Why a gardener’s guide to grief? One of the hardest things about grief, for me, has been feeling like the love I still feel for the person I’ve lost is useless. Sometimes we can also feel like the person’s death, or the relationship lost, equates to a waste of life. Here is where I found comfort in nature. In nature, nothing is ever wasted. Yes, a tree can take years to grow to great heights, only to be struck by lightning and fall in an instant. Or a young sapling can be killed by a harsh winter before reaching its potential.

However, neither is really wasted. One becomes a owl’s den and the other feeds the next season’s saplings. Our grief can be like that. Our losses will never be undone, and those we love will never be replaced. However, grief, if we allow ourselves to feel it, to heal from it without rushing our hearts, has something to offer.

The Compost Metaphor Makes this A Gardener’s Guide to Grief

A nature-based metaphor for loss and grief became evident to me one fall day as I was working on my compost pile. It is the reason that I’ve called this “A Gardener’s Guide to Grief”. It got me thinking how some losses were like leaves that fell before I was ready. Some of my relationships were like logs that had to be burnt to ashes before they could release their nutrients. They still hadn’t disintegrated fully. Their charred chunks still remained. Other situations had, like my pepper plants been nourishing for a time but had come to the end of their season. Their time had simply passed.

Like compost, all of these things had to be processed to be useful. When the loss was new they seemed like they were churned up every day. It felt as if it would never be any different, like the loss would always be that raw. It seemed I would spend an eternity missing what had been and thinking about what could have been. Slowly, very slowly sometimes, there came a time when the churning lessened. Then the temptation was to try to leave them buried. I wanted to deny the pain, or at least ignore it. But inevitably life would churn it up again. I saw, in time, that this helped me process them further, so their nourishing potential would be released.

A Month of Grief

I always struggle with grief in March. The three major deaths in my family that have happened in the last ten years all have strong connections to March, and to St. Patrick’s Day. I mourn that my mother is no longer here to dance the jig as the Irish bands play. I wish my brother-in-law was still lining the parade route dressed to the hilt in green. And I wish my “almost stepson” could still weave through the floats on his skateboard.

I realized during the last week that my unintentional overbooking of commitments this month was probably intentional on a subconscious level. Part of me still wants to leave the pain buried. So I’m trying to practice, instead, leaning into the hard places.

Perhaps your grief is not the loss of a person to death. Perhaps it is, instead, the loss of a relationship, a role (professional or personal), or a dream. Regardless of the source of grief, some of the follow tips can be helpful.

Gardener’s Guide to Grief- Tips

• It’s been said that grief is love with nowhere to go. How can you give your love a place to go? How can you honor who or what you loved? Or, how can you honor what you learned?
• Like the compost, sometimes our grief needs to be turned up. What action can you take to process your grief more completely? Be curious about what still needs healing- maybe self-forgiveness, faith, or anger at the person you lost? Perhaps you could seek counseling, or write a letter to the person lost? Perhaps there is another creative expression that speaks to you or service you can do in their honor?
• Sometimes grief needs to be left as it is. If the grief feels too intense give yourself permission to put your attention elsewhere. Offer yourself this permission whether the loss is recent, years, or decades old. Grief doesn’t heal in a linear way. Don’t judge your healing journey. For more on the difference between how grief really is and how we think it should be see Sophia Dembling’s article What Grief Really Looks Like.
• Accept that some losses never heal completely. I wish I could say they do, but that hasn’t been my experience. Consider how even that serves a purpose. How has grief made you stronger or wiser?
• Sometimes we have to put a container around our grief. Many suggest giving yourself a specific time set aside to grieve. Perhaps, 20 minutes a day when you can sob, rage, or do whatever you need to do. You may not need to do it daily. Or you may. While setting aside time on anniversaries may be helpful, know that grief may not show up on time. It might be the next week that you feel it more.

Healing and Growing Don’t Negate the Loss

Please don’t take me saying that grief has something to offer to mean that I’m saying the loss was worth it. That is not what I’m saying. The loss of two close family members within a year of each other helped propel me towards major positive changes. But there isn’t a day that goes by that I wouldn’t choose to have them back instead.

To heal and grow is not to say that the loss didn’t matter, or worse that the person lost didn’t matter. We can’t go back to the way things were. As much as we may want to, it isn’t an option. All we can do is go on. Doing so with self-compassion, patience with ourselves, and acceptance of the ebbs and flows of grieving can help.