Unearthing the Support to Rest and Recover

Ironman Hard

At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and my first year as a principal, my husband and I bought a home. We called it the Sky House because from the back yard we had an unexpected, unobstructed view of the sky. Sky over pine trees to one side, sky over a neighborhood on a hill in the distance, and sky over mountains to the other side. We had a fenced yard with new green grass and a framed picture of the sky. It felt incredible.

Two years later, our yard was brown and full of weeds, there was still nothing on my bedroom walls, and I had forgotten about the sky. The stress of parenting and leading a school in an ongoing pandemic was taking a toll on my physical and emotional health. I felt anxious. I was experiencing joint pain in my wrists, shoulders, and hips. I had pain in my legs and back without an apparent injury. I was simultaneously exhausted, and unable to relax. It was as if my nervous system was stuck in a fight or flight response.

The last two years had felt like the first two legs of an Ironman Triathlon, a body and soul crushing race that begins with a 2-mile swim, then a 112-mile bike ride, then a 26-mile run. My physical and emotional reserves had been depleted early in the first leg, when necessities were out of stock at stores and schools were closing their doors for the rest of the year. I had to stay alive in open water for two more miles, and then incredibly stagger out and start riding a bike toward remote and later in person-learning. I had not signed up for or trained for this, but I was here, and I was weary. What I needed was a way to rest and recover from the race.

Rest and Recovery

One of the systems of support at my school that helps create safe and healthy learning environments are classroom charters. Each classroom creates a charter, or agreement about how they want to feel, behave, and resolve conflicts together. Classroom charters promote a sense of safety, comfort, belonging, and empowerment at school. Individual classrooms begin to take on unique environments shaped by their agreements. What if I could extend this same system of support at school, to my home? What if I could create a physical space of rest and recovery from the race?

My bedroom was the only room in the house that did not yet have anything on the walls. It was mostly bare and uninspiring. I had never thought about how I wanted to feel in this space, but I knew what it felt like now. My bedroom was a place where I sat and worried about what was waiting for me the next day. It was like a pit stop Taking a cue from my classroom teachers, I started out by thinking about how I wanted to feel in my room and writing it down. I decided I wanted to feel still, present, and supported. I thought about what would help me feel this way and after jotted down elements of nature. I loved being surrounded by trees, standing at the edge of the water, and staring into the expanse of the sky. There was a special kind of quiet awe there, and a wisdom that shifted my perspective and brought me to the present moment. How could I capture that feeling in my room? What elements of nature could I bring into my room? To investigate this further, I consulted with Amazon. Amazon suggested natural lighting, soft textures, and natural wood. With just a few clicks, my purchases would arrive on my porch and then in my room like magic.

Right away I knew Amazon was onto something important because after adding in a few elements of nature and natural colors, my room took on a marked sense of calm and separation from a hard day. I hung up macrame art with long fabric tassels with wooden beads on the walls. I hung a large forest print tapestry that looked like the view out a window into sky with pine treetops and foggy mountains. When I looked around and spent time in my room, I felt my breaths slow and deepen and my chest and stomach begin to relax.

What it Takes

Creating a bedroom charter made a marked improvement in my ability to feel at rest in my room. What would happen if I made a backyard charter too? Inspired by my previous success, I wrote down my thoughts and decided that I wanted to feel grounded, healthy, and inspired in my back yard. I knew things would be more complicated outdoors because my healthy green grass was not going to just appear on my porch.  I sensed that I had something to learn from nature about being grounded. What did it take to have green grass and to keep it? What was the nature of weeds and what did it take to keep them from coming in and taking over? To find out, I consulted with Google.

Google said that the best time to plant grass is September and that I would need to start by removing the weeds that had grown in my yard. Then Google said I should aerate the soil, spray on a fertilizer and plant new seeds, making sure they sprout at least 40 days before the first frost of the year. This response was both intriguing and distressing. It was late October now and I was going to need to act quickly if I was going to be able to outrun the frost.

After an extensive review of customer ratings I added Grandpa’s Weeder-the Original Stand-up Weed Puller to my cart. This would mark the beginning of what would become a harrowing journey of self-discovery and the untimely destruction of the back yard.

Growing Good

By the time Grandpa’s Weeder was finally delivered to the porch, it had been weeks. I already had the weed treatment, fertilizer, seeds, and handheld spreader and aerator that Google said I needed. I already learned that tools would be important because I had already broken a nail and made a big hole in my yard trying to pull out a dandelion root with my bare hands. The right tool would probably make the difference between a healthy outdoor hobby and back-breaking work.

