🪱 Composting Grief

what the garden teaches me about tending what hurts

I didn’t know how much grief I was carrying until I started moving compost.

It was early. The first cool morning after a long, blazing summer. I was hauling wheel barrows uphill, turning what had broken down into something usable. Into new potting soil for the fall garden.

My body was tired, but something in me softened.
Grief was moving too. Slowly. Quietly. Layered in the pile with old stems, spent blooms, and kitchen scraps.

🌧 Grief doesn’t need fixing. It needs tending.

We live in a culture that wants to tidy up pain, to tuck it away, wrap it in silver linings, and push it past the discomfort. But the garden doesn’t do that. The garden lets things fall apart.

Grief, like compost, is a process of return. A breakdown of what was, back into something fertile. Something holy.

I’ve had to let go of people I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to. Friendships, communities, even parts of my identity. It all came loose. And like my dahlias, the grief took root even when I forgot to water it. Even when I was overwhelmed. Even when I wasn’t ready.

The thing about compost is, it keeps working underground.

🪞 The garden mirrored me back.

This year, only six of the twenty dahlias bloomed.

Some didn’t make it.

And yet, those that did?

They arrived right on time. Their time.

I’d left them in someone else’s care for a while. I’d been busy. Scattered. Trying to hold too many things. But when I finally remembered them, when I finally came back, they were already sprouting. Reaching. Surviving without the conditions I thought were essential.

Grief is like that.

It finds cracks to grow through.

🌊 Grief comes in waves.

Sometimes it’s a sneakerwave, rising suddenly from calm.

Sometimes it’s a king tide, reshaping everything.

And sometimes, it’s a slow rain that doesn’t let up for days.

What I’ve learned is, you can’t control it.

You can only greet it.

Sit beside it like an old friend.

Offer it tea.

Let it speak.

Grief just wants to be felt.

It doesn’t need a solution. It needs a seat at the fire.

🧱 When things fall apart, something else gets made.

I lost my home once.

Everything familiar was gone. The people, the connections, the sense of place.

It was a violent kind of emptiness. But from that destruction came something surprising:

resourcefulness. creativity. adaptability.

Grief broke me open, but it also asked,

What do you want to build now?

What came next was art.

Big self-portraits with rust and glass and layered textures.

Botanical series with carnivorous plants and medicinal herbs.

Windchimes that sing when the wind moves through the quiet.

These pieces carry my grief, but also my resilience.

They are the compost.

❤️‍🩹 If you’re in the early stages of grief…

Please don’t try to “fix” it.

Just start with your body.

Treat yourself like a newborn.

Give yourself comfort, tools, rhythm.

Make a sensory basket. Fill it with textures, smells, and sounds that soothe you.

Journal without rules. Cry when the wave comes.

Don’t apologize.

And when the waters calm, even just for a moment, breathe.

You’ll know when it’s time to make something new.

❤️‍🩹 Grief is a teacher. And compost is sacred.

The dahlias taught me that you don’t have to be on time.

You just have to bloom when it’s right.

The garden taught me that rot is part of the cycle.

That what falls apart isn’t wasted. It’s transformed.

And grief?

Grief taught me how to stay with myself, even in the unraveling.

To sit in the in-between with both hands open.

To become softer, stronger, and more rooted than before.

💚 Reflection

Have you been carrying something heavy that wants to return to the earth?

What might it look like to compost your grief, not discard it, but let it transform?

What kind of art, or life, might bloom from that soil?

💌 Invitation for guidance

If you're grieving and not sure how to move forward, my Grief-Garden coaching sessions are gentle spaces to tend what's hard and reclaim what’s blooming.

You don’t have to do this alone.

[Book a session] (link) or reach out. I’d love to hold space for you.

Closing Thoughts

You don’t have to be ready.

You just have to begin.

The soil will know what to do.