Have you heard of the Ladies of Hive community? Each week, they've been posting some pretty thought provoking and/or fun questions to answer, and to get to know each other better. In light of Mental Health month both globally AND on HIVE, I've been thinking a lot about HIVE communities and how they have helped me feel supported. Whether I can write or not, whether I'm happy or down, whether I'm grumpy or ecstatic, there's a degree of acceptance, patience, love and support that really just warms my heart. Whilst my main community is Natural Medicine and some amazing, supportive people there (thanks @vincentnijman for listening to my crying voice message on Telegram last week!), no community on HIVE is exclusive - we are all really one big happy family! If you are new here, you'll find this out soon enough, and it's one of the things that keeps me here!

One of last week's questions (which I didn't get time to answer), was:

Do you have a special quiet place to go to be by yourself to think about things, or make important decisions? The change in seasons often equates to important decisions. I have a lovely, peaceful place to go to meditate, think, and pray when I am faced with hard decisions. For example, a place like: a Beach spot, Park bench, a City scape or river side view?

If this isn't a #mentalhealthawareness topic I don't know what is! The world is pretty noisy at the moment - if it's not government health covid laws and regulations we have to pay attention to, it's worry about the environment, our jobs, the state of politics. Whilst I'd love to say that it's easy to breath and shake that off wherever I am, it's a helluva lot easier doing that out in nature.

To me, it doesn't matter whether it's one beach or the other, one forest or the other, one lonely track along one river or another, so long as I'm outside under the sky, the soft wind on my face and the sky above, earth below. All the noise slows down and I can start to think. Sometimes good mental well being involves stepping away from the things that are stressing you out into an environment that's going to nourish and support you. At times we have to be told - I often have to force my husband away from what is stressing him out and down the beach for a surf or out in the garden to get his hands in the earth and he returns refreshed and grateful he's been given the headspace to gain a little mental clarity.

This week's question, for challenge #4, is also one I see related to #mentalhealthawareness:

One day you wake up and learn that you are being relocated (for whatever reason) to another part of the world. You are allowed to take one thing with you and you must choose from this list of three things: A seed canister of vegetable seeds; a shovel, or a solar panel and controller kit. What is your choice and why?

At the risk of sounding pedantic, if I don't have a laptop, a light or any other things to run off the solar kit, what's the point of bringing it, du'oh? And a shovel just means I have to DIG things - and I have a husband for that.

But seeds?

Seeds are hope.

They say that gardening means that you are invested in the future. I have always loved that pithy home wisdom. Plant a seed, water it - and you have to stick around and watch it grow. It's one of the few things that guarantee an outcome for your labour, so long as you tend it carefully. And one tiny seed can grow an absolute abundance - sometimes more than you can handle. If you've ever planted a few zucchini seeds, you'll know what I mean - all of a sudden, you have a bounty of zucchinis, which turns into zucchini cake, pizza, slice, noodles and more. Plant a garlic clove, and you'll be given ten in return. That's pretty good odds.

Gardening too has a proven benefit for mental health because it increases your gut health. Yep. Dirt is good for you, and bacteria has a relationship with your gut, which has a relationship with mental health:

Getting your hands dirty in the garden can increase your serotonin levels – contact with soil and a specific soil bacteria, Mycobacterium vaccae, triggers the release of serotonin in our brain according to research. Serotonin is a happy chemical, a natural anti-depressant and strengthens the immune system. Lack of serotonin in the brain causes depression - Permaculture.com.au

So wherever I am in the world, if I plant a garden, I'm going to be happy. Or at least happier than I'd be without a garden.

True story - when I was in lockdown in the UK unexpectedly (remember I live in Australia) the first thing I did was go and buy some seeds. My mother in law has a greenhouse and a small vegetable garden, and we planted tons of seeds. She had her own way of doing things, and understood the UK climate, but she entertained me anyway, knowing I needed to do something. And remember those early days in the pandemic, when you couldn't buy seeds and everyone was panic buying them and planting gardens, some for the first time ever? I was thinking if that we couldn't get back to Australia, and things got worse, I needed to be in control of our food supply a little.

Anyway, I planted some aubergine seeds (eggplant). My mother in law said they don't grow too well in the UK and they'll likely not bear fruit before the cooler weather hit.

Guess what? They got eggplants - but by then, we were long gone, and I was planting eggplants in my garden in Australia. I look at those little plants, struggling against bugs and chickens, and I can't wait til harvest time.

That little jar of vegetable seeds is also going to make me new friends, and connect me to community - another thing that's important for my mental well being. Connecting to other gardeners and sharing produce is a beautiful thing to do. Now I'm not sure if that's what the Ladies of Hive challenge means - maybe I'm on a desert island and there's no one to trade with, but hey, at least I'll have eggplant fritters, maybe covered in coconut flour from that coconut that just dropped from that imaginary tree over there with some date syrup from that date palm... but now I'm dreaming.

Encouraging all you Ladies of HIVE to write under the #mentalhealthawareness tag this October. You don't have to write in the Natural Medicine community - we aren't being exclusive when it comes to this important topic. Here's a few posts you might like to read first:

A New Hive Buzz Badge in Support of Mental Health Awareness
Mental Health Awareness - Enter in October to WIN!

I'm meant to invite someone else to the LOH party - I'm inviting @mamrita. She's as busy as hell in her new job and her move to Stockholm, but when she does post, we love her. @mamrita, here's the community Ladies of HIVE but even just using the tag will connect you to other amazing woman on the HIVE blockchain. Love you, you powerful, beautiful woman you!