The Secret Garden

The Secret Garden

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The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden
#33 WLFC New Years in April, anyone?

#33 WLFC New Years in April, anyone?

My year FINALLY feels like it's starting, why I got a part time fun job at a florist, and a mental health real talk.

Alyssa Kuzins's avatar
Alyssa Kuzins
Mar 29, 2023
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The Secret Garden
The Secret Garden
#33 WLFC New Years in April, anyone?
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It’s practically April and my year FINALLY feels like it’s starting, what about you?

As spring has commenced in Charleston, so too has wedding season, and I should know, because I’ve officially taken a “fun job” working part time at a florist! 

Yep! More on that decision and talking my mental health ahead. (+ I asked YOU what your secret fantasy fun jobs were and gathered up a pretty cool list that speaks volumes.)

So, I was on my mid day hot girl walk and I realized I had a spring in my step. A spring which hasn’t been there until well, Spring. 

It feels like since January I’ve been living in black and white or maybe sepia, and now, hello color, my old friend! 

Like the rose bushes popping up along the white picket fence where I walk, I have to laugh at how cyclical beings we women most especially are. But of course my year just started, for didn’t the first flowers just open and the grizzly bears just wake up?

Here’s a prose poem I wrote two years ago.

Prose written in Spring 2021

It’s funny, I thought moving to South Carolina would take away any winter blues, and while it’s surely curbed my seasonal depression woes from Pittsburgh’s past, perhaps winter is winter no matter where you go. I’ve been reminded most confidently that we cannot escape the inner winter just because the outside is less cold. We are a part of nature, no less. So although I did not have to scrape my windshield from ice and although I did not see a single snowflake, winter came. I have to wonder if I was naively hopeful to think that Charleston’s milder climate would somehow protect me from the inner seasons that must commence for our own good. That just because the palm trees do not lose their leaves, they dull in color, nonetheless. Nothing in nature is at its peak indefinitely, for how would we even know it was a peak? 

All that to say, Spring is here and I can breathe that much more, so I want to open up about my mental health, my ego, and how this relates to my new “fun job” at a florist. 

There's a greater conversation at work here that goes far beyond me.

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