Papaya trees!

For my older daughter Amalia’s 19^th birthday, my 18-year-old younger daughter Libby bought her a compost shed. What better celebration for the earth than a girl getting an ugly black plastic box to recycle garbage rather a coupon for the modern equivalent to Chinese foot-binding: epoxy-glued fake nails. The compost shed was a great success. Suddenly, we had less garbage to throw out and all this rich compost for our garden. What we didn’t know was that slugs had tunneled out of the compost shed and into my husband Jonny’s garage where he keeps his Harley Davidson. What was more important? Saving the environment or saving my marriage?

I had to get rid of the compost shed, unfortunately, but what grew out of the compost? Three papaya trees! (Drum roll…here they are in the picture.) I’d eaten a few papayas and threw them out in the compost and voila.

What’s the lesson? Out of garbage grows beauty. So, if you feel like s**t, you are being fertilized to grow. There’s no short cut here. We have to feel like crap to change. We have to disintegrate, dive into the darkness, struggle, scuffle, and tussle with our demons before we can change into something else. We have to hit the s**t to get ourselves even willing to do something different.

If we’re struggling with a decision, a person, a place, a situation, then we can remind ourselves that it’s for a positive purpose. We might not feel it now but everything will be OK. Is OK, even when we don’t really feel it. We have to have patience to sit in the sludge.

Tool for Tuesday: If you feel like s**t, you are being fertilized to grow.