Heliena
Leafing Out
I'm Heliena, or Liena.
I started life as a feral Detroit street kid, doing martial arts, cleaning stalls so I could ride horses, and navigating a family that resembled compacted clay... I couldn't tell you when the generational violence, alcoholism, and instability started in my family, it's just always been there, solidifying under its own weight for generations. But to my benefit, both of my parents at least knew that something wasn't right. For all their faults, I couldn't have made it out without those first promises to "not be like their parents." For all their faults, I owe them that.
There was also a noteworthy complexity to my childhood that's a little hard to convey meaningfully to outsiders. In short, from an extremely young age, my father started training me in various martial disciplines. He covered and impressed upon me everything from long distance marksmanship, to bushcraft, to psychology and more. We talked long and hard about how to sort important details and how to manipulate "the bad guy." Always a proverbial bad guy. Trust was a luxury I wasn't allowed to have, my high cheek bones and beautiful eyes were purpose built to disarm, and my whole purpose in life was to be smarter, stronger, more capable than anyone who might try to hurt me or my sister, on whatever scale. And to whatever benefit or consequence, I was very good at it, it came very naturally. I can't really say if my father thought I was going to start the next spy ring or start the revolution or what in the good grief he had in mind. I'm not even really sure how he knew enough to teach me what he did, I'm 99% certain he wasn't ever in that line of work. I've set down that mystery, chasing it never did anything good for me. The details of this story get dark and uncomfortable quickly, as you can imagine, so I wont do that. But now you might be able to imagine that going from this brand of childhood (or child-soldier-hood?) into mundane, struggling single-motherhood was not kind to me. Hence the title of this thread.
"Oh, I thought you were always a gardener. You know so much." These words from my husband, who met me when I was 23 and my daughter was 3, hit me like a brick. He only knew me now, the gardener, the artist, the mom, the adventurer, who could hold her own. Not as some little human-weapon. Gardening was one of the first things I did for myself, and not for my father.
And thank goodness I did. As you can imagine, my mental health going into young adulthood was not wonderful. I struggled for a very long time, and only since learning to grow my own food, and working for a local farm and radically changing the way we eat, did I really get the upper hand in my mind. No medicine, no therapy really touched what I had going on, and to the benefit of every poor counselor or therapist that met me, I wasn't exactly a classic case. But anyway, all that to say, gardening literally changed my life. It is my sword that cut through generational trauma and was there every step of the way while I broke the cycle for my daughter. My seven year old daughter... who does do martial arts with her papa, but who could also run my homestead by herself in my absence. She is so much louder a kid than I was, so much freer, this spooks my father, but he respects my right to improve upon his parenting. He's damn proud of me, and we understand what happened, why, and why things are different now. I'm glad he's here for her, and now her little brother.
With this history it's no surprise to anyone that I ended up starting a business as a niche market gardener this year. Running things my own way, living seasonally and in flow with my mind and its own seasons, spending all my time outside with my kids... Bless my husband who is wired for the 9-5, supports my ambitions, and keeps me balanced. For the first time, I don't feel like life is against the grain.
I have a handful of Scarlet Runner Beans to thank, passed from my fathers second wife, to me. She was pretty concerned that I might succumb to young folk chaos and be lead astray back before I met my husband, and basically voluntold me into the local community garden with as many seeds and starts as I was willing to let her pile into my car. Thank god for that. My relationship with her is rocky at best, but someday I hope to adequately thank her for that. Soon I'm going to hand wrap a gift for her with a few of the heritage bean seeds I got this year...
If you've read this far, thank you.
Now that you know where gardening sits in my mind and in my heart, I'll post here again in the near future to chat about what the physical garden is like and what's in it. To no ones surprise, I have had Scarlet Runners in my garden since my first year at the community garden back in 2020.
