My very bad case of The Januaries
Or, how I'm working my way towards Square Two after finding myself back at Square One
Hello Friends,
I have had a very bad case of The Januaries.
The onset was a feeling of anxiety that settled in around September, propelling me towards what was surely The Life I’m Meant to be Living, and was guaranteed (so my anxiety said) to start on the first day of the New Year.
The Januaries, by contrast, has been the reality, which isn’t so much The Life I’m Meant to be Living as it is just more life. Day by day. Week by week. And now one whole month later.
I’ve actually enjoyed The Januaries more than I think I would’ve enjoyed The Life I’m Meant to be Living, because the experience has brought with it a weird expansive acceptance and hope as I’ve realized that what I really get is just one day at a time to figure it all out anew. And I’ve spent each new day of my January listening to endless hours of self-help books and podcasts while rearranging furniture and hiding things in the basement that I will not be dealing with this year. It’s been productive, but not in any of the ways I’d planned.
Do you pick a word for the year? A few years ago, after hearing so many people talk about their words, I tried it out and I liked the practice. This year, my word was two, actually — Really Try.
The end of last year found me in crisis, and I spent September through December planning how everything would change (for the better, obviously) as soon as January came. It was the kind of obsessive wishful thinking that can only come when life as we currently know it is pushing us to our brink.
Many of you who read these Notes may remember that our dog Ginger had a terrible time with seasonal allergies, which, even now, sounds like such a minor deal but, in reality, was the most intense bit of caregiving I’ve ever had to do. Months of around-the-clock hyper-vigilance later, my own health — physical, mental and emotional — was really starting to suffer. At my regular appointment, my doctor said she believed the stress had gotten to me, and when I got home the paperwork from the visit listed “adjustment disorder” as one of my issues.
“Adjustment disorders are excessive reactions to stress that involve negative thoughts, strong emotions and changes in behavior. The reaction to a stressful change or event is much more intense than would typically be expected.” — Mayo Clinic
I don’t know if my reactions were really more intense than would typically be expected, but I do know that my coping mechanisms had fallen quite short. My doctor, who is lovely, suggested talk therapy, and thankfully I was able to start back up with the same therapist I’ve seen on and off for years. (I was in no state to start from scratch with someone.) When I described what I’d experienced during those months, my therapist said, “you’re having panic attacks.”
Friends, I really thought I was done with panic attacks. I thought all the spiritual work over the last several years also meant I was done with debilitating anxiety, and that I could move forward in my life without being stopped in my tracks and held in place. Sure, my body is still an unforgiving barometer of what I’m allowed to do and not do, but I thought I was on such solid ground psychologically and emotionally that I could face whatever might come.
And I am, and I can. Obviously. But not without help, and not without a deep dive into why the coping mechanisms I developed over years of pretty intensive spiritual work were no match for canine seasonal allergies.
This month, I had a wonderful chat with my friend Charlotte of Happy Souls 11:11, which I’m going to share with you all soon on the Welcome to the Garden podcast. We talked a lot about anxiety and depression and the spiritual tools that have helped us both get through some of our hardest times. I’m really excited to share this conversation, and I’ve included a really lovely exercise from Charlotte below that I thought you all might enjoy adding to your own daily practice. Among many other things, we talked about how our spiritual work doesn’t prevent us from experiencing further suffering. But we both agreed that, in our experience, when we find ourselves back at square one, it’s really helpful to know what square two looks like, and that makes it so much easier to believe we will find our way through.
I have found myself catapulted back to square one in so many ways, which is unpleasant and disconcerting and not at all where I thought I would be going into 2025. My inner guidance has shown me that what is needed is a very gentle, slow-and-steady approach to healing what’s come up, and a shoring up for what’s next. As I wrote this, I realized my new hope for the year is this: to show you how I move through it, how I work my way back to square two and how my brilliant friends help me get there. And that’s what Really Trying is going to look like for me this year.