The night my weeder arrived I went from my commute to the back yard to try it out. I wouldn’t need to read the instructions or even change out of my work clothes because I had watched plenty of customer videos and I was running out of daylight and grass planning season.

With dusk coming on I held the four-foot-tall tool that looked like a rake on the top and a claw on the bottom and easily found an oversized dandelion to practice on. I pushed the tool into the middle of the plant with my foot, and it effortlessly pierced the ground and sank down under my weight. I tilted the weeder back, and it unearthed the weed in one swoop and small snap, holding the whole root in its claw. There had been something growing in my yard that did not belong there, and I had used a tool to pull it out. I was in awe.                                                                                                                             

With daylight fading I didn’t need to look far to find another weed. I pierced the middle, pushed down, and leaned back to reveal a complex and intricate root. Under the ground, the weeds had been silently taking over my lawn and without intervention, nothing would change. When it was too dark to see the ground, I looked up for what felt like the first time in a long time. The sky was immense, and the air was cool and gusting. Grey and white clouds were rolling steadily over an ombre of darkening blue. Standing next to a pile of weeds I had pulled from the soil, and remembering the sky, I felt my chest soften inside with something like hope.

All Bad

I was looking forward to the next weekend to work in my back yard. It felt good to have a wellness project and to remember the sky. In the daylight I would be able to take a closer look at the lawn and plan for where to start. I could already hear the satisfying snap and swoop of taking back my yard. I sensed that nature had something to teach me about rest and recovery.  If I could restore my back yard to health, couldn’t I heal myself too?

When the weekend arrived, I learned things in the yard were much worse than they appeared. There were unknown species of weeds in all sizes silently converging underground in what seemed like one massive root system, reaching out and connecting with each other. There were weeds on weeds on weeds. How had they gotten into my healthy lawn and why had they come for my grass? I was astounded.

It took two lawn treatments, two more weekends, and ten compost bags to remove the uninvited plants in my yard and now it was almost November. I wanted my back yard to become a place of recovery, but apparently first I had to destroy all the bad things that didn’t belong there and actively keep them from coming back. This felt like a metaphor for something.

Drilling Down

When the weeds were mostly dead, it was finally time to aerate. The plan was to pierce a row of five-inch holes into the ground so that water and nutrients could reach through the compacted soil. I had already passed on spending hundreds of dollars for a drill like machine that would plug into an outlet and pulverize the soil. If restoring my lawn was going to teach me how to heal myself, then I wasn’t going to need some kind of power tool, I would stick with a low-tech tool that I could use with my hands.  

Wasn’t this a lot like what I was trying to do in physical therapy? Every week through targeted low back exercise, I had been bringing oxygen rich blood to the area and was strengthening the muscles that would in turn protect me from injury. Bit by bit, I was creating an environment in my body where healing could take place. Wasn’t I doing the same thing in my back yard?

I started in one corner of the yard with the aerator that looked like a rake with a row of sharp stakes. I stepped down purposefully on the metal bar and made my first holes. In some spots the aerator sunk easily into the soil, in others I had to jump up and down and struggle. Slowly, and dripping in sweat, I managed to aerate a small section of my yard. I was proud but concerned. This task seemed to require muscles that I did not yet have and time I did not have either.

My children found me standing outside with hands on my hips, catching my breath, and looking despairingly at the yard. An enthusiastic voice came from behind me, “Can I help?” After a short lesson, my children were ready to take a turn aerating. My son held the spikes to the ground and stepped up on the bar, but nothing happened. He wiggled and jumped, but the soil barely loosened. After several tries and a helping push down on the handle, the aerator finally sunk down. My daughter took a turn in the struggle too but having estimated that I could make 10 rows in the time that they could make two, I took the tool back.

The more I aerated, the more it sunk in just how bad the back yard had become. The surface was no longer grass, but a disturbing layer of dead weeds and roots several inches thick. It was like a thick layer of decaying carpet that would need to be ripped off to restore the floor underneath. Nothing good was going to be able to grow out of this and poking holes into it was not going to help. I was unsettled.

What was nature trying to teach me about my health. Was it worse than I thought? Was it too late? Would I have to start from scratch? If there was any hope for my grass, I would need to be able to get down to the healthy soil, wherever that was.

Breaking Down

I am not sure how it happened, but I apparently forgot I was supposed to be resting and recovering from the Ironman. Instead, I inadvertently created another leg of the race where you were supposed to rip out your entire yard and then plant it again in the winter. I had been outside for hours, breaking a sweat, and raking the earth with all my might, trying to get to the healthy soil underneath the carpet of weeds when my husband appeared outside. He looked around, eyes wide and said, “Oh, wow!” I started to explain why ripping up the yard was a good thing and that it was all part of the plan. Then I admitted that it was a horrible plan and that I had underestimated how hard it would be. I looked around at the momentous task around me and wondered if this was the moment that I would have to admit defeat. My husband was impressed at what I had accomplished, then suggested we cut our losses and hire a professional to take over in the spring.

