Love is a Garden
How do YOU tend your garden?
How we tend our gardens determines how they grow, what grows there, what kind of garden it is, really it's everything after the original planting of the garden. If love is a garden, how are you tending your garden?
Before you answer that, let's talk a bit about the effects of intergenerational trauma and how it can grow in anyone's garden. It often begins in our homes, reaching up from humanity’s roots and into the branches of each of our family’s trees. It's hard to imagine that there isn’t some seed of trauma embedded in all of our gardens' soil. We hear a lot about LOVE starting in the home. Anyone who has loved knows this part is the easy part. Falling in love, beginning a love, choosing to love, these are all so incredibly powerful. It is the tending to love, the keeping of love, the protecting of love that makes a lasting love. At its best, LOVE is a garden, and we all know gardens need tending. That’s what makes them gardens.
Intergenerational trauma is a psychological theory stating that trauma can be passed down through the generations to affect those who did not directly experience the original traumatic experience. Some examples of this trauma are rooted in any type of abuse, racism, dogma, displacement, divorce, and poverty. There are many in our community who have experienced trauma as a result of the pandemic.
For this project, we are welcoming everyone inside, those with trauma and those without, and agreeing that a person's trauma is whatever they feel it is at the time.
Let’s work on recognizing the seeds of intergenerational trauma when we see them and amending the soil around them. This is NOT easy! This is hard work! Sometimes the seeds of intergenerational trauma produce the prettiest flowers in the garden. Well, "pretty is as pretty does, friends." Let's get to work and share what has done well in our own gardens.
