Grief, compost, bulbs

Mid October. The days are grey and subdued and strangely quiet. Eclipse season kicked my arse, and the harvest supermoon walloped me even more: I feel as though I’ve been in an emotional washing machine for weeks, walking around the house in weird clothes and scarves, looking around at all the grubby bits and struggling to find the motivation to do much about them.

A visit from a relative recently brought old grief swirling back up to the surface. Grief happens to us all at points in our lives; nothing can protect us from it. And although I still have so much to learn, I already know that grieving someone we love while they are still alive is its own particular, lonely kind of pain. It’s a spiralling process and not a straight line. Like all forms of grief, it is hard to explain.

Deep, underlying emotional issues have a way of overlapping and compounding the more everyday things - such as trying to navigate a broken special educational needs system with a child who is not currently in school, being left in limbo for weeks and months at a time, financial pressures, and the ever present noise and uncertainty of life in the mid 2020s. All of these things are interrelated, and the result has been a state of constant low-level overwhelm that is currently manifesting in a deep, damp, chesty cough.

I’ve been feeling confused about what and how much to share online, what to keep back for a longer work in progress, and whether sometimes quietly processing things in private is actually what I need. I questioned whether anyone wants to read a piece about me feeling stressed out about first world problems - but I believe that when we share from the messy, vulnerable, most authentic parts of ourselves, we dismantle the harmful powers of shame and silence that keep us small and quiet, and maybe even give others permission to do the same.

I think a lot of us are just getting by these days. And sometimes the pieces we hover over and feel the most unsure about sharing might be the exact thing that someone else needs to read.

When my kids feel sad, angry or overwhelmed, I tell them that no feelings are bad, we just have to let them move through us. Of course, this is easier said than done. I practice letting emotions wash over me in waves when they come, and meanwhile try to be gentle with myself: cups of ginger tea, candles on the windowsill, walks around the village when I can. Chipping away at my writing, keeping the house warm and keeping everyone fed. My husband reminds me often that these are no small things.

When I slow down and attend to the present, it is possible to find grace and beauty in the murk of the in between.

The other day I dug over the compost heap at the bottom of the garden for the first time. At its base, beneath layers of rotting vegetable peels and garden waste, I found an abundance of fluffy compost that has taken six years to fully break down into rich, dark soil. It’s the first year I haven’t had to buy any compost from the garden centre, and I’m actually quite chuffed with it.

Things take time.

I filled up all the big pots with the crumbly stuff and bought big value packs of tulips, crocus and alium bulbs, pressing them into the soil like little bundles of hope. Dug over some space in the wildflower patch and buried a few more there. The bulbs will flower in bright jewel colours in the spring, reflecting the light of the sun when it returns. I’m so grateful for my messy, rented garden.

Perhaps I am in a compost time, too. Fumbling through the dark. Although life feels a bit grey and muddy and as though not much is happening at the moment, I believe that things have a way of working themselves out in time.

The sun will return - but first, the autumn and winter have stories to tell.

If you’re surviving rather than thriving at the moment, please know that you’re not alone. I hope you can practice showing yourself the love and care that you extend to others. Thank you so much for spending a few minutes here with me; truly, it means the world.

love Caroline x

A poem

I’ve been watching the way the cherry tree lets go its leaves
on a windy day in mid October, how the yellow flames of their
bodies rush and spiral downwards as though they’ve been
dreaming all summer of flight. I’ve been thinking about
the good things, like rain on the window on a slow morning,
how for every child wrapped in bloodied rags there are surely
thousands more lost in the rapture of play, thousands of souls
making prayers for each new day; how for every pair of hands
mining minerals in the red mud there must be thousands
of mothers cooing over healthy babies, thousands of lovers
driving away into the sunset, and millions of voices imploring
‘don’t give up now’. I know this isn’t good enough, and
I know that none of this is fair. Maybe for every promise kept
there are thousands more lying in tatters on the floor.
But for some reason I’ve been watching the yellow leaves of
the cherry tree as they fall to the ground like unmade wishes,
gifts of sweetness for the future, and I’ve been thinking about
the good things, like rain on the window on a slow morning,
like however far we fall, how we always somehow dream of flight.

Thank you for reading 🧡 My poetry collection The Honey in the Bones is available here