For a really long time, I thought that my “lack of success” was because I didn’t know how to work hard. And to a degree, that’s true. We hear all these phrases- “just put in the work, do the work, do the hard work”, but like, what does that even mean?? I read so many books about steps to success, how to do the things to get where you want to go and every time I felt like I was still missing a crucial piece of the information. Like, ok to all of this but I still don’t know what to *do*. What the daily actions are that eventually create THE BIG THING. How you work backwards from a goal. Part of that is the way that my brain works- neurodivergence and all that entails. Part of it is trauma related- my mom used to get so mad at me because she’d tell me to do a thing- to do the laundry, say. But she had never, ever shown me HOW to do the laundry. If I asked her to tell me what to do, she’d get angry because as she told me years later, she just expected that because I was “so smart”, she didn’t understand why I didn’t just inherently know how to clean a house. Spoiler alert, I still struggle with it. And another piece of it is cultural- we talk all the dang time about doing the hard work, but we refuse to acknowledge that the hard work is hard work. We don’t let people see us or even talk about the mundane, the boring and monotonous, the sweaty and dirty. We make tik-toks about skipping to the good part or going from the very beginning to the end transformation.
A lot of this became clear to me when I really decided to get clear on our garden and farm journey and get productive with it. I felt really overwhelmed because I knew that there was work to be done- clearly there is, but I didn’t know what to do. What does that even mean to dig a new bed to plant into, or to WEED THE GARDEN, or to mulch the garden? The scale felt so daunting. Was I really supposed to bend over until my back hurt and pull out all these weeds? Like, everything that isn’t the one plant I planted? Literally, yes. It took me watching YouTube videos for pieces to click. And not just any old gardening content will do. I LOVE the channels where gardeners make video, especially time lapse, that shows the actual work. The shoveling, hauling, dumping and spreading of compost or woodchops. The double digging or broadforking of beds. The amending- all of it! Because in all of my years of struggle, and also in talking with people about their own garden and farm journeys- a lot of people aren’t opposed to doing hard work. They just don’t know what they are supposed to do.
My mom was also a gardener and so we always had a beautiful yard. She didn’t grow vegetables, due to her own childhood traumas, but she did grow flowers and lush greenery. She had a compost pile back in the early 80’s before it was a cool thing to do. She grew luffas along the fence line and used them to make bath products for my teacher gift baskets every year. She was so talented in so many ways, and I know she worked hard- I would see her come in covered in sweat or in her later years laid up on the couch for days on end because she overdid it in the garden after a steroid shot. But she was also quite secretive about what it is she was actually doing. How you keep a garden bed from turning into a weedy mess overtaken by something you absolutely don’t want there. She would either work while I was at school or she would do it while I had something else I needed to do- like homework. I know I probably complained about being outside, but she never really pushed hard. It was her sacred time, I get that. But as a parent now, for the life of me, I can’t imagine not fighting tooth and nail for my kids to enjoy their time spent outdoors. Even when it’s a fight. Even when I would like nothing more than to put on a movie and go putter in the garden by myself. Just looking and pulling and tidying and picking. Not making much of a dent but keeping my mind and hands busy in a way that keeps the sadness from slowly creeping in. I have come to understand that this is not about me, or is it really about this garden. It’s about my kids learning viscerally the *how* to do it. When they grow older, they may never want to see much less touch another garden bed. But if they want to, or god forbid they need to grow a garden to feed themselves, they will know exactly what the process is to make it happen.
Maybe this is something that seems absurd to talk about. To be fair, it does seem like a good chunk of the population out there doesn’t struggle with things like executive dysfunction. If you do, but you still want to be productive and creative and to figure it all out anyway, I’m here for you! One of the aspects of the world I wish to call in involves more transparency around process and also more communication and less shame around the struggle. I’d love to be in conversation about this topic- what are your thoughts?