I thought it meant I was going to post every day on social media and anything short of booking lots of readings and selling lots of books would be further evidence that I am A Total Failure. (I still wouldn’t mind booking lots of readings and selling lots of books, so there’s the links if you’re so inclined!) But I see now that Really Trying is actually about living my life every day, learning new things, building upon all the work I’ve done in the past so I can develop more stable coping mechanisms through study and practice, and seeking balance in all these parts of my life — physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. And then sharing all of that with you here. Really Trying to do that feels like it’s worth my time.
A brief bit of housekeeping
I spent my time off in December and January thinking a lot about this space and what I want it to look like and be, and also how I want to work, and the kind of work I want to do. And I discovered that I want to do more, less often.
When I was an early-20-something living in New York and entrenched in the downtown theater scene, my friends and I started a zine called The Geek. It was so cute! And because it was the very earliest of aughts, we made it by cutting and pasting pieces of actual physical paper together and then copying it at Kinkos and stapling the pages together. I was very, very poor and soon began working two full-time waitressing jobs that left no hours or energy for any creative pursuits, so The Geek was unfortunately very short-lived. But the way I felt about it has stayed with me all these years, and I want Notes from the Garden to have a bit of that old, zine-like feel. I know you’re likely reading this on your phone, but I want it to feel like something you could’ve picked up in a quirky coffee shop or been handed by a very strange stranger while walking down the street.
All this to say, I want to create a space that feels lovingly crafted by hand, and brings you into my very favorite parts of life. These Notes will be longer than they used to be, but written in sections so you can skip around and read whichever parts strike your fancy most. And because I want to spend more time crafting them, I’ve decided to publish once a month.
A big shift in my perspective this very January of Januaries came after talking to one of my dearest friends, who, when I told her my theme for the year, asked, “But try at what?” As we talked about what is really worth the time and effort of Trying, my whole energy system settled down and clarity started to emerge (finally).
I have a lot of dearest friends, and we have a lot of these conversations, so I’ve also decided that I would like to share their wisdom with you here. Each month, I’ll do an interview with someone I think is wonderful on the Welcome to the Garden podcast, so you can be a part of some of these chats that have, for me, moved so much energy and provided such wonderful insight, clarity, and guidance over the years. The first episode, where I talk to Charlotte about studying and practicing healing, and how life-changing it can be, will be coming out soon!
I’d love to hear feedback about what you think of the changes going forward, so feel free always to hit reply to these emails, or make use of the comments section if you’re arriving here via Substack. There’s a lot of writing advice out there about keeping things short and simple because people’s attention spans no longer exist, but I still regularly sit down with 60-million-word pieces in The New Yorker about things I’ve never heard of and really don’t care about and find myself enjoying the hour-long journey as it unfolds. Not that I think Notes from the Garden is The New Yorker, mind you — I just think people are more inclined than we realize to spend time in a space they enjoy. And I hope I’m creating a space that you enjoy!
Each issue of Notes from the Garden will feature a little bit about my favorite parts of life — gardening and nature (of course), healing and spirituality, living a creative life, and updates on Ginger the Dog. These topics all overlap and flow together in my day-to-day life, and I suspect they might for you, too. So read on to find out all the latest news about all of these favorite things.
Dispatches from Ginger’s Little House
The most important development in this corner of our world is that Ginger, in her infinite wisdom, has decided she no longer wants to sleep in our bedroom at night. During the day? No problem! At night, she prefers the room that was meant to become a library, but has instead been the place where we stack things we don’t want to look at. Each night, she would get up and tap, tap, tap her way to the bedroom door, waiting for me to get out of bed and follow her to this glorified storage space so she could sleep on the little love seat that holds a million squishy pillows. Luckily, the room had another couch, too, and this one was very nearly long enough for me.
After several weeks of this, I gave up the hope that she’d decide she liked our bedroom again and instead moved the furniture around. The bed is now in the not-library and the couch is in the no-longer-a bedroom, tucked into the space that once held the bed.
