Cultivating and Composting Stories

Welcome to Pocketful of Prose, a community for sharing stories. Links are in bold, and there’s an audio of this pocket if that works better for your life. Pocketful of Prose is free for everyone so please share with friends. If you want to further support my work, you can do so by becoming a paid subscriber. If you like it here, please click the heart at the bottom, and make sure you are signed into Substack when you do so.

Without further ado, today’s pocket

Recently, I finished reading Everything Is a Story, Reclaiming the Power of Stories to Heal and Shape Our Lives by Kaitlin Curtice. I teach a class on Native American Literature, and when this book came out this past fall, I knew it might be an important one for me to read. Using the metaphor of an oak tree, Curtice suggests that we plant stories that can either harm or heal; how we tend to these stories matters. Some stories need more light, water and love. Some, on the other hand, need to be composted.

Reading Kaitlin Curtice’s work is similar to participating in meditation or yoga. She encourages breath and mindfulness. She offers rituals for healing. One such ritual that she shares in this book is meant for times of transition, where something is dying and something else is being born. Curtice invites us to draw two circles which are not touching each other. Label one circle letting go and label the other circle harvest. Then, reflect on what you want to release and what you want to draw in.

On the last day of school for seniors in my Native American Literature class, I shared this practice with my students, and I asked them as they either prepared to graduate or move on to their senior year, I have several juniors in the class, what is it that they want to let go of, and what to do they want to cultivate. What do they want to tend to? It was a big ask on their final day of school where many of them were hoping they could just play cards and sign yearbooks, but we had created our own little community in the room, and I wanted to close out by doing something that fed that community, so instead of caving to popular demand, I insisted we have a final community circle. I made three dozen chocolate chip cookies to soften the deal.

To be honest, it wasn’t that hard to get students to participate. The end of the year brings up a lot of feelings, and this was a chance for them to reflect on those feelings, to think about what they wanted to hold on to and what they wanted to let go of, to give them some ownership in a time that perhaps felt like it was moving a little too quickly.

One student said they wanted to return to their culture more, they wanted to dance again and work on their regalia. Another graduating student said they wanted to harvest time with their friends. One student spoke about how she didn’t want her illness to get in the way of her life and another talked about how she hoped she could work on her lateness because she missed some things this year, she wished she hadn’t.

In the circle, we listened to each other, and we held each other’s reflections, hopes and aspirations. I reminded them to honor their humanity. Yes, it is healthy to reflect on what we want to harvest, but sometimes when life takes over in ways we don’t expect, when that darn illness we wish we didn’t have shows up and gets in the way, we need to give ourselves some grace, and maybe find a work around. Sometimes we have to let go of what we hoped to harvest.

It was a beautiful way to end the year, and it reminded me that one of the things I want to continue to harvest in my classroom next year is community. Several students shared how they spoke more in this class than in previous classes. One student said that he shared more things with this group of people than any other group. I hope to create a similar space next year. I remind myself, though, that some of that will depend on the willingness of my students to share and open their hearts.

As for my own list, I want to cultivate reflection. It’s an incredibly busy time of year. This past week alone, in addition to baking those three dozen cookies, I also baked two dozen brownies for my youngest to take to a school picnic so he wouldn’t think I loved my students more than him. I met with so many students about their final research papers, which I am once again swearing to introduce earlier next year because procrastination is real, and there is enough stress at the end of the year without having to worry about works cited pages. To top it all off, as a senior prank, someone gave all sixty of my sixth graders kazoos. I’ve never been so close to breaking y’all.

It was a full, chaotic and exhausting week, where my brain was bubbling with ideas for the following year, ideas that might make it a gentler, smoother ride for myself and my students if I put them into practice. The problem is that at this time of year I’m often too tired to write the ideas down and come August, I forget them all. This year, though, perhaps because of Curtice and the gentle way she speaks to herself and her readers in her book, I decided to be kind to future Mary. I wrote her a little list with a love note at the top, a reminder of the beautiful community she built and a few thoughts for things she might want to let go of and or refine. I think I’d been putting it off because I thought it would take a ton of time to do this, but in practice it took less than twenty minutes because the ideas were already brewing. I saved it in a 2026-27 folder, and then I let it go.

This Week in the Garden

Here’s what I’m cultivating…

Garlic scapes, things have definitely gone a little loopy

Gorgeous red strawberries

A large rose, the color of sunset, blooming on a bush I planted for my parents who celebrated their 49^th wedding anniversary

snow and snap peas which I’m eating right off the vine and turning into stir fry

Thai basil and other farmer’s market seedlings

the leaning tower of delphinium

a blackberry trellis and the anticipation it holds

so many sun flowers, stately, stoic, just starting to…

Here’s what I’m composting…

The strawberries not being as plentiful as I’d like them to be

the cut worms or something such that ate the dahlia I tried to transplant in the back garden, the carrot seedlings they seem to have eaten as well

the porch I watered unintentionally

the lavender I transplanted, with so much hope, that probably won’t make it

the last week of Spring which I’m sad to see go

the bird that pooped on me while writing this piece

Share

I would love to continue this conversation in the comments? What are you cultivating and composting right now?