The connection between self-care, mental health, and houseplants.

I bought a basil plant from Trader Joe’s.

My family has a history of killing basil plants. My mother had purchased several basil plants from Trader Joe’s over the years and never seemed to be able to find the appropriate light for it in our home. I had inadvertently continued this tradition.

But this one would be different, I told myself. This one would LIVE. Maybe even THRIVE. I watched its leaves flutter slightly as it sat in the cup holder of my Prius on the drive home and made Big Plans for it.

When the basil plant was Bright and New I coddled it. And by coddle, I mean I gave it the basic houseplant necessities needed to keep it alive. I watered it regularly. I checked if it was getting the correct amount of light in the window and adjusted its position accordingly. I picked off any sickly-looking leaves. Compared to the inconsistent care I gave my regular houseplants, this was coddling. My actual occupations are generally garden-related, but as many Professional gardeners will confess to you, their at-home flora lives a subsistence lifestyle while their professional green spaces flourish.

Then my basil plant went from being a New Project, filled with hope and high expectations, to an in-progress project. In-progress projects are less engaging. Ask the scores of unfinished Medium posts that greet me whenever I open the Stories part of my profile.

This is not to say I forgot about the basil plant completely. It just joined the realms of other houseplants that I pay attention to inconsistently. Sometimes I would forget to water it, and it would wilt. Sometimes I stripped it of too many of its leaves to make pesto. Sometimes I’d forget about it for a couple weeks at a time, only to rescue its brown and withered form from the brink of death with some adequate watering.

Oh well, you think. Maybe you’re just not cut out for houseplants.

And I would have left it at that if I hadn’t noticed some parallels between how I took care of the basil plant and how I took care of myself.

When I start a New Project, I am diligent. I am excited; I am happy. The new project signifies Hope for Something Better. Some how my mind has equated “doing well” by my standards on a project with leading to a Better Me.

If I can keep this basil plant alive, it will mean I finally have my shit together, I think. If I can stick to a routine in one aspect of my life, the other aspects will fall into place.

See “scores of unfinished Medium posts,” above.

Some weeks, I meet my exercise goals, but my work suffers. Other weeks, I meet my work goals, but my exercise suffers. Other times, I have Very Social weeks, and my energy level suffers.

Sometimes I do too much. Sometimes I do too much of one thing and not enough of another. Sometimes I find myself dried out and withered in a corner, too tired to heat up even a frozen dinner.

Growing up, my mother did not often put herself first. She has had caretaking responsibilities since her younger siblings were born, starting just 2 years after her. She cooked and cleaned and baby sat. As she grew older, she became a much-needed listening ear to them, whether they asked her or not. Later, she became a teacher, working hours of unpaid overtime just to come home and fall asleep on the couch at 6pm, exhausted. She always cared deeply for her students, even and especially the ones that were challenging, and gave the majority of her energy to work she believed in. The rest of her energy tended to go to her family. I rarely saw the pieces of her energy that went to her. She was a caretaker, through and through.

The basil plant wilted in the window.

My mother was generally happy. She made sacrifices for things she believed in, and was often met with unconditional love and community because she did so. She chose her life and I believe she is at peace with her decisions. But I spent years watching her forego meals and sleep when something needed to be done. Weekends were spent preparing for the haul of the next week: groceries, laundry, cleaning the house. Rest was likely. Fun was optional, something to do when everything else had been done and you still had energy leftover. I recognize this isn’t an uncommon role for parents. But I made the mistake of thinking her decisions had to be mine.

I am good at giving myself over to professional projects. In work, I am very consistent in Getting Things Done, though not with any consistent work pattern. In a time-crunch, which I regularly find myself in, I will forego everything but the basics to Get Things Done. Sometimes, like my mother, I will forego the basics. The supervisors that work best with me trust me to get stuff done, but are blissfully unaware of the disorganized and irregular internal processes it takes for me to make this possible. Or rather, they know that they exist, but they know better than to ask what they are.

I am not good at consistently putting work into the project that is me. I support the concept, and am good at encouraging others towards self-care, but do not regularly keep myself to that standard.

I am learning to pay attention to the unanswered texts in my phone, the drooping leaves, the missed meetings, the dry soil.

I am tired of my basil plant being on the brink of death. I am tired of running myself into the ground only to realize belatedly that my eyes are barely level with the soil surface.

I will leaves those emails unread for the night and read a book instead. I will finalize my work project in the morning, after a good night’s sleep. I will send my energy to the good leaves, and discard the bad. I will drink water not because I’m desperately dehydrated, but because I already have been. I will sit in the window and bathe in the light.