Weeding with compassion

 I was going through the archives of this blog today.

Over the last wee while, I have been distant from my creative side - work, life, the world - there are many excuses but are they worth not living my life? Not giving my brain the chance to  explore, express and enjoy itself.

The further I go back in my blog the  more I laugh and enjoy the enigma I was in those times - times when I had so few worries and cares, compared to now.

But these are my choices. Reconnecting is my choice too!

We now have AI in our lives and I am dedicated to utilizing this to free up my brain for more me time. So I took AI back with me in my blog draft archive to see if we could revive and publish some old, half-finsihed (and sometimes not even half-finished) posts.

It's working! And it's been fun!

We found many posts that we've polished and published. 

We also found this one from 25 January 2009 (!); just a title.

Weeding with Compassion. 

When we stumbled upon this one, the AI already had a pretty good sense of my writing style, patterns, directions and choice - so I thought, let's see what it thinks I would have written in a post with this title even though we have ZERO notes to go with it.

This is what happened... 

Presented with the mysterious title Weeding with Compassion, AI offered up three possible interpretations. And honestly, each of them felt like something I could have meant back in 2009. Possibly even all at once. Because that’s the kind of thematic multitasker I apparently was (according to AI!) —and maybe still am.

Here are the contenders:

 

1. Gardening. Literally.

Weeding your actual garden with compassion. Not for the weeds, mind you—although we’ll get to that—but for yourself. The gentle art of kneeling in the dirt, pulling up roots while simultaneously untangling your own. It’s hard to be a perfectionist with dirt under your nails. And maybe that’s the point.

Could I have been talking about sustainable gardening practices? About resisting the urge to nuke your dandelions into oblivion with chemicals? Maybe. Or perhaps it was simply about turning weeding into a mindful, meditative act. Something I chose to do with presence instead of treating it like punishment from the gods of domestic order.

2. The Social Metaphor.

Here’s where it gets spikier. What if “weeding” was about people? Habits? Social groups? Emotional entanglements? You know—the “friends” you’ve kept around because you’ve always kept them around, even though every encounter leaves you feeling like a trampled daisy.

In that case, with compassion becomes the key. Not ghosting. Not rage-quitting. Just... gently recognising that something isn’t nourishing you anymore, and that it’s okay to let go without blame. That’s a harder kind of pruning, and one I wasn’t always brave enough to do. But maybe I was writing my way toward it.

3. Internal Thought Management.

Weeding the inner landscape. The beliefs, the self-talk, the assumptions. The overgrowth of “not good enough,” “too much,” or “never going to.” Removing those invasive species from the garden of your brain—with compassion—rather than yanking them out while berating yourself for ever letting them grow in the first place.

Honestly, this one hits a bit close to home. Especially when paired with the other unfinished draft from the same day, “Negative Thoughts Directed at Ourselves.” It seems 2009 Me had some themes going. And bless her for that. She was really trying.

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So, which one did I originally mean?

I truly have no idea. But in the spirit of compassionate weeding, I’m choosing not to worry about it. Instead, I’m embracing all three—because they each speak to something true.

Maybe Weeding with Compassion is just what it says on the tin: the reminder that growth sometimes requires letting go—but that even in the letting go, we can be kind.

To the weeds.
To each other.
To ourselves.

 

Now I’m curious—
What are you weeding right now?

Is it your inbox? Your garden? Your inner critic?
Are you doing it with compassion, or are you still in that rip-it-out-and-salt-the-earth phase (no judgment, we’ve all been there)?

Maybe today’s the day to pause and ask:
What’s worth keeping, what’s safe to release, and how can I be gentler about the whole messy, miraculous process?

Feel free to leave a comment. Or just let the question sit with you while you drink your tea and stare thoughtfully at your metaphorical (or actual) compost heap.

We’re all tending to something.
Let’s try to do it kindly.