
Journal entry from the evening of 5/15/25
Tonight I’m sitting at my vintage work table with a cup of tea I made from the self-heal growing in a lush patch in my yard, in a handmade mug I love. I am looking at a triumph: Today I made relief printing ink using powdered pigment I bought in Venice, and I printed my self-heal linocut. This pigment is green earth, it is a bit of Italy, and I only spoke Italian in the shop, and we discussed all sorts of fine points about art materials. After 30 years, I figured out I’m allowed to go to Italy even if I don’t have a PhD from Yale. In every way, this little print and all its circumstances represent triumph.
And also I am deeply sad. Love, as we know, moves the sun and the other stars, as Dante told us at the end of Paradiso, but lately I’ve been more lost in the middle of the way of my life. This winter I became so depressed that I withdrew from all the activities and friends and places I know give me strength and sustain me, and eventually retreated into the tiniest, most shut-down version of myself. I knew something was wrong, but I was thinking through mud.
I haven’t had a full night of sleep since my IUD was removed in January. Never enough hours, and always interrupted. Since January. (We’re working on it. I have been having hot flashes again, and brain fog, night sweats, and overwhelming emotional surges — I already did second puberty, and no one told me this could happen, but I have been struggling through a new wave of menopausal bullshit for over four months.) The last time I was sleep-deprived in a big house that wasn’t quite warm enough, I was enduring abuse that has haunted me for 25 years. Abuse that has felt extremely present, given the Neil Gaiman reports, and the horrific French rape trial. The political everything happening at the same time has been an existential threat. They hate people like me, and want to eliminate all the ways I made myself up out of whole cloth.
Then my psych meds were fucked up for most of a month. The meds that were keeping me hanging on as hard as I could, using every skill from every worksheet and book and therapy session I have learned from. It was the last straw. When I had a phone call with someone I love, and felt detached and empty and confused, I lashed out and blew up plans we’d made, wonderful plans that never seemed in any way real to me.
My horror when I began to comprehend what I had done, what I had been doing, kicked me out of the depression, right into some kind of new-fangled, extraordinarily beneficial nervous breakdown. It hurt like hell, and I will also always be grateful for the experience — I have been mining it for all of the treasure I can drag out of it. This disintegration has led to a huge leap of progress in healing from that long-ago abuse. I was never suicidal at any point, even though I started out in agony. Careening through my thoughts, I saw both sides of every pop song and book and scrap of culture I have cared about, in ways that brought me some compassionate acceptance of my behavior. (If I am only as stupid as Joni Mitchell, and not nearly as terrible as Diego and Frida, then maybe I’m just a traumatized weirdo doing the very very best I can to be a good person, to show up for my people, to teach what I know and share what I have. When I break, it is not because I am a bad person.) The comparative religion aspects this all kicked up have been fascinating (having an experience of rebirth and awakening while casting off a slave mentality, during Passover/holy week — it was so interesting to lean into, and I felt companionship with every other human who has suffered, bringing in my Buddhist learning.) Seeing all the ways I was neglecting to take care of myself, and then feeling neglected, has me trying to do better for myself. Not for anyone else, for me. I deserve my good fortune. I deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, even.
It’s so good to have my head on straight, to be feeling real emotions again, even though some of them are painful. I’m grateful and largely content. And also I am journaling about my recovery from trauma instead of living my life. I am alone when I should be showing off my new house and trying my houseguest’s patience with too many garden stories.
Since I don’t have a houseguest, and you’ve read this far, you can have a garden story.

Last fall I went to Annie’s Annuals, one of the last days they were open*, and before they’d announced the closure. We’d put in an offer on the house, but there was so much waiting. At the nursery, I thought, “I wish I knew what my abuelita grew, I wish I had her wisdom.” Just then I turned a corner and found a stunning sage, at least four feet tall, dark green leaves and bright chartreuse calyces, with brilliant purple flowers. Salvia mexicana, v. Limelight. I decided this was a sign and I brought one home. I drew it and pruned it, and when we got to the new house I put it in a much bigger pot, and then I kept an eye on it.
It was winter, and I fretted that it wasn’t doing well, because I had expected it to take off with the rainy season. But that isn’t this plant’s way. It held onto the last leaves of the fall all through the winter, as they looked more and more bedraggled. I was sure I had harmed it when I transplanted it, but it was green, so I let it do its thing. The days got longer and longer, and since I had stopped checking every day (depression!) I was happily surprised when I found new growth, both on the tips of the two old branches, and also coming up from the soil.

The new growth from soil level was vigorous, and quickly grew taller than the old stems, yet I didn’t want to cut the old stems — they were still trying! But I finally decided to try rooting the new growth from those stems, as separate plants, and I cut them off.
Those two old stems withered completely in the time it took for the new little plants to make roots. When I potted them up, I cut off last year’s growth at the base. Some plants thrive when you completely cut them to the ground and let them start again in a new season, a fine metaphor right there. I finally read the fucking manual on this specific plant and learned it is a little more complicated.
Leaving the old growth until the new growth starts is correct — it helps the plant overwinter and gain strength for spring. Cutting it off after it’s done its job is also correct. My two new baby plants are lagniappe — a little something extra that I get because I rescued the growth on the otherwise withering stems. One of them is going to my neighbor, because gardens are for sharing.

My plants have so much to teach me when I slow down and listen to them. And they teach their lessons over and over again, so those of us with attention problems, or who are particularly stubborn, keep getting chances to tune in to their wisdom.
Saturday 5/17 addendum:
I am still very sad. None of this insight or progress or healing gets me ten days in northern California in May with one of my favorite people in the world. It does have me cherishing being alive, taking better care of myself and loved ones, even understanding Dante and Borges better, so it could surely be worse, however much it hurts. I was so unwell, and I am recuperating, and I am sharing what I learned. And here’s one more gift from the breakdown: This has given me a new yardstick for my mental state. If I feel unloved, that is some brain weasel depression nonsense. That is crazy. I am so loved, by such a spectacular array of humans (and cats!). May I never forget it again.
(Post title from Jesca Hoop’s exquisite, piercing song, “Enemy”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp-AxSnUtCo)
*Annie’s Annuals is dead, long live Curious Flora, the worker-led successor to our beloved local nursery, right on the grounds where it’s been for years. (Annie’s lives on nearby as a mail-order nursery, but isn’t open to the public.)