Leisha Growing pains at a tipping point
On Sunday we open the doors to Plant & Kitchen Alchemy, seven days of soil, microbes, plants, fermentation, herbal preparations and the living world inside our own bodies. I’ve been building this workshop for a long time, piece by piece, like a giant jigsaw puzzle that only makes sense once the last piece goes in.
Right now, in the final stretch, everything feels tight.
The spa was meant to be finished before this workshop and it’s still being finished. National holidays landed right in the middle of our deadline (I’ll admit I’ve never had much love for national holidays), and over the last few weeks a lot of other things needed attention too. We hosted another workshop this week. The garden needs tending, the kitchen needs organizing, and there are a hundred small details that only I seem to be holding in my head.
I’ve done this enough times to recognize the feeling. Whenever I’m working on something good, there’s a build-up just before it comes into the world. Things go sideways, people get tense, and old feelings come up from somewhere. It used to frighten me. These days I’m starting to read it as a sign that something is about to break open.
What happens inside a seed
Anyone who knows me knows I can’t resist turning to the plants, soil and microbes for answers, so bear with me.
A seed sitting in a packet is dry and quiet. Put it into moist, living soil and it starts to drink. This is called imbibition. The seed takes up water and swells, and pressure builds inside each cell as the water pushes out against the cell walls. That’s turgor pressure, the same force that holds a healthy leaf upright.
At some point the seed coat, which has protected the embryo all this time, can’t hold it any longer. Under all that pressure, it splits. Boom!
The root comes out first, before the shoot. The seed sends something down into the dark to anchor itself and find food, and only after that does anything green reach for the light.
I like that. All that pressure is part of how a seed gets going. It reminds me of what women say about labor, that the stage just before the baby arrives is the hardest and you’re sure you can’t go on, and then you do. I remember something similar from competitive long-distance running when I was young. There were moments when I thought I couldn’t keep going, and I kept going.
Where it shows up in me
The trouble is that the pressure doesn’t stay in the timelines and the building work. It gets into me.
I’ve had Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure” playing in my head all week. That song is singing me at the moment. It’s about how pressure squeezes ordinary people, and how caring for each other is really the only way through it. Lovely to sing along to, and a lot harder to live when I’m at my limit, there are things to finish and get ready, the spa isn’t done and the clock is ticking.
This past week I’ve caught myself reacting to ordinary work situations with more frustration, disappointment and even anger than I’d like. Anger is an emotion I try to avoid, because it sends my head spinning into dark places. A change in the work schedule, a small disappointment, and suddenly the larger shit that’s been sitting in my emotional knapsack comes up. Something much bigger rose up in me, and some of the thoughts that came with it I recognized as demons, trying to convince me I had every right to be indignant.
One of those moments really stuck with me. Something small happened, the kind of thing I’d normally let go of, but it had been building for a while. I’m not sure whether I reacted more than it deserved. When I sat with it, though, I could see it had touched something much older, a story that had been quietly gaining traction for some time.
I grew up with my father’s belief that you work for what you get. Nothing is handed to you, and if it is, the foundation is weak. I’ve lived by that my whole life, and somewhere along the way I decided I wanted to make that road a little easier for other people. Living Ground is partly that wish. I’ve long imagined building something good and one day gifting it to the people who helped build it. But maybe life has other plans, and I need to allow those plans to unfold.
What I’m seeing now is how much I assume, and have assumed in the past. I’ve assumed the people around me understand what’s going on and why. Sometimes they may not, and I need to step back and remember that what’s obvious to me isn’t obvious to everyone. Or they may understand perfectly well and simply not want the gift. Either way, I’ve been deciding for them what they want, and that’s not my decision to make. Humbled!
If I’m honest, there’s some grief under all of this too. I’ve been carrying a picture of how things would unfold, and I’m having to let some of it go. Disappointment is easier for me than anger. When I get to anger, I feel wrong.
I’ve learned that when my reaction is bigger than what’s in front of me, I’m usually reacting to the past: an old hurt, a resentment, that “it’s not fair” feeling.
So I’ve been asking myself some honest questions as I work through this pressure point. Am I responding to what’s happening now, or to an old story? The story where I have to do everything myself, or where I expect others to step up and feel let down when they don’t. Or the one where I give generously and quietly expect something back, without ever saying out loud what that something is. Life is hard!
