She Who Grew Without A Garden

A myth for the healer who became what she needed

—

The House Without Water…

There was once a girl born under a roof where love was named but never felt.
The women there spoke in shoulds and silences.
The air held secrets like mildew.
And when the girl cried, no one asked why.

They told her she was saved,
but she was never seen.

They said the world was damned,
but she already knew better:
hell is what happens when children are not believed.

She tried to be good.
She tried to be small.
She tried to bloom in a soil that never watered her.

But still—
still—
something in her lived.

A root.
A seed.
A quiet, watchful eye beneath the surface.

—

What She Learned in the Dark…

She learned the language of pain before she learned her own.

She learned how to hold others
because no one ever held her.

She learned how to sit with the dying
because she’d been dying to be seen.

She listened to trees
because no one listened to her.

She didn’t become a healer because she was healed.
She became a healer because she knew what it felt like to bleed in silence.

—

The Goodbye That Made Her Whole…

One day, she stood at her mother’s bedside
and whispered goodbye to a woman who never gave her the love she craved.

Not because she forgave it all.
But because she chose to end the inheritance.

That night, a cardinal flew into her chest.
Not her mother’s spirit.
But love itself—
raw, red, winged and wild—
finally finding its way into her.

—

The Woman She Became…

Now she walks barefoot in the hollers,
with rosemary oil on her crown
and lavender that blooms when she stops trying to fix it—
just like her.

She plants gardens for children she will never meet.
She midwives the dying with hands that no longer shake.
She sings to hummingbirds in the voice she reclaimed.

—

The Myth Made Flesh…

They call her Healer.
But she is more than that.

She is the end of a lineage of silence.
She is the mother her mother never was.
She is the voice rising from the body they tried to shame into stillness.

She is not blooming despite the pain.
She is blooming because of it.