🌿 Can a Garden Heal a Broken Heart — and a Broken Justice System?

 A blog about surviving, growing, and getting justice on your own terms — with mud on your boots and a brew in hand.

After the abuse. After the betrayals. After the traumatising trial.
I didn’t find peace in a counsellor’s office. I didn’t find it at the bottom of a bottle. I didn’t even find it in the justice system that promised to protect me.

No, I found it in a bag of compost, a battered trowel, and a patch of lawn I watered with my tears — tears that had been held down and buried for over a year.

I didn’t plan on turning into some kind of village gardening granny. I wasn’t searching for zen or mindfulness. I was just a woman who needed something to do — something to dig, something to nurture, and something to smash into the dirt instead of smashing up my own headspace.

So, I went outside and got stuck in.

Digging through it

At first, it wasn’t spiritual or Instagram-worthy. It was survival. My hands shook with fury. My chest felt like it was full of bricks. I pulled at the weeds like they were the people who’d done me wrong.

Between yanking out dead roots and planting hopeful blooms, I realised I was digging through everything I’d been burying:
The betrayal.
The silence from those who knew but looked the other way.
The fake loyalty of workplaces that vanished faster than your last pay cheque.
And the courtroom, where I had to relive it all while they treated me like a case number, and an invisible human being.

The garden gave me something the system never did: space to feel. Space to heal. Space to just be without having to justify myself.

And yes — I cried into the soil. I sobbed until the earth felt softer. Until I felt softer.

The unexpected miracle

Then, the best surprise of all — my son came out to help.

He’d seen too much for a kid his age. The abuse hadn’t just broken me; it fractured us both. But the garden gave us a new way to talk. Without words, just with dirt and seed packets.

He’d hand me the tools. Ask what I was planting next. One afternoon, he even got to pick the flowers himself.

We weren’t just growing plants. We were rebuilding our trust — quietly, in muddy boots and wet knees.

He laughed again. I smiled again. And for the first time in a long time, we felt safe together.

What they don’t tell you about healing

Healing isn’t about perfect Instagram shots or fancy yoga retreats.
Sometimes it’s swearing at the rose climber that’s pricked you more than once. Sometimes it’s screaming into your wellies. Sometimes it’s planting a Hosta in the same spot where your trauma tried to take root.

I didn’t get the closure I expected to automatically feel after the trial. But I got something better from my garden — a sense of control, a routine, a little plot of joy to call my own.

The garden didn’t erase what happened. But it gave me life I could watch grow, day by day, a stability and a security when my whole world had been taken away from me.

My justice, my way

I used to think justice was something handed down in a courtroom — a verdict, an apology, a punishment.
Now I know it’s something you build yourself — one daffodil at a time.

Sometimes healing isn’t about who hurt you. It’s about who’s still standing with you when the dust settles.

Sometimes it’s about laughing with your kid over trying to pronounce the ridiculous names these plants have!

So, here’s to the messy gardens, the stubborn sunflowers, and the women who refuse to stay down.

And finally, I found the justice I’d been chasing — not in a courtroom, but in the quiet miracle of something growing where abandonment once lived.

🌱 If you’re on your own journey after abuse, you’re not alone.
You can reach Refuge’s 24/7 National Domestic Abuse Helpline at 0808 2000 247.

 

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