Journal entry from 4/11/25

from my notebook, 10/23/24: “Who will I be, with almost no artificial constraints? Myself, just more so, is my guess.”

What is hell, if not the inability to enjoy a glorious spring day due solely to the conditions inside one’s head? That’s my new definition. And so I am trying bravely to walk out of hell yet again. Sometimes other people put me there, sometimes circumstances, but this visit has been entirely on me.

Because my life is a magical realist fable, soon after I started telling people that my abuelita had been a curandera I noticed a new plant at the edge of my garden. When I looked it up, I was delighted to learn “self-heal” had found me. Also called “heal all,” “woundwort,” and carpenter’s herb,” it is a well known and widespread medicinal herb, described by Linnaeus, sure, but in Chinese herbals a couple thousand years earlier as well. Its reputed uses cover a range of maladies, mostly physical, though one herbal I found specifically described its use for “blocked anger” and “overheated emotion.” My yard’s Prunella vulgaris (which is going to be my burlesque name when I’m 80) might be a European introduction, or it might be the native North American species, or it might even be a hybrid, which would make it just right for a mutt such as myself.

Late this winter I was having some feels, and I woke up one morning with the most vivid image in my mind, of my small side yard cleared of grass and weeds so the little patches of self-heal I had found there could get a chance to grow. Few gardening tasks have ever, in decades of gardening, given me as much satisfaction as ripping out that grass and literally rematriating the land. I got down on hands and knees several cold days in a row, seeing my vision through one trowel full of weeds at a time.

After clearing a small area down to moist dirt and dark self-heal, I scattered a package of California wildflower seeds a friend had given me as a housewarming present. It was the beginning of March, and not at all the best time to start native seeds. That would have been last fall—and I had a chance to do it, but there were so many things to do, and so I had neglected the project. Those dense little rosettes wanted friends in their plot, though, so I decided to give it a try. If I hadn’t, I would have had to put the whole thing off until next fall, which felt intolerable.

Our spring weather this year has been extraordinarily favorable for late-sown seeds. Watching their wee cotyledons open, their tiny leaves find the sun, has cheered me every single day I’ve had the good sense to spend some time with them.

The self-heal is thriving with less competition. When I get home from catsitting, I’m going to make myself some tea from it. The herbalist I’m going to consult for advice helped me tend the broken heart I mostly gave myself in 2006; she will be happy to hear from me, and maybe she can help with my current grievous self-inflicted wounds.

May this little herb and my art and my story bring you some of the healing you yourself might need on this glorious spring day in 2025.

(Post title from the intensely comforting Sierra Hull song, “Truth Be Told”)