Enjoy this picture my photographer friend got of my husband, who had almost nothing to do with the growing of that Lila Lu Sang carrot, but agreed to be in the garden shoot. <3
I started life as a feral Detroit street kid, doing martial arts, cleaning stalls so I could ride horses, and navigating a family that resembled compacted clay... I couldn't tell you when the generational violence, alcoholism, and instability started in my family, it's just always been there, solidifying under its own weight for generations. But to my benefit, both of my parents at least knew that something wasn't right. For all their faults, I couldn't have made it out without those first promises to "not be like their parents." For all their faults, I owe them that.
There was also a noteworthy complexity to my childhood that's a little hard to convey meaningfully to outsiders. In short, from an extremely young age, my father started training me in various martial disciplines. He covered and impressed upon me everything from long distance marksmanship, to bushcraft, to psychology and more. We talked long and hard about how to sort important details and how to manipulate "the bad guy." Always a proverbial bad guy. Trust was a luxury I wasn't allowed to have, my high cheek bones and beautiful eyes were purpose built to disarm, and my whole purpose in life was to be smarter, stronger, more capable than anyone who might try to hurt me or my sister, on whatever scale. And to whatever benefit or consequence, I was very good at it, it came very naturally. I can't really say if my father thought I was going to start the next spy ring or start the revolution or what in the good grief he had in mind. I'm not even really sure how he knew enough to teach me what he did, I'm 99% certain he wasn't ever in that line of work. I've set down that mystery, chasing it never did anything good for me. The details of this story get dark and uncomfortable quickly, as you can imagine, so I wont do that. But now you might be able to imagine that going from this brand of childhood (or child-soldier-hood?) into mundane, struggling single-motherhood was not kind to me. Hence the title of this thread.
"Oh, I thought you were always a gardener. You know so much." These words from my husband, who met me when I was 23 and my daughter was 3, hit me like a brick. He only knew me now, the gardener, the artist, the mom, the adventurer, who could hold her own. Not as some little human-weapon. Gardening was one of the first things I did for myself, and not for my father.
And thank goodness I did. As you can imagine, my mental health going into young adulthood was not wonderful. I struggled for a very long time, and only since learning to grow my own food, and working for a local farm and radically changing the way we eat, did I really get the upper hand in my mind. No medicine, no therapy really touched what I had going on, and to the benefit of every poor counselor or therapist that met me, I wasn't exactly a classic case. But anyway, all that to say, gardening literally changed my life. It is my sword that cut through generational trauma and was there every step of the way while I broke the cycle for my daughter. My seven year old daughter... who does do martial arts with her papa, but who could also run my homestead by herself in my absence. She is so much louder a kid than I was, so much freer, this spooks my father, but he respects my right to improve upon his parenting. He's damn proud of me, and we understand what happened, why, and why things are different now. I'm glad he's here for her, and now her little brother.
With this history it's no surprise to anyone that I ended up starting a business as a niche market gardener this year. Running things my own way, living seasonally and in flow with my mind and its own seasons, spending all my time outside with my kids... Bless my husband who is wired for the 9-5, supports my ambitions, and keeps me balanced. For the first time, I don't feel like life is against the grain.
I have a handful of Scarlet Runner Beans to thank, passed from my fathers second wife, to me. She was pretty concerned that I might succumb to young folk chaos and be lead astray back before I met my husband, and basically voluntold me into the local community garden with as many seeds and starts as I was willing to let her pile into my car. Thank god for that. My relationship with her is rocky at best, but someday I hope to adequately thank her for that. Soon I'm going to hand wrap a gift for her with a few of the heritage bean seeds I got this year...
If you've read this far, thank you.
Now that you know where gardening sits in my mind and in my heart, I'll post here again in the near future to chat about what the physical garden is like and what's in it. To no ones surprise, I have had Scarlet Runners in my garden since my first year at the community garden back in 2020.
Enjoy this picture my photographer friend got of my husband, who had almost nothing to do with the growing of that Lila Lu Sang carrot, but agreed to be in the garden shoot. <3
i'm always feeling fortunate that i could do the same for myself, but it was done with the help of some good people along the way and Mom who is here in her house and i'm helping her out as best i can.