For a reason I did not yet understand, I changed my mind when my husband went back inside and went back to raking the lawn with a renewed intensity.  I could do this, and I would do this, it was going to be awful and hard, and then it was going to be beautiful. Also, I had to do this now because I was out of time. It was almost December and the frost could come any day. Something sinister had come for my lawn when I wasn’t paying attention and destroyed it and now it was my responsibility to bring it back to health. I knew this experience would teach me an important lesson about my own healing and push me to the edge of what I was capable of. So, I put my head down, ripped up my yard for three more hours, and blew out most of the muscles in my body.

The next day, I threw out my back. I had big plans for the day. I planned to go straight from martial arts with the children, to a few appointments, and then to the Humane Society to meet and possibly adopt our new family dog. Instead, without the use of my protective muscles, my back was unprepared for the demand of the sidekick that would strain my back. I kicked, I felt the pain, I fell to the floor.

Now, I could not bend down so I needed my children to help to put on my socks and shoes. Now I could not stand up straight, so my chiropractor sent a note to my other providers, so they were aware of my injury. Now I could not get out my chair in the waiting room, so in physical therapy I would learn how to stand up from sitting with my nose over my toes. I would experience a new low on my way out when my doctor looked at me with concern and offered me a cane. I was dismayed.

Now in therapy, I would reflect on how I was feeling about trying to do a thing, failing miserably at it, and then injuring myself. My doctor would ask me what I would say to one of my students or children if this happened to them.

Now at school I would put a brave effort to limp around the halls with the help of ice packs and aspirin. But when I didn’t slow down the following week either, my injury would rebound. Then the school nurse would help me carry my bag to my car. Then my children would help me get out of the seat, and then my husband would help me to get into bed. I was broken.

For the Birds

I was still trying to process what nature might be trying to teach me. I had been trying to recover, but instead I had injured my back and destroyed my yard. I had done too much, and I had hurt myself. For a reason I did not yet understand I fixed my mind on planting the seeds in the winter anyway. This project had been awful and hard, and it was not going to be beautiful after all, but I was going to finish this. The next weekend my children helped me put on my shoes and shuffle to the back yard where I sprayed grass seed onto my ripped-up lawn using a handheld seeder. It didn’t matter anymore if I had done it right, or if it was going to look good. It only mattered that I finished it and that I learned the lesson I knew would follow.

As it happened, what would follow was hundreds of birds. The first time I saw a flock of sparrows fly away when I opened the back door, I was enchanted. Moments later, dozens of 4-inch-long brown birds were back, hopping and scratching and foraging. The next day, and the next, the sparrows returned in increasing numbers for the winter buffet that I had unintentionally laid out for them to eat. I was astonished.

Learning the Lesson

The grass that I injured myself and ruined my yard to plant, never grew. Except for a tuft of blades that grew in a crevice near the patio, there would be nothing to show. The grass could not grow because the seeds had not been planted in healthy soil at the proper time, and because they had been eaten by the birds.

Maybe nature was teaching me that I will need to take an active role in creating and keeping the optimal environment and conditions for my health and my growth. Weeds are coming, and I will need to address them at the root.

Maybe nature was teaching me that I didn’t have all the answers about how to heal and that I will need to take time to learn and prepare. I will need to gain knowledge, understanding, strength, and use the correct tools to be successful. My bare hands are not going to cut it and the birds are coming.

Maybe nature was teaching me that rest and recovery happen in their own time and in an optimal order. First weed, then aerate, then fertilize, and at the proper time, plant the seeds. The natural laws that govern the seasons determine when grass goes dormant and foraging birds grow hungry. No amount of will or work will change what is not in my control.

Wasn’t that what it would take to rest and recover? Remove the foods and thoughts that aren’t healthy and commit to physical and emotional discomfort to grow stronger. I would not be able to bypass rest, I will need wait the whole time it will take to heal?

Maybe nature was also teaching me that I am not alone. I am supported through an extraordinary and intricate network of roots. I will need to reach out and connect with the support that is already around me to heal.

Two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ironman race continues, but I am supported. My school community is shining brightly and my bedroom is beautiful. My body pain is information, and my back yard is dormant; they will rest and recover over the winter, and in the spring they will be stronger than before.