I went to cut back the herb garden today.
The basils with their flowering stacks of seeds were up to my shoulders and the sage has become woody. The fennel has sprouted big, yellow flowers and the oregano, thyme, and tarragon has become lost somewhere beneath the tangle of taller things. It’s certainly time to cut it back – past time, really.
But as I looked it over, assessing how to begin, something green, fat, and squishy caught my eye, munching ravenously on a stalk of milkweed.
It was a Monarch Butterfly caterpillar, all chubby and weirdly adorable.
I had left a small patch of milkweed that sprouted volunteer in the little front herb garden just for the Monarchs, in hopes of attracting their tawny beauty into that space. But as many wild plants do, it spread, popping up between the basils and spreading their branches up beyond their herbaceous neighbors.
One patch had become seven somehow, maybe more, and at some point, I could not keep up with cutting it down. So, it mingled, interspersing itself with the herbs as they grew wild. Soon, a veritable aromatic jungle had grown up together, with towers of milkweed poking through. And the Monarchs came; they drank deeply with the bees from the basil blooms, and laid their eggs upon the underside of the milkweed.
And now, here was I, ready to cut it all down. One chubby fat caterpillar, two, three… seven… eleven… thirteen…
Oh, how could I do such a thing? Mama Monarch, in her maternal wisdom, saw in my herb jungle not a matted, towering tangle, but a home. She entrusted my wild, unruly herb garden with a great number of her precious children. These small, weirdly cute green chompy blob monsters single-handedly cutting down the milkweed in their hunger-fueled feeding fury found refuge in this matted up, tangled and wild space.
And I saw how the whole garden, tangled up as it was, supported the milkweed and protected it. Even if I just cut out the basils, the nourishing milkweeds would be put at risk. This wasn’t just a neglected herb garden turned jungle; this was a whole ecosystem I had accidentally created.
Somehow the mess was home to at least a handful of bee species, two handfuls of butterflies, and to the caterpillars. It attracted the aphids which attracted the ladybugs and their offspring. It housed the biggest, fattest, healthiest grasshoppers I’ve ever seen, with colors I’ve never seen. Even the hummingbirds were happy to drink from the variety of blooms that burst out from the disordered depths.
The mess made them grow. More than that, the mess protected them, and made them chubby; the mess made them flourish.
—-
I realized this week that the post-partum depression has returned. It took me a week or so to recognize it, because it’s flavor is different than before. Getting good sleep, having good support, and grief have colored it pale blue instead its usual fiery red. And though it still is making my temper short and my patience thin, it doesn’t taste like rage this time – it savors more as constant sadness and lack of energy. And I guess that makes sense.
I’ve feared this mess. This tangled, matted jungle of emotions that grew up after my previous pregnancies and kept me from considering having more children for soo long. I did not trust myself, ashamed of the mother I was – of the mother I couldn’t seem to be. I even stopped wearing a cross necklace for a while… thought I’d just bring shame to the family name if anyone knew I called myself a Christian.
That was a hard season.
But there was just something about those chubby little caterpillars chomping on the milkweed in that matted, tangled garden…
Perhaps these beautiful children that God, in his own perfect version of maternal wisdom, saw within the matted up, overgrown, wild spaces of my heart not a mess needing managed, but a habitat.
A habitat in which these children wouldn’t just survive, but would become chubby.
I don’t mean to say my kids are fat. (Though I will admit to being partial to a chubby baby, all rolls and dimples, big-cheeked and blossoming.)
I mean to write of flourishing – to write of their beautiful souls.
Perhaps it’s weird to think about souls becoming chubby and fat like a caterpillar, I know. But I’m telling you, there was just something about those chubby little caterpillars chomping on the milkweed in that matted, tangled garden…
They were beautiful in their chunky little way. Their only job being to grow fat, to consume, to prepare to change. To change in order to fly.
And what job do my children have but to grow? Grow in wisdom and in stature; in favor with God and with their fellow humans? (Luke 2:52)
What if the things I think are a mess within my own heart, mind and soul, are the very things that nourish theirs? What if my struggle is the very food their souls need to consume to become chubby? What if it’s not in the “Pinterest perfect” they will flourish, but in the “getting up again” and the “not giving up”? Could it be that this very mess I am entering into once more is exactly the sort of habitat that will build them up?
I’ve tried so hard to grieve well… to show them a good example. To be light in the darkness.
But maybe this recurrent, hormonal depression isn’t a thing I should fear.
A thing I should tame, certainly.
But a thing I should be ashamed of? A thing I should pretend doesn’t exist? Or pretend I don’t exist out of the shame of it, until it passes?
Yeah, it’s messy. But maybe it’s the very sort of thing that might make my children’s souls become chubby.
To witness the struggle, to consume the apologies, to walk with me as I get back up again after every failure.
Maybe that’s the stuff that makes our kids’ souls fat. Flourishing. Preparing to change – to change, in order to fly.
There’s just something about those chubby, chomping caterpillars…
I’m learning to treasure the beauty in this grief.
Maybe this time, I can find the beauty in depression, too.
Written: 7/17/26
G&P,
-SF
Cotton Ribbons 