A moment that changed me: I hated my job in advertising – then a mug of home-made stew set my life on a whole new path | Gardens

IIn 2012, I had moved to hiding and crying in a meeting hall at the London Advertising Agency. She occupied a great position in the company, and if any, it would have been very embarrassing. But in most days, I woke up to the feeling as if the weight of the lead was pressing my chest; I would like to make my movements soaked in an irreplaceable feeling. Each ringing phone in the office felt an electric shock. It is barely hiding in the meeting room, hoping that comfort will be regular.

But comfort did not come. Despite my perfect life for pictures-a high profession, a happy and healthy home-my mind disintegration. I fell to work with depression, and at first, I spent weeks of a spiral ball under the quilt with the set curtains, unable to face life, and consume it ashamed. Good luck of understanding presidents and a healthy cover means that I have been able to reach drugs, treatment and doctors – everything I need. But the real healing, hope, and even a completely new profession came in the end from an unlikely place: a vegetation.

My mother persuaded me first in the garden, where I sat between the diligent vegetable beds and put my hand in the soil. I saw insects, weeds and lettuce that went to the seeds. There was silence. Constant gossip in my mind was suppressed.

For a few weeks, I returned to the correction, and in the end I planted some of the ancient seeds that my mother found in a drawer, and I admired chemistry from the nature that turned this nucleus without life. I found a group of radish seeds as well, and within weeks I chose actual radish, which gave me additional satisfaction to eat something that has grown.

She became involved, and with the progress of recovery, she planted anything and everything, creating a random and chaotic garden. When you feel as if the world falls around you, seeing the seed turns into dinner very comfortable. Hope reminded me.

A few months after the signing of the work – although the adjacent pigs that escape and eat pumpkin, despite the forgetfulness of the place where the potatoes were planted, and despite my roaming attention – I had grown abundant harvest.

The first cooking meal with the entire local ingredients felt annoyed. There was no more than a simple broth with onions, porlotti beans, carrots, and Cavolo Nero, but she felt as if it were a real achievement. When I sweat on the onions, I thought when I planted it on the correction and how this job exhausted me for several days. I formed the Purlotti pills, and I remembered how the world felt dark and despair when I planted them. The carrots were small, strange and mud, but I cleaned and cleaned them in the broth. An uncomfortable basin basin found in the freezer, which I was hoping to be the chicken stock that I made months ago at better times, it was found that it was. When I added the Cavolo Nero papers in the last moments of cooking, and the snail capture that clung to the laundry, I realized that cooking this local food made me feel more related to nature than I was years ago. This connection was exhausted. It was my medicine.

Although I was still relying on others on many things (shopping, organizing medical appointments, and daily logistics for normal life), and fed myself using local products that felt wandering and empowering. Here was a meal made of things that were not present a few weeks ago. I did so.

I took a cup of steam soup to the vegetable family and grabbed in my hands and I liked the garden. At the right time, this soup brought me a new path. I left my job as an idea of ​​what I will do after that. However, she was very timpeled, I went to the chef school and got a job in choosing crops in a member market garden. I have started a blog, I share the recipes inspired by my garments.

In correcting vegetables, things are still dilapidated and consecutive. I had no aspirations to be completely self -sufficient; I have always managed to turn something that has grown to a meal, I am happy.

I still feel the same horror when I see that the seed has grown – and I still make the same soup every year, to remind me of what I can achieve, and to what extent I have arrived.

A rough patch: How a year brought me back in the garden to life by Cathy Slack on February 6 (Robinson, 18.99 pounds). to Support the guardian and the observer, and ask your copy of Guardianbookshop.com. P&P fees may apply