Victimhood and Blaming

Lessons on losing my garden

The difficulty of having a thousand and one notebooks is that I find scribbles of things, sometimes with labels and context, and sometimes none. In one particular scribble, I wrote a short response on victimhood and blaming. Reading the response, I imagined my higher self, knowing all that she know, sharing this message with my past self, so that a future me would be able to receive that message.

Photo by pure julia on Unsplash

Before I left for my month of travel, I was feeling a way about gardening. I was already projecting future events into my current reality and feeling the emotions of the future. In other words, I was already thinking about how sad and depressed I would be when my garden plants hibernate due to New Jersey winter. So instead of enjoying the garden with the time I had left, I was in my feelings about the upcoming winter. After some Substack interactions and readings, particularly Jess Joseph’s Healing My Climate Anxiety Through Gardening, I was motivated to get my head out of the future and back into the present. I looked forward to coming back to the garden. But first, retreats (see my last post about coming home).

Almost immediately upon my return, a few of my siblings came over for the day and wanted to see my space in the community garden (pictured above in early season 2 of 3). As it was neglected for much of the season already, the anticipation of what I would find grew more and more intense the closer we got to the park.

But nature does what nature does best and I was thoroughly surprised that the garden didn’t need my help to thrive. We found chamomile, holy basil (Tulsi), calendula, lavender, sage, rosemary, oregano, lemon and English thyme, garlic, lettuce, legumes, and tomatoes growing beautifully. The lettuce had already bolted and as is my custom, I left the lettuce trees so they could go to seed. The kids and I enjoy bearing witness to nature’s display of abundance in the form of seed, fruit, and the production of many more seeds.

There was a good amount of grass growing, but the bed was mostly filled with herbs, most of which were self-seeded. I was most impressed that the tomatoes were supported by the herb bushes. Look at nature providing support for plants without the need for man’s wooden or wire stakes! It was nature at her finest. And to add to the nature magic, a variety of pollinators enjoyed the flowers sprouting from the majority of the herbs.

That day, we harvested aromatic herbs and talked about the healing properties of plants. I began to pull some grass but as the sun beat down on us in the hottest part of the day, we didn’t stay too long. Still, it was a good day for connection between man, woman, and Earth in my little corner of the world.

A week later, my husband received an email with a receipt for $0 (for noncompliance I assume), officially dismissing me from the garden. As it turns out, my garden was a bit too messy for one particular individual, the overseer. Yes, whatever image that conjured up for you, that’s the correct one.

He sent exactly three emails warning me to clean up the garden bed OR ELSE! The messages, each growing more intense in verbiage, were sent during my travel. And since I was still coming down from my vacation, retreat, plant medicine, breathwork high, and neglected to check my email immediately up on my return, my garden was destroyed. He likely uprooted my entire garden very soon after that day of connection. Because I had broken the rule, apparently community garden law, of not responding to his emails, my 3 years of tending to my nature space were destroyed in one afternoon. I hope it took him multiple sweaty ass afternoons because I’m still human, I can be petty.

Perfectly good herbs were ripped from the Earth and sweet, sweet nectar was trashed so another individual could sweep in to claim my space for $40. As you might imagine, I was bitter. I couldn’t shake the feelings that were now crawling under my skin. After a couple of phone calls and emails back and forth, I felt my anger turning to rage. It was too intense, I had to redirect my energy.

I channeled my energy through pen and paper. I wrote. I slept. And then I dreamed. I embodied  Medusa, the Goddesses of rage that night. The healing wisdom of sacred rage, under the guidance of the dream space, left me feeling much better when I woke up.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel angry about losing my herbs. I feel angry that my happy place was taken from me because of somebody’s weak ego. But, shifting the energy from inside my body kept me from getting stuck in rage. I can feel anger but I am not anger. I made a conscious decision to not be the victim of all the -isms that presented themselves in this situation. That’s not to say I did nothing about it either. My higher self, spirit guides, ancestors, karma, and Medusa are doing exactly what they need to do.

When I first wrote this scribble of a response to victimhood and blaming, I don’t recall the circumstances that led to me writing it. But it doesn’t matter. It likely made some sense then, but it makes much more sense now.

“When it comes to life experiences and lessons, we can take ownership or we can blame.

Taking ownership requires acknowledgment and acceptance.

From that space, we can choose the next steps to move forward.

Essentially, we are approaching the experience with conscious awareness.

When we blame, we are giving up.

We choose to stay the victim.

We will never grow.

The experience will occur over and over until we choose to move on.

We move on when we accept and take ownership.”

In transmuting my internal rage to written words, I chose to take ownership of my feelings. By spending time in the dream space as Medusa, I chose to move on.

So what’s next for my garden? Well, a fire has been ignited inside of me and it’s very hot. Let’s see what it burns away and what new growth will emerge from the ashes. Until then, my garden is every space I find myself in as I am harvesting herbs from my yard and public spaces.

And because I am human, I dedicate this song to the overseer (if you are easily offended by Jamaican bad words, then you can skip this one).