Ease Into Abundance
The summers of my teenage years were spent in the backyard of my grandmother's house in Northeast Washington, D.C.
Every spring, we would work together in the soil, tilling and digging, planting and sowing, tending and toiling. And every summer, we would watch her lawn transform. Amid the urban landscape, her backyard became an oasis of flora, cascading over chain link fences and spilling into the alley behind her house. Two arbors stood militant at the side entrances to the yard and exploded with Concord grapes. Rhubarb stalks shot out of the ground. Eggplants, cucumbers, beans, peppers, lettuces, spinach, summer squash, watermelons, tomatoes, herbs, and peanuts filled every space where there was once just a seed. The burst of growth seemed to happen overnight. And it often felt overwhelming to stand in the backyard and see vines inching toward the sky and the wildness of vitality.
When I look at my drinking days, the garden metaphor fits.
There were so many occasions when my drinking felt beyond me, and I was overpowered by the roots and reasons that led me back to the thing that kept me in a loop of shame. Anxiety and self-loathing felt like a tangle of vines. I didn't expect my recovery to look like the garden too. I didn't know how to meet the abundance of fruit that came from removing a poison in my life. That I would sometimes fear my evolution and growth because it felt unruly and rampant.
As I started to put days together without alcohol, my mind, body, and soul received rain and sunlight. And with that, the physical healing and internal growth could feel too much too soon and send me back to the safety of the seed state and hold on to what used to serve me.
On those hot summer days, as I stood in the overgrowth of kale and sugar snap peas in the backyard, my Grandmother would ease up next to me with a shovel and spade and baskets and jars, and slowly we would begin the work of harvest. We pruned and reaped where we once plowed and planted but labored just the same.
This is the work of my recovery.
The labor of letting myself bloom and trusting my capacity to receive the beauty and bounty that comes from that. For days after, we would pickle, can, and freeze, knowing that we would feast on the goodness of the garden for months to come. And just as my Grandmother would ease up next to me in the garden, I am learning to ease up next to the newness that springs forth from the continued work of recovery.
I no longer fear feeling good and healing but welcoming the abundance of growth that nurtures my mind, body, and soul.