Persephone’s Greenhouse

and how the world is a depressing (and sometimes anti-trans) place

I’m in a moment of struggle where coming up with something positive and light-hearted is a stretch for me.

Here was the plan – I wanted to build a platform to encourage and inspire me to write, to put my creativity out to the world, and to create a space where others could see the full dimension of a human who is also a transgender person.

Here is the problem – life.

More aptly put, I read a recent account of someone who went to their doctor, and the doctor asked what was making them feel so awful. “Capitalism,” was their reply.

What’s making me feel like this? Capitalism, for sure, but also a couple other items.

It’s almost spring, but we’re still in the Persephone months.

I learned this terminology from Eliot Coleman, who is a big name in organic farming in all four seasons. The Persephone months, specifically, are those over the harshest, coldest months of winter when those of us in the northern hemisphere receive the fewest hours of daylight (often less than ten hours per day). Things in the garden at this time of the year aren’t growing above ground, even if their root systems benefit from the cold and the dark. We can’t see that happening. And here in the Pacific Northwest, where it should be raining and not freezing, it is, instead, snowing still. It’s March, and we have been getting snow regularly. The snow isn’t sticking around for long, but it’s a constant reminder that winter isn’t ready to let go.

What should I be doing? Obviously, I should have my spring seeds started in those little pots in the kitchen window with their heat mat warming them from below. Duh. I should be excited about spring coming. I should be planning the whole damn garden on paper with colored pencils and copies of previous year’s gardens to keep me from putting carrots where the onions have been. I should be drooling over seed catalogues and descriptions of new plants to buy.

Kale and broccoli seedlings from last year.

I should be getting ahead in the yard and garden, cleaning up all the things I didn’t quite finish at the end of the last season, prepping paths and clearing out the growth of those damnable laurels that keep coming back whenever I look the other way. I should be yanking out blackberry roots and long runs of ivy from the fence that leads into the untamed woods behind our property. I should pick up the stray pots and plant tags strewn in corners where the winter windstorms left them.

I should have the greenhouse cleaned up.

Oh.

About that.

The greenhouse is damaged.

That used to be a roof, but the snow was too heavy.

Which is another major source of destabilizing grief that prevents me from getting things done that really ought to be done already. Yet again, thinking of snow in the PNW, we have gotten more of it, more frequently than ever before in the last five years. It used to be a once-every-seven-years kind of thing, and now it happens regularly enough that my kids look forward to sledding and building snowpeople with it. They know it will come.

So yes, I figured it would, and yes, I should have prepared better, and yes, when it snowed really hard in December I should have layered up and set aside my horrible head cold and gone outside to brush the snow off the roof of the greenhouse.

But I didn’t.

And the roof gave way under the weight of all that compact snow. It might have happened the very night it fell, in which case there’s nothing I could have done short of standing outside all night, a sentry in the silent garden, warding off each snowflake as they fell hard and fast. That’s not realistic, and I was feverish. The snow fell, it compacted, and the greenhouse roof suffered dearly. The damage is so bad, in fact, that I’m not sure I can salvage the structure at all.

It is crushing. Yes, you can laugh at the pun.

I’ve had friends tell me they know I will rebuild, better and stronger. I’ve had offers of help and money to replace it, and here I still sit, doing nothing, just mourning the loss of what I had and how I loved it. I am stuck in my immobility.

And then I had surgery.

More on this later, but one of the important aspects of surgery that almost no one talks about is post-op depression, and I am right in the eye of that particular hurricane. Worse than feeling sad is feeling almost nothing, other than the twinging pains of recovery in my body. They are the reminder to move slow, to rest and heal, to stay out of the places where I feel productive and worthwhile, which further slows my ability to move on from this feeling.

Depression is real. Post-op depression is very real. I am still learning how to talk about it and not get lost in the stigmas and biases we all have of these terms. Rather than face the how and why and what of depression, we almost always turn to changing our moods. So we could solve all of this by simply turning on a TV or computer and…

I am crushed again by the horrific nature of anti-trans rhetoric and bills across the United States.

Ari Drennen @AriDrennen

Just like @RollingStone, the @thedailybeast bowed to right wing pressure to change their headline. This is more than mere cowardice. This is joining in the campaign to reduce the very existence of trans people to a matter of ideological disagreement.

Despite living in a state that supports and protects my rights as a trans person, I am inundated with news about all of the other places not far off where transgender rights and access to healthcare and existence as a whole are being debated without trans voices being included in those debates. There have been the resonant voices of some trans individuals and allies, for which I am so grateful and inspired, but all too often we are drowned out by misinformation and hatred.

To catch up on what’s happening with these things, read about 'Shouts Echo In Kentucky's Legislature As Anti-trans Bill Passes House With Nobody Having Read It' and 'Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely', and also 'Disney-backed Florida legislator proposes major expansion of "Don't Say Gay" law'. And definitely read 'Florida introduces bill that would remove trans kids from parents.'

Now what?

I can’t fix where I’m at right now, and that’s okay. So many of us are caught up in hustle culture, in being productive to be valuable, which means we’ve lost touch with how to sit still and be present in the moment. It’s uncomfortable and difficult, and it would be so much easier to simply move on to the next thing.

In honor of the discomfort, I offer no resolution to the weather, the wrecked greenhouse, the semi-useless condition of my healing body, or the state of an angry world. It’s not my job to fix those things, and I don’t have to feel bad about this unresolvedness.

But I am open to change. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.

Your trans friend,

Robin