our joy is so obviously the point
When Covid first hit, it didn’t take long for me to start talking to the plants. It didn’t take long for me to try all sorts of new things: trimming hedges; accidentally revisiting childbirth trauma in the kitchen; eating my feelings.
I even tried my hand at comedy life writing, for the length of one short essay:
“...when you begin to sob near the yew tree, go ahead and place your head inside of it. Go ahead. The new growth isn’t listening. Your neighbor might be, but you exist in a new reality now. One in which everyone is a poet and no one is successful. It’s called twitter…”
bah-dum-BING!
While the comedy writing career didn’t take, my habit of shamelessly talking to plants has persisted. And while I would still trust them to hold my sobs tenderly, and without judgment, most of our conversations these days are filled with pure and unabashed joy.
I don’t watch much of anything on tv — realizing that audio + visual inputs are too much for me to process in a healthy way has been one of many powerful shifts in my life post-diagnosis — but I joke that my favorite show right now is called “The Garden,” and there’s a new episode every morning.
Today, in a surprise twist, one of the cherry tomatoes has taken on the role of most-likely-to-ripen-first, while the two larger toms who’ve been pacing each other as they inch towards more and more golden hues each day, are still close behind. Who will win? We’ll have to ask the squirrel who steals that first ripe tomato, a ritual that seems to play out each year. But, as I often exclaim (to myself and the plants), you can’t have a community garden without a community!
Soon, summer growth will be in full swing, and it might be the first year that I have more tomatoes than I know what to do with. What a beautiful problem to have! But for the moment, I get to sit with each moment of joy as everything moves towards over-fullness:
— getting lost in the visual vibrations of a not-yet-bloomed coneflower’s psychedelic, fibonacci, center
— brushing against the copper canyon daisy to release it’s powerful and intoxicating scent; letting my hair down into its leaves so I might carry some of it with me
— eating one tarragon leaf because it’s delicious, makes my tongue tingle, and feels important
What I often realize in these moments of joy, when a smile breaks across my face and I giggle and dance on my toes in the garden, is that for many years, the task of neuroconforming1 meant stifling my big joy as well as my big pain. I feel things big, regardless of the feeling, and when I’m able to feel all things big, there is a natural balance. Yes, my sorrow and rage can be indescribably big, but when my joy is as well, the pendulum swings in a natural and regular way. A goodly way.
I remember years ago, watching my young child jump with a friend on the trampoline. His joy was massive and contagious, and (it suddenly struck me) very soon to be deemed too big. This was before our whole world changed, but my sadness at knowing he would likely soon begin to make his joy smaller for the world was immense.
It’s painful to watch: as children grow in their bodies, they often shrink in their experience of the world, having been told and/or perceived that there is always a right/appropriate/acceptable level of response to that world. That to overreact, whether in anger or joy, is to bring on a sense of shame and embarrassment. And what is embarrassment but a natural expression of feeling unsafe? And weren’t we all children once too?
But what if we can be unsafe — always, perpetually, undeniably — and let ourselves feel the immensity of our joy, wherever and whenever it arises? What if we can let our bodies dance and wiggle and move however they like, because our joy is so obviously the point?
a recent handful of paid subscribers, who simply want to support my writing and art with no strings attached, has me feeling free and full of gratitude.
my writing here will always be free to anyone who wants to read it. thank you for spending your time and attention here.
origins of this term, which I personally prefer over Neurotypical, for a lot of reasons (thank you Dr. Dave Saunders!)
This is glorious!
Beautiful! I love to think of you dancing for joy!!