Sunday journalling prompt

Expand and contract

Hello,

I keep stepping out into my garden at the moment, just to see if anything has grown. At this time of year, you can almost see the rambling rose creeping up my fence, and the feverfew fluffing out its leaves like a ball of feathers. The new euphorbias are - I think - growing nicely, and the rosemary slowly spreading. It’s like watching the garden fill its lungs.

I’m not a great gardener. My interest waxes and wanes, and weeding makes me feel guilty so I let everything overgrow. Some of my favourite plants in my garden are volunteers, like that enormous feverfew, and a creeping buttercup that I think is absolutely lovely. All my friends are growing veg, and I admire it, but I travel too much to really look after them. Besides, I love big, blousy, tender flowers that billow about late summer and then die off over winter. 

That’s a pretty good analogy for how I feel throughout the year. In the summer, I tend to be full of ideas, craving growth and newness. In the winter I slow right down, sleep more, and tend to consolidate and reflect (and also sometimes regret the plans I made for myself in the summer). 

I quite like this as a way of life. Granted, summer me can feel a little speedy, and winter me gets frustrated with herself, but, looked at from a distance, it’s a kind of balance. When people talk about balance, they often seem to think that it means living every day in a state of equilibrium. I think that’s one way to do it, but not the only way. I notice that neurodivergent people in particular find balance by moving between extremes. It looks chaotic, but it averages out over time. 

We expand and contract, like a garden, like breath. We take it all in, and we let it all go. We reach out into the world, and we shrink back again. We burrow deep into ourselves, and we seek new connections. We bring something from each cycle to the next, but equally, we let something go too. We move forward incrementally, shedding our skin, growing it again. 

This week’s prompt is about the ways we expand and contract.