Dirt Therapy
I have only recently heard of this term. Getting your hands dirty, feeling the soil and sharing space with the earth more intimately cleanses your soul. For the past few years, I have spent ample time growing and tending to my garden babies in our patio and backyard. Gardening started as just that. Gardening was just gardening. I have developed a green thumb and learned along the way how to help a living plant or flower thrive. I’ve also killed a lot of them, unintentionally! That was just the result of not knowing any better. As Maya Angelou says, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” One of my main issues all my life has been being too hard on myself when I made a mistake or did something to offend someone. I have learned that this is part of life and we learn from our errors and oversights. Sure, I feel bad and want to desperately have a do over. The do over is now moving on and improving. With gardening, I now see that this enjoyable activity is just like how we human babies need to be nurtured through the sunny and stormy times. Sometimes you gotta learn things the hard way. Otherwise, you don’t learn or grow. Since none of us are getting out of this place alive, stare down the rest of your time here with intention, purpose and passion. Make the mistakes and move on. Don’t worry about getting dirty while doing it.
It goes on to say that dirt therapy helps with several things: brain health, depression, exercise and creativity. Breathing in some fresh air, hearing the buzzing of the bees and the chirpings of birds in the trees and watching the breeze tickling the branches is intoxicating and healing. These observations remind me to calm down and not take things so seriously all the time. Nature has its way to bring us back to the simple and organic things that make life livable. Nature also boosts the mood and brightens the spirit. The feel, the smell and the look of soft dark earth powder transforms my ever-fluctuating feelings of dullness, sullenness, stiffness, illness, sadness, and hopelessness into many hues and shades fit for a artist’s palette. The artist is inspired again after kicking their own ass if someone hadn’t already sicced a fiery rage on them. Just take, for instance, a plant or flower destroyed from lack of water or too much water, infestation or knocked over from a storm. It can come back from turmoil with some time and care, JUST LIKE WE CAN.
While I love painting my nails, a dirt manicure is my favorite look. I fawn over the look of a french manicure or multicolored nails with glitter, but stick my bare digits in the dirt and make the environment nicer than it was prior, you can color me happy and call me Poppy! The artist is ready to create. Since we’re on the subject of painting the body, I tend to wear enough makeup to make Dolly Parton jealous. Lately, though, I love a bare face while working in the yard because I’m just going to sweat in ten seconds. Whether clown face or clean face, it’s fun to play on the body’s canvas. That’s art.
While I’m working outdoors, I am present in the moment yet lost in imagination. I have always been a creative person dreaming up stuff. I love just about all types of music so I listen to it while I prune and plant. I was a dancer in a previous life, so gardening is the main exercise that I can actually do nowadays and I’m grateful for that. As I clip away spent parts of flower and foliage, the task at hand takes me on a fairy land or tropical jungle adventure. The colors and shapes of petals and leaves inspire me to draw and paint pretty things.
While sharing the space with the land, I’m cultivating, propagating, growing, improving, and creating future art references. I’m lucky enough to be able to step outside, and plop down on a patio chair, drink in one hand (ice water or a tiki drink) and pencil and sketchpad in the other hand and find inspiration. Ooh, and a cat or two circling around my feet or napping in the grass doesn’t suck, too. I told you that there would be lots of cats!
I saw this on one of the many Facebook gardening groups I’m in: Gardening helps you slow down. When you slow down, you feel. When you feel, you heal. When you heal, you grow.
