This morning I finally won the battle against procrastination and went outside in the early morning dew to weed. I don't know why I've been putting it off. I usually don't mind weeding, especially in the early morning when the day is new, the birds and the insects are just waking up and the breeze holds the promise of the day. However, we've had a really rainy summer and the weeds have taken on a whole new life as if someone has injected the rain with super vitamins. I only wish my poor tomatoes, still green in this first week of August, had so much energy. I also knew that my having put the job off had resulted in some very deep rooted weeds. My last go around with just such a weed taught me a very valuable lesson: sometimes you have to go a lot deeper than you want to go if you want to clear out what's growing there.
The weed in question was growing in the garden bed that is the home of some beautiful day lilies, iris, wild strawberries, and a host of other things. At first I thought it was some kind of late growing bush because it was almost three feet tall and looked like it was going to be a tree when it grew up. In fact, it was already the size of a small bush. At the time it was early spring and I was just beginning to discover what was growing in each bed of my new garden that had already been established years and years ago. My landlords assured me that no one had planted that particular specimen and, in fact, it was choking out everything around it. Not to worry, here comes Flower Bear, aka Barb, to the rescue. My philosophy in gardening, much like my philosophy in life, is that if you can't co-exist nicely together side by side, somebody has to go. So I got out my tools and got to work. First I cut it down to where it was just a bunch of stems sticking out of the ground, and then I started to dig around the roots ... and dig ... and dig ... and, oh my goodness! This thing had to have been growing those roots all winter long under the three feet of snow on top of it. I couldn't be sure, but for a moment there I could swear I heard Chinese music when I finally pulled it out and looked down into the mammoth hole! You will be happy to know that in that spot a pretty, stripped hosta has found a new home.
Shortly after the Great Weed Extraction, I was listening to a guided meditation by Denise Linn on Hay House Radio (my favorite place to hang out online) where we were supposed to "go deep" to find those well-hidden limiting beliefs that kept us from living our lives to the fullest. As her soothing voice lead us along, I went deep, really deep, deeper than I think I've ever gone in any meditation I've ever done, and suddenly I began to cry as the words, "No one protected me" surfaced from way below. I don't think I've ever said those words, either out loud or even just to myself. I knew in an instant what it meant: that no one protected me from my first husband who had been an abusive man, both verbally as well as mentally, and on a few occasions, with threats of physical abuse to keep me in line. I blamed everyone, especially my parents and his parents, who grew up in a world where a woman in those days kept their mouths shut and were lucky to have a man who would take care of them. I wept for a long time. I don't believe I even heard the rest of the radio show. All I knew is that I had just freed myself from the idea that I needed protecting when the truth was I was an intelligent, caring, creative woman, and that I was safe. I didn't constantly need to be saving the world one cause or one person at a time. All that I needed to do was love, forgive, and move on.
I didn't meant for this post to go on for so long, but my experience was so profound that I knew I had to share it, especially with women my age who may be carrying around a limiting belief that is so deep that they need an emotional backhoe to get to it and root it out. Like the Great Weed Extraction, sometimes you just have to keep digging until you hear the music, but it is so worth it.
And so it is.