Imagine my amazement when this turned out to be the perfect podcast nook! Why am I even surprised? All these years later, Ginger has proven time and time again that she always knows what’s best for me.
In other news of her absolute brilliance:
We were in the truck the other day after an unsuccessful attempt to go for a potty walk. It’s been very, very cold here and really, really snowy, and so I was telling Mom that I could clear out a space in the back, on the little patio, so that Ginge could use it when she needs to poo. I must mention the fact that we never go out the back for pottying purposes. But Ginger was listening to every word I said from her perch in the backseat, so a couple hours later when she needed to poo, she sat down by the back door and started chatting at me.
“Do you have to go outside?” I asked in the voice I use just for her, which I recently heard on a recording and realized is very loud, very high-pitched, and occasionally tinged in a slight British accent. She pointed her nose toward the door and looked at me like, “yeah.”
I bundled up and she proceeded to take me through the snow, past the little patio I’d been talking about, around the back of the house to the other side where the big patio is, and that’s where she pooped. On the patio, just like I said. I should have just been more specific about which patio I meant!
This dog is so funny, and we can regularly see her actively thinking about how to make us laugh.
One last bit, for those of you who have been along on this epic journey with us … we had another vet visit recently. (If you’re new here, Ginger developed a tumor last year that was surgically removed, biopsied, and turned out to be thyroid cancer. She’s doing really great though, as you’re about to find out!) Ginger was in a lot of pain in December, so the doctor prescribed some medication that works so well she romps around like a puppy now. We had to go in for some bloodwork, though, to make sure her system was doing ok with the pills, and while we were there, we had a consultation with the doctor about pain management and what to look for and what to expect.
The doctor assured us that there is still a lot that can be done, that this pain medication isn’t the final thing, and that we are doing a great job taking care of our girl. Yay! She also said something to this effect: A lot of dogs in Ginger’s situation would be gone already, because the people would have given up. When I told this story to a friend, she said, “So basically Ginger is being kept alive by love at this point!”
And really, aren’t we all?
I found this so uplifting, and I wanted to share it with you all because there have been so many times this past year when I have been beside myself with fear and self-doubt. I have been so worried that I’m not doing enough, or not doing the right enough, but in one second the doctor confirmed what I really felt deep-down is true: that Mom and I are doing everything we can for our girl, and that the three of us are working together to make all of Ginger’s days as joyful and lovely as possible.
I mostly wanted to share this last story in case you’re out there feeling fear and self-doubt around something that’s just as important to you. If you’ve dedicated yourself to doing everything you can do, I bet you’re doing a really good job. When I could get beyond my fear and self-doubt, I knew that I was, but it really helped to hear the doctor say it. So if you need to hear someone say it too, here you go:
Whatever it is you’re putting your whole heart and soul into, you’re doing a great job.
In the Garden
Things are quiet, and covered in snow, but we did keep up my favorite New Year’s tradition, which is to spend the day dreaming about what we want to grow and then ordering our seeds for the year. They arrived from all the lovely places we order from, and they’re tucked away in my tidy seed box, just waiting for spring planting to begin.


This year, we are going to try to do less, and do better. We have a tendency to dream bigger than our energy levels allow. And we’ve learned some very important lessons along the way. For example, not only do two people not need 65 tomato plants, these two people can’t really take good care of 65 tomato plants. We’re going to try having more realistic expectations (something neither Mom nor I have traditionally been very good at) and then spend our time loving the plants we do grow.
Seed starting is one of my absolute favorite things, and I’m thinking about getting going as early as this week. I think it will be warm enough in the dome greenhouse in four to six weeks to plant the cold-weather stuff like spinach and lettuce and broccoli and cabbage. We’re pretty obsessed with peas lately too, and I’m excited to spend more time with these happy little legumes!
