It's Time to Write a New Story.

Plants, nature, & gardens saved my life. Now a growing field of medical research, nature & garden therapy helped change my story -- ultimately, it helped bring me back into the land of the living.

Fall colours wrapping around an endless sky at Lake Diefenbaker, Saskatchewan, Canada. Photo by Olivia Kulbida.

For starters, let me say, I never thought I would be here, writing. Not only that, but writing about gardening & nature, alongside art & design. When I was young, I was unlike my friends as I knew early on the profession I wanted to be in. Apparently I marched home after school one day at the age of 8 or 9 & told my mom 'When I'm a teacher, I will be a teacher like Josée' (my teacher at the time.)

I didn't budge from there & taught until my early 30s when I hit a 40 year-old mid-life crisis. Even though I was trained to teach visual arts & history, I had become the history & law teacher. Don't get me wrong, I loved it & still miss it deeply, but I was lacking art & design in my daily working life. Being the crazy person that I am, I added a part-time design business & made more time for creating my own artwork. Things were pretty ideal -- I'd met a great guy, we had a cute character home in a lovely historic neighbourhood (well, historic for the prairies of North America haha), my family was close, plus my business was thriving & my husband was tapped to make partner at work.

Then, wham, life threw a curve ball, what could have been a sinker if it weren't for plants.

I have been in a decade-long health battle with endometriosis & chronic pelvic pain. Early on, I was struggling through while still working -- but winding up in the emergency room at the hospital every 2 weeks, rescheduling meetings & sending out emails between episodes of throwing up from labour-like pain levels. Then, I was three years completely bed-ridden -- well, I could slide downstairs on my bum on my very best days.

Even now, ten years on, I continue to be disabled by daily pain (think of your worst headache ever, that's me on a really good day now, but from my shoulders to my knees.) I've tried out so many pain meds, treatments, & strategies. Although humour plus great family & friends have held me together, sometimes it feels like I've been clawing my way out of a deep, dark, muddy pit where the walls fall in with any disturbance.

Wait a second though, I said these were supposed to be uplifting, inspirational articles though didn't I? So what changed?

It was nature, plants, gardening, alongside garden & landscape design that brought me back to life.

At first, in my darkest moments, nature & the gardening world were simply a nice distraction from the pain. I would look at pretty pictures of plants & stunning landscapes, then gardening documentaries & TV shows once I could focus somewhat. Suddenly, a passion I'd had since childhood was majorly reignited, one I had let wane somewhat in pursuit of stress (oops, I mean in pursuit of my career goals.)

Nature, gardening, & garden design have helped so much with my day-to-day well-being, but even more so in my long-term recovery. I have seen an improvement in my mental health, as they quieted my anxiety & cleared my mind. I became a mindfulness Jedi, but with plants. Through gardening, I have been able to rebuild muscle & dexterity.

Remarkably though, & best of all, gardens & nature have helped me reclaim my brain. Pain is a determined creature -- if allowed to linger for weeks (a decade in my case), it begins cannibalizing memory & brain function, shrinking pieces & supplanting them instead with pain signals. As a cogent bilingual who has fluently worked professionally in two languages, I could barely string together one sentence about wanting a cup of tea. Yet, the more I focused on my plants, the more information started to be retrieved, like many of the facts from teaching history (information I could not recall when most sick, after years of study & previous instantaneous recall.)

What I was doing turned out to be nature & garden therapy. It's now a growing field that is showing some real promise in medical research, something I'll be sharing more with you in future articles. What I do know is that it made a big difference for me. This fall, I finally feel like I've made it out of the black hole. I feel like a new leaf unfurling, or a flower returning in spring.

Dazzling in the mid-spring sunshine are the unfurling copper-burgundy leaves of Rodgersia aesculifolia (fingerleaf rodgersia), backed here by the zingy greens of emerging Convalaria majalis (lily-of-the-valley.) Photo by Tao Chamberlin.

So I'm here, doing something new, writing to you, because it's time to write a new story -- it's time to step into the land of the living. As Paulo Coehia said "If you're brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello." For those that have been asking me to do this for years, thanks for the push & I hope you like it!

The charming flowers of Viola adunca (early blue violet) peaking through in early spring. Photo by Tao Chamberlin.

So, why do I love gardening?

It’s invigorating & infectious.

I get to work with & learn about plants -- they continue to amaze me. It's easy to develop a vested interest. There’s nothing like watching a seed one's planted spring into life.

I get to live with the rhythm of our distinct seasons & be immersed in nature. I watch the fiery colours of the willow & dogwood stems announcing that spring is around the corner, plus I enjoy the earthy sweet smell after a summer rain, or the golden arches of the elms lining the streets in early fall. It's a life of taking time -- smelling the flowers along the way if you will.

Or, maybe it’s just because I’ve always loved playing in the dirt.

Welcome everyone, to the Land of the Living.