Tending What's Rooted; Finding Meaning and Belonging in the Garden You Inherited

Written by Bridget Goode, CSW

So hear me out for a second- what would happen if you believed that people actually like you? What real and lasting changes would you see in your life? What would your felt experience be if you believed you deserve good things? What if you, as a person, were a garden? What would that garden look like? 

I wish I could properly credit where I first heard this idea, but it stayed with me: you are a garden, and traumas are your less-than-nurturing weeds. Trauma is all the things people planted in your garden that aren’t giving you life, but are slowly suffocating you. Maybe it was overt and explicit, like physical abuse or neglect. Maybe it was more subtle but still cutting, like those comments your mom used to make about eating bread after 6 PM. Every experience planted something, for better or for worse.

Over time, invasive plants took root. Weeds began to grow—taking up space, draining nutrients, making it harder for anything nourishing to survive.

Then one day you go out to your garden and take a look around. “This won’t do,” you say to yourself. 

And here’s the possibly bitter truth; no one else can tend this garden for you.

People can support you. A partner might offer encouragement. A mentor might share wisdom. A therapist might sit beside you and help you understand the soil and the plants. There are those that can help stride parallel to you, gently holding space and helping to hold your experience with compassion and love. 

But this heavy-duty, messy, honest, beautiful work falls to you. Trauma work is like completely tearing apart the garden. 

It’s not just adding well-intentioned affirmations on top of what’s already there.

It’s not planting hopeful flowers in soil that’s been depleted and overtaken. 

Those things can be helpful, but if the soil is already depleted, then those well intentioned affirmations and flowers will just die. And then we’re left wondering, “Why didn’t it work?”

It didn’t work because the soil needed tending first.

This is where it gets fun. Trauma work is getting messy, it's pulling things up by the roots. Through anger, grief, desperation, you start to dig holes. Going deeper, finding out how thick the roots are. Using shears to cut things out. Getting your hands dirty. 

Then, eventually, we can start to add to the soil. 

Starting with love can feel too much, too soon sometimes. Can we just sit with understanding first? How did this garden come to be? With understanding, may come compassion, helping things to soften. And eventually—slowly, gently—love begins to take root. Like heavy rain falling in a dry, cracked desert, that initial downpour always pools at the top before seeping in. And that’s okay. Just a little at a time. Some days it’ll feel impossible—and that’s okay. What matters is not the volume of love you heap on every day, but the consistency and showing up with what you have at the moment. So what do you have to offer yourself, right now, at this moment? Whatever it is, it’s enough.

So what would happen if you believed that you deserved good things? What would that garden look like? There might still be some weeds, there always are. Hopefully they feel more welcome, less overwhelming, the roots not running as deep or pervasive as before. 

Maybe your garden would be a little wild. Some things were left intentionally, growing in ways you didn’t expect but that still support life. 

I love the idea of a wild garden. 

Worms turning over the soil. Bees pollinating new growth. Decay becomes nourishment.

A garden that’s alive.

A garden that’s yours.

Where everything has a place. 

Including you. 

If you are ready to begin your healing journey, consider starting therapy. At Resilient Life Counseling & Wellness, we have a diverse team of therapists fully equipped to provide compassionate and personalized care to individuals, couples, and families. We offer flexible, confidential sessions, both virtually throughout Utah and in person (Farmington, UT), and we are here to meet you where you are and support you on your journey.