Have you heard about how legumes fix nitrogen? It’s brilliant, and makes me so excited to learn things like this about nature: There is a ton of nitrogen in the air all around us all the time, but it’s not the same make up as the nitrogen in the soil that plants need to survive. So legumes, and other nitrogen-fixing plants, are able to capture atmospheric nitrogen, and convert it to useable food. But they don’t do it alone! They have these tiny bacteria friends who help with the alchemy, and they set up little homes in the roots for all this magic to take place. That nitrogen feeds the legumes, sure, but it also feeds the soil they grow in and all the plants that grow around them. What an amazing way to share resources!
When I started thinking about legumes and their bacteria friends, I wondered how we could all be a little bit more like that, especially now, when we’re surrounded by so much evidence of greed and destruction. How can we each, just by being our own unique selves, learn to feed our bodies, minds, hearts and souls, and then spread that nourishment around to others?
On Healing and Spiritual Matters
Here’s little preview from the pod, which will come out as soon as I learn how to edit audio:
This month on the Welcome to the Garden podcast, I had an amazing chat with my friend Charlotte of Happy Souls 11:11. Charlotte is a psychic medium and healing practitioner who generously shares her gifts and what she’s learning with people all over the world through classes, monthly meditations, readings and more.
Nearly seven years ago, Charlotte had a spiritual awakening, which she says on her website, “opened the door to real healing.”
In our interview, Charlotte said that one of the results of this experience was a new awareness of the fact that, “I do have power. I have power to choose my state of being. That is probably the foundation from which every other bit of healing flows.”
Charlotte said there were several long-held belief systems and a lot of trauma that she had to work through, and one of these was how much of a problem her inner dialog was, and how conditioned she was to be cruel to herself.
She decided to do something about it.
“Every time I look in the mirror,” she said, “that’s an opportunity to be present with myself.”
So she started changing the way she talked to herself in the mirror, one day at a time.
“Initially,” she said, “when I started saying to myself, ‘you’re beautiful, you look great today, you’re going to have a great day, Charlotte,’ there’s a little voice in my head that would be like, ‘you’re an idiot, why are you talking to yourself? You know that’s not true. Of course you’re not beautiful, look at the state of your hair. You look like shit today.’
“This belief system that I was worthless, ugly, a terrible person — all of these things — was so deeply ingrained that even when I’m choosing to contradict it, my mind resists that process and fights against it.”
But Charlotte found that making a practice of changing the way she talked to herself quickly started dismantling that old belief system.
“What I noticed, in actually a relatively short space of time, was that slowly but surely, I started to feel it.”
During the next two to three months, Charlotte said that, even though she hadn’t made any changes to her outward appearance or how she presented herself physically in the world, the way people responded to her changed. People were approaching her in ways they never had before, showing interest in her, and just generally being attracted to her.
Her life also provided her with a measurable way of seeing what this actually looked like. At the time, she was in sales, and she said her conversion rates went from around 30 to 40 percent to nearly 100 percent, even though she hadn’t changed anything about how she was pitching.
“I was starting to reshape this belief system about who I was through this positive self-talk. I was now giving off this energy that actually aligned with that state of being that other people could feel. So I went from feeling unlovable, ugly, worthless to feeling beautiful, good enough, and then my whole life starts changing around that. That just gave me the impetus to continue.”
Charlotte acknowledges that this is a lifelong process, and that there are layers and layers to dismantling these belief systems and doing the healing work around how we feel about ourselves, but working through that resistance when it comes up is such an important thing we can choose to do for ourselves. So keep at it, she advises, because even if you can’t believe it at first, simply making a practice of saying kind things to yourself will change everything.
“It very quickly felt more natural and then that little mean girl voice in the background started to dissipate and the more positive thoughts took precedence, and before you knew it, I felt like a brand new person. Everything changed. … I saw that miracle take place in my life.”
If this story and this practice has inspired you as much as it’s inspired me, be sure to tune in to the episode of Welcome to the Garden when it comes out. We talked about so many amazing things, and Charlotte was so generous with sharing her experiences and how they’ve shaped her life. I think you’ll love every minute!
