and desires and knows only what she has the ability to know based on her own internal landscape within the context of this external situation. She has no knowledge or ability to know other people’s motivations or desires, only her own.
Then, I basically will free-write with this cloak of the PN as my writing lens.
Last year, I returned to the exercise several times, and each time there was a theme: my inner child felt like she had to do everything by herself and frankly she was sick of having to do things alone. I had to really steel myself when this came out in my journaling because my 34-year-old self wanted to bust in and take over, try to tell her what she really meant. The thing is, at that young age, one of my favorite phrases was “I’ll do it!” In fact, I always was looking for ways to do things by myself and not rely on other people to help me. So the notion that even my tender, independent, 7-year-old self was struggling…it really shook me.
Whenever that would come up, and it started to happen fairly often, I knew I needed to seek support from someplace. Sometimes, it was in learning how to do safe and proper forms for various lifts with a personal trainer. Once, it was in hiring an intuitive healer to help me re-connect with a somatic plant medicine integration session (more on this another time perhaps…). One time, it meant saying “yes” when the man I’d gone on two dates with before getting Covid and barely having the energy to get out of bed offered to run Maddie and help wear her out so I could get some sleep (that man is now my boyfriend).
The reality is that none of us are ever really doing anything by ourselves. The perception that we are or that we must do it all by ourselves, however, is one that feels like a very old story — one where toxic and rugged individualism falls flat on its face. It’s a story that I would really like to re-imagine. Perhaps you would as well?
After almost a year off of teaching public classes, I’m so excited to announce that I’m kicking off the transition into spring 2023 with a new round of Practice Not Perfect, which is my tried-and-true one-hour practice featuring movement, meditation, and journaling. We will practice together once a week on Thursdays at 6:30pm ET (starting THIS Thursday, 2/23!) and you can learn more details here. The classes will be recorded as well if that time doesn’t fit your schedule. If you can’t start this week but want to join, still sign up! You can catch up with week one on your self-paced schedule so it’s easy breezy. It’s already forming into a lovely group.
If you’ve been reading this newsletter since it was Om Weekly and would like a chance to get to know me more, and also support this newsletter so one day this can become my full-time livelihood, Practice Not Perfect is a great way to support. <3
I’ll close this by saying, I don’t exactly know what burden you might be carrying right now in your life, or what farm row you’re weeding or what hand knife you may have opened but now you don’t how to close it, and you are walking around too afraid to put it down but unable to take your eyes off of it. But I would guess someone not too far away, if you are willing to ask for help, will have some ideas.
May we all move with ease today knowing that we aren’t doing this by ourselves.