Composting

Guest Post by Heather Stevenson

I love the concept and reality of composting. How the earth takes all our shit and turns it into fertilizer. So, when

Heather

shared her piece about composting in our writing group, I got so excited. She graciously agreed to share it here with you all. Please follow her here so you can enjoy more of her amazing writing.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Composting
By Heather Stevenson

I’m supposed to be writing about a time you held up the sky, yet my mind is caught on the idea of the earth composting our shit. 

I suppose I don’t want to feel sky bound today. 
I want to feel grounded and connected to this earth composting my shit.

I want to push down and rinse out all of the shit in my body, my mind, and my psyche 
so it can drain out of me and be returned to a place that can transmute it all.

I like this idea of feeling cleansed of my shit. 
Of feeling parts of myself get sloughed off to be absorbed by the ground below.
Knowing I no longer need to carry them around with me. 
I no longer need to be weighed down by their toxic, sludgy energy.

Sometimes I want to get down on the ground and dig my hands and arms into the dirt.
Till the soil and aerate the earth so it’s ready and open to absorb all the crap of the world into its healing and magnetic core.

God bless it for that.

I want to imagine all the ancestors and natives of the land doing a blessing of the earth, a ritual that cleanses the soil, and purifies all of our impurities that have been placed into it.
All of our traumas and wounds and soul aches—
Composted, composted, composted.

To compost means to take ‘a mixture of various decaying organic substances, as dead leaves or manure, used for fertilizing soil’. 

To fertilize, to impregnate, to enrich, to make productive.

Isn’t it incredible that the earth can take literal shit and compost it into something enriching, something fertile and beautiful and life giving. 

I feel in awe of its ability to transform.

I want to dig a hole long enough and wide enough for my whole body, and I want to lie down in the earth and let it transform me.

Let the rain or the spray of a garden hose water me 
washing away the dead or decaying or dying parts into the ground so that they can be fertilized
so I can be composted 
so we can be transmuted into something new, different, organically nurtured 
with fresh air and sunlight and raindrops. 

Photo by Celeste Horrocks on Unsplash

I’d love to hear your thoughts. What does the idea of composting bring up for you? Transformation? Decay? New life? Nutrients? I’d love to hear about it.