I’m looking out my window as I type this, watching snow slowly decorate the juniper trees across the street. It feels like an odd time to be writing about planting and growing, but (a) I’m trying to be a “good therapist” and stay out ahead of my blog posts this year, and (b) I just received a beautiful assortment of seed packets in the mail, each decorated with a cheerful picture and a heart-palpitating description of the July garden to come.

Our last frost in the mountains of Colorado is tardy—the end of May is usually a safe bet—so late March is on my calendar as a goal date to sow the more fiddly seeds in my overly ambitious collection. Last year, I started snapdragons on March 24. Snaps are divas, and they require 8–10 weeks inside before they can be transplanted into the big bad world. 

July, here we come!

Starting seeds always makes me think about what we’re cultivating—unconsciously or intentionally. In The Self-Compassion Daily Journal¹, Dr. Diana Hill likens our thoughts to seeds and the mind to a garden, asking, “What seeds are you choosing to water?”

Let’s go on a little mental journey using Dr. Hill’s metaphor. If you don’t love visualizations, you can write or sketch for this part, or reflect on the questions while you go for a chilly walk.

Exercise: What’s Growing in your Mind Garden?

• If you were to imagine or draw the garden of your mind, what would it look like? 
  
  
• If your thoughts are seeds waiting to sprout, what’s the most common vegetation we'll see in your internal raised beds come spring?
  
  
• Which plants return most reliably? 
  
  
• Which plants have you labeled “flowers” and which have you labeled “weeds”—the thoughts you greet with joy and the ones you try to eradicate? 
  
  
• What seems to thrive no matter the season?

In my literal yard, the plant I’m always battling has a name: bindweed. If you're a Southwestern gardener, you’ve probably met this Audrey II-esque little menace. It has arrowhead-shaped leaves and pink-and-white flowers, and it grows pretty much anywhere it damn well pleases. We have gravel on the south side of our house, and bindweed LOVES it there. I’ve been in an epic showdown with that patch since we moved in. I even developed a technique called the “kick and pick” where I use the heel of my boot to move gravel aside, then pull as much of the devilish little plant as I can. 

You probably have a mental equivalent of bindweed. It’s that one thought, or series of thoughts, you’re always fighting. You pull and dig and spray vinegar, and maybe even ask your husband to buy you a propane weed burner—but the thought keeps coming back.

In more cognitive approaches to therapy, thoughts are seen as the problem. The solution is to debate or disprove “negative” thoughts—to pull them up by the roots and eradicate them for good. In ACT, thoughts themselves are not the problem. Instead, the battle with our thoughts is what causes suffering—all the pulling, digging, spraying, and wrestling that leaves us with sore backs and scraped-up fingers. 

Going back to Dr. Hill’s metaphor, the more energy we put into the plants we don’t want, the more they control our day-to-day existence. The technical term for this is fusion—when there’s no separation between us and our thoughts. When we’re fused, our thoughts feel like absolute truth.

We can become fused not only with the visible leaves of a thought, but also with its deeper roots. I see this root system all the time in my therapy practice. The women I work with often struggle with thoughts tied to self-worth and a chronic sense of not measuring up. At their core, those thoughts sound like:

• “I’m not enough.”
  
  
• “I’m worthless.”
  
  
• “In order to be worthy, I have to work harder, do better, be perfect.”

Just like a sneaky bindweed sprout hiding next to the marigolds, these deeper beliefs aren’t always easy to spot. Most people notice the day-to-day thoughts more readily:

• “My friends are all mad at me.”
  
  
• “I’m not doing a good job at work.” 
  
  
• “I didn’t keep up on the group ride.”

These thoughts are just the visible vine, with the deeper “not good enough” root system running underneath. When we don’t recognize the roots feeding the leaves, we end up fighting the same plant over and over again, pouring our energy into a battle we can’t win.

Let’s be real: I’m probably never going to stop fighting the bindweed in my garden and in the gravel patch. But last summer I noticed something interesting: the beds overflowing with sunflowers, marigolds, cosmos, and zinnias had very little bindweed. Where I devoted time and attention to those bright, vivacious annuals, the bindweed didn't flourish.

Certain thoughts—especially the ones rooted in old stories about worth and adequacy—are perennial. They return in new seasons, sometimes in slightly different shapes. But the goal was never a flawless, weed-free garden. It was a living one—imperfect, unruly, human.

This brings us back to Dr. Hill’s suggestion that we be intentional about the seeds we water. When we spend less energy battling our thoughts and more energy cultivating what matters, our lives grow richer and more vital. Loosening our grip on the metaphorical propane burner means we free up energy—to plant sunflowers, water marigolds, and tend what truly matters.

So as you move through the coming weeks—whether your soil is still frozen or already warming—I wonder what you might choose to cultivate. Not because you’ve finally gotten rid of the weeds, but because the flowers deserve your attention.

Growth doesn't always look dramatic. Sometimes it looks like winter’s stillness, or starting seeds indoors while the cold lingers. Sometimes it looks like noticing a familiar thought and deciding, gently, not to do battle today.

The snow is still falling outside my window. The garden beds are cozy under their thick white blanket. My seed packets are bundled sleepily in the bottom drawer of my desk. For now, everything is quiet, dormant. But beneath the stillness, preparation is already underway—both in nature and in us.

References
1. Hill, Diana. The Self-Compassion Daily Journal. New Harbinger Publications, 2024.