Quote by Shelly Tygielski

In the Podcast Dear White Women (Episode 144), guest Shelly Tygielski says, “There’s a Buddhist proverb that says that we should tend to the areas of the garden we can reach. If we all took responsibility for tending to the areas of the garden we could reach, just our garden, not our neighbor’s garden…When you look at things broadly…there are so many daunting problems in the world, that we cannot directly control. But when you can hone in and narrow in on the things we can control, and there is a lot we can control, right? And it starts with our own responses and reactions.”

I really like this quote because it can get so overwhelming to see the pain and suffering going on in the world and it can feel hopeless, which often leads to shut down or not doing anything.

There’s a really similar process that happens in trauma therapy too, where it’s easy to get overwhelmed looking at all the things one has to heal and feeling like it’s too much or like you’ll never be done.

But the more focused and targeted we can be on making changes, the easier it is to start the work and to create real, meaningful change. Don’t dismiss small bits of work as pointless, all those small bits of work add up to healing ourselves and our world.