As a body-focused, trauma-trained psychotherapist, I often have my hands full as we transition through the holidays and into the new year. Recently, especially, my clients feel stressed with the devastating wildfires, the aftermath of the election, and all the usual strains of daily life. Weather permitting, I like to meet with them outside in my garden, which serves as a haven for me and my guests. After a particularly emotional session, depending on the season, we pick strawberries and sugar snap peas as a helpful way to ground them.
Gardening is naturally therapeutic and allows for much growth (puns very much intended). In the garden, there’s a perpetual balance between managing and allowing, accepting what you don’t have control over, and offering guidance that benefits the ecosystem. Rather than being in the process of dominating and controlling our environments, gardening offers a window into being with and deepening awareness of cycles and seasons. Surrendering to being present with our experiences rather than judging our feelings as wrong or messy can be fruitful in the dirt and in our lives.
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I take a similar approach to my garden in Oakland, yet it’s a struggle as a recovering perfectionist who wants to get it right. Each season brings failure, acceptance, and a chance to hold success (however one defines it) less tightly. Persisting in the face of external forces (weather, gophers) and personal ones (relationships, careers, politics) is an act of hope. As in my life, a new trial is introduced to my garden every year. What change to the ecosystem will affect the soil? Will another irrigation fiasco kill my crops? How quickly will slugs decimate the sugar snap pea tendrils, preventing them from taking flight up the trellis? Is water stress making beets bitter? Did forgetting to thin carrots force them into petrified yoga poses around their tinier twins? No matter how much I plan thoughtfully or wish I had control over all these factors, I need to make peace with the reality that I don’t get to have that.
Gardening and life are filled with unknowns. This is a daily topic with my clients. Much of what is happening in their relationships and the world—wars, political strife, climate change—is also partly out of our control. As humans trying to make sense of all this, we create a false sense of control to anticipate and prevent negative outcomes. I learned the Serenity Prayer, with its famous “God, grant me the serenity” opening, as a teenager attending Alateen/Al-Anon meetings for people in relationships with drug addicts and alcoholics. As much as this prayer relates to cultivating boundaries with the addicts you love, it also relates to gardening and life: We each need to accept the things we can’t change and have the courage to change the things we can, but we really need the wisdom to know the difference.
Even when I have planted something I’ve successfully grown in the past, I let go of expectations because I don’t know what will flourish and what won’t. In aikido, there is a term called an uke, which refers to your training partner. I sometimes suggest to clients that they see their outside challengers as ukes and that they should work to meet them toe-to-toe.
In my garden, gophers are my most consistent uke, but rather than see them as my enemies, I choose to see them as training me to be present and to not get too attached or complacent. These furry little ukes demonstrate tenacity, which I need to match with my own. In my first year of planting, I haphazardly lined my raised veggie beds with gopher wire without adding gravel or deadwood for drainage or extra protection. Four years in, the wire rusted and softened, and gophers chewed right through to victory, accessing my arugula and bean roots and teaching me how to do it right the next time. And, believe me, there’s always a next time.
Caring for something outside of ourselves and caring for nature are in our nature. Studies show that connecting to nature builds resilience and is healing. Tending a garden is caring for yourself, something worth thinking about as we begin 2025.
I started my own garden amid the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020, during a time of collective loss, fear of death, and widespread global uncertainty. One of my closest friends died in 2021, a loss that vividly and painfully reminded me of the universal truth that we all die. Everything dies: plants, animals, people, ways of living and being. In death, though, we hope we’ll leave behind something that nourishes what comes after us.
Gardening connects me to these cycles of birth and death, creation and destruction. Time and time again, nature heals itself. Volcanoes erupt and fertilize the land. Forests burn and regenerate. It may take decades or centuries, but they grow again. Knowing this should provide solace even in the darkest times.
Every winter, I grieve the dying back of my abundant summer herb garden. Last year, I meant to move an African basil plant indoors but didn’t act in time and watched as it withered. With each plant that dies comes more acceptance of death and less preciousness. I feel less hesitation cutting back dead columbine and yarrow foliage or pulling up tomato and zucchini plants to plant new crops. Similar to setting a boundary in a relationship, it takes time to trust that pruning a fruit tree benefits its health and future production.
After my friend died, I did a guided ketamine journey. A wild Fantasia-like scene unfolded from the deepest recesses of my psyche. I saw myself as the soil from which animated purple bok choy and broccoli sprouted and serenaded me with love. The reciprocity and nourishment I get from my plants and that they receive from me were blatantly apparent.
Looking back on 2024, I’m grateful that I spent so much time taking in my plants and not fear-based media, aware that whatever breaking news or cult documentaries I consumed would’ve likely shown up intensified and in Technicolor during a medicine journey. Our subconscious material is our operating system. Curating what we take in is more important than ever, given what is unfolding in our world. I’m glad I chose vegetables.
You don’t have to be lucky enough to have a backyard. Start with a pot. Grow an herb. Let that be enough.
This year, care about something and tend to it. Last year, while I was giving cucumbers away by the bushel, I had a client in New York start a cucumber plant on her fire escape, and it produced a single beautiful Persian cucumber, and with it, her prideful smile pressed through the Zoom screen. Through the care of this plant came new practices in self-care, boundary-setting, and reduction in her drug use. Her garden—and her life—flourished.
Plant the seed. Self-care will follow. When you’re worrying about your plants getting enough water, you’re more likely to water yourself.•
Charna Cassell is a licensed trauma-trained psychotherapist, embodied sexuality coach, writer, and gardener. She also hosts the LaidOPEN Podcast and teaches an online course called Pathways to Peace: Mindful Practices for Transformative and Vibrant Living.