That last one, humbly, stings a bit. I’m an overly generous person and I’m glad of it. I want to give. I love to give. But I’m starting to see that generosity with unspoken expectations attached isn’t entirely a gift. Gifts are a tricky thing for us humans. They don’t always come back in kind, and sometimes they turn into a contract the other person never knew they’d signed. And maybe some of my gifts simply aren’t wanted.
My own seed coats
I think I have a few seed coats of my own.
One is believing that if I can see the vision clearly enough, everyone else will see it too. I can see what Living Ground can become, sometimes so vividly that I forget the people around me may be looking at a different picture. They might love this place, enjoy their work and care about what we’re building, and still have no intention of taking on a leadership role. That’s okay.
You can offer someone responsibility, but you can’t hand it to someone who doesn’t want it. I can teach, encourage and open doors, and whether anyone walks through is up to them. Maybe the people around me now aren’t the ones who will carry Living Ground forward. Maybe it will pass to people who haven’t arrived yet, people I haven’t even met. That’s not something I need to figure out now, or get wrapped up in. My job is to keep building something worth handing on, carry on with the mission, and trust that the right people will turn up when it’s time. I am just an instrument.
There’s something else I need to keep straight. Letting go of the gift doesn’t mean letting go of what I can reasonably expect from the work. Those are two different things, and I think I’ve had them tangled up. Nobody here owes me a share in my dream. But clear communication, reliability and respect are fair things to ask of anyone who works here, and I can ask for them plainly, without the old story attached. I suspect that tangle is part of why small things have felt so big.
And maybe my father wasn’t entirely wrong. People often value most what they’ve chosen and worked for themselves. The gift might already be happening, just not in the shape I pictured: fair pay, new skills, a beautiful place to work, a hand when life gets hard. I think that counts.
Another seed coat is how much I rely on reading people. My Spanish isn’t what I’d like it to be, so I’ve become very good at noticing body language, tone and small reactions, and mostly that serves me well. But when I’m tired and under pressure, I’m more likely to read a short answer or a flat expression through my own frustration. I live in Ecuador and work with people whose lives and upbringing and ways of doing things are different from mine, and a lot can get lost between us. What I take as rudeness may be shyness, or tiredness, or just a different way of speaking. And sometimes it might just be rudeness. But that isn’t a reflection of me.
So my practice is to ask more and assume less, to say plainly what I’m hoping for and then listen to the answer, even when it isn’t the one I wanted.
The seed doesn’t do it alone
When a seed starts to germinate, it leaks sugars and other compounds into the soil around it, and the microbes come. Bacteria and fungi gather around the sprouting seed and a little community forms there. Scientists call that zone the spermosphere. I love that word.
Living Ground was never meant to run on one person’s energy. But a healthy soil community isn’t a bunch of organisms all doing the same job or all wanting what the plant wants. They each have their own role and their own needs, and that’s why the whole thing works.
My part is to keep creating the conditions: good soil, nourishment, clear communication and fair boundaries. That last one is hard for me, but I’m learning, and I get it. I don’t get to decide how every living thing here will grow.
Roots first
I’m nearly sixty and I’m still meeting parts of myself that need attention. I don’t think that work ever ends, and lately I find that more comforting than discouraging.
In these last days before the workshop, I’d like to do what the seed does and put the roots down first. Before I rush into fixing or deciding or reacting, I want to get grounded in what’s actually happening now rather than what happened years ago. Then have the conversations that need having, calmly and clearly, and leave behind the baggage that doesn’t belong to the person in front of me. Any bigger decisions about people and roles can wait until after the workshop, when I’m rested and can see things more clearly.
The spa still needs finishing, the herbs still need gathering, and the gardens won’t wait while I sort out my feelings. But I’ve felt this before, right before something good came into the world, so I’m trusting it.
So this is where I am. I’ve been soaking it all up (that’s the imbibition), the pressure is building (that’s the turgor), and the seed coat is starting to crack. When it goes, I want my roots to go down first, into a spermosphere full of people and microbes and everything else that makes Living Ground what it is. I’d rather meet it like that than with my fists clenched.
A vulnerable share, but a necessary part of what’s being created.