And, you can learn more about Charlotte by visiting her at happysouls1111.com. Be sure to sign up for her newsletter while you’re there, so you can hear all the news about the group meditations she’s hosting, classes she’s teaching and when her books are open for readings.
My Creative Life:
Somewhere down my self-help rabbit hole, I came across Martha Beck, and started listening to Bewildered, the podcast she hosts with one of her wives. (Hearing about their little family is really joyful and uplifting, and stories they share from their life together regularly make me laugh out loud.)
In recently episodes, they talked about Martha’s new book, Beyond Anxiety, which I just started reading and am already enjoying, and how creativity is the antidote to anxiety. Martha says that when you feel anxious, ask yourself, “What can I make?”
I’ve noticed this recently in my own life. Sometime in the midst of my recent hard times, I started spending the first hour of my day doing something crafty that brings me joy, and I think it really has changed the way I feel.
I thought I’d share some of the things I’m making, because I love them.
I just started learning embroidery — something I’ve always wanted to do — after being delightfully Instagram Influenced by Clever Poppy. Here’s the first pattern I made after learning eight basic stitches from the beginner’s embroidery class in her membership:
I took a break from embroidery this past week or so because I got to my favorite part — the deer! — of the mosaic crochet blanket pattern I’m working on, and spending each morning watching the herd grow from nothing is one of the highlights of my life right now. Here’s a picture of the blanket I made for a friend last year using the same pattern:
The blanket I’m making right now is actually for me. I have so rarely made anything for myself, and I’m pouring the same gentleness and love into this one that I pour into things I make for others. I’ve been using it for weeks, even though it’s not done, and I feel so cozy and calm under it every time I spread it over my legs.
If you’re a maker of any sort, do you make things for yourself? If not, maybe it’s time you do. So far, I highly recommend it.
My other big creative project for January was gluing these flowers I pressed from last summer’s garden onto cardstock so I can share some of the magic and beauty of the garden with people who are far away. I love preserving these bits of loveliness the plants made so we can appreciate their magnificent hard work for years to come! Thank you Zinnia, Lavender, Lemon Bee Balm, Feverfew and Snapdragon for being so gorgeous and bringing us so much joy.


So, friends, what are you making? I’d love to hear about it or, even better, see pictures of it in the comments below!
Book Club:
I don’t know if this section will exist always, because sometimes I devolve into reading nothing but rom-coms for months on end, and I’m sure you don’t need to know what I think of those. (In case you do, I love them all.) But I did read two books that really helped me make the most of The Januaries, so I wanted to tell you about them here.
The first was Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman, and I have since recommended it to everyone who will listen. His reframe of how we think of productivity and what we’re actually living for has really helped me settle something deep inside. I continued with his Meditations for Mortals, and am listening to one each day as he suggests. The gentle — so very gentle! — prompts aren’t things I think about all day, but I have noticed they are cumulatively changing how I spend my time, and more importantly, how I think about how I’m spending my time.
The other was Atomic Habits by James Clear. He talks about the tiny incremental changes we can make that will have huge impacts on our lives. As someone with chronic illnesses that significantly influence how much I can do on any given day, building my life to look the way I want it to look in the easiest, and again, the gentlest ways really, really helps. One of the things I liked most about this book was his advice to look at why you want to form or break a habit. The root of success, he said, lies in knowing what kind of person you want to be, and how you feel that habit reflects this desire.
I want to be the kind of person who keeps things tidy, who takes good care of my skin, who only eats tater tots once a week for dinner and who grows beautiful things in the garden all year ‘round. I’ll keep you posted on my progress on all these fronts!
Until next time, I hope this finds you all well and that February is kind and loving for you.
Sending love and light from here,
Jodie
p.s. Would you like to participate in a real book club on Zoom? As I mentioned, I’m reading Beyond Anxiety by Martha Beck now, so if you’d like to read it too and then have a chat about it together as a group, I’d love to do that. Here’s a little poll, so just click to let me know if you’re interested in forming a book club!: