Some years ago when I was facilitating writing workshops in a women’s shelter I often brought blossoms and leaves, twigs, odd objects, things for the women to use as prompts. One week, a very young woman, really just a girl, chose a sprig of mint, which she inhaled several times, then wrote how it had been a cure-all when she was growing up in Jamaica, a remedy for everything from headaches to stomach aches, and more. Reading that piece out loud to the group, she seemed overwhelmed with the joy of remembering, as if she was back home surrounded by beloved acres of mint and family not alone in a shelter with a baby just a few months old.

The next day I brought her a pot of mint from my garden. She seemed pleased, said she would take care of it. I had no doubt that she meant it and that if time and circumstance allowed, she would.

The following week I saw her again and she ran over, face bright, smiling, talking a mile a minute, telling me that the day I’d given her the mint she called her mother to tell her about the shelter, the workshop, the people that were being good to her there, and that she’d been given a pot of mint and that surely that must bode well. Her mother agreed that it did. And you could see in her face that this agreeing was a tonic in itself.

I still think of her. She’d be a young woman now, no longer a girl. The baby would be in school. I think about the mint too, and wonder what time and circumstance allowed and I can’t help feeling she made it. Somehow. I like to think she found her feet and that she walks in safety somewhere, through a garden fragrant with healing.

♥

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