Tending Tiny Gardens: Choosing Presence in a World That Demands Everything

I came across a comment recently that stopped me mid-scroll. The writer spoke of “tending tiny gardens, being faithful to the beauty that wants to grow under our care.”

That simple sentence gave voice to something I’d been feeling but hadn’t yet named: the difference between tending to what’s right in front of us and trying to cultivate everything, everywhere, all at once.

It made me think about how scattered our attention has become. How we’re constantly trying to water every plot of land we can see, even as our own small garden is left neglected and dry.

When Everything Feels Like Your Garden

So many women I know are caught in this same overwhelm. We’re trying to manage too much at once: the comparison garden (where everyone else looks younger, more accomplished, more together), the crisis garden (where global suffering demands our constant attention), and the performance garden (where we must have the right opinion about everything, posted at precisely the right time, with exactly the right tone and God help us if we get it wrong).

Meanwhile, our own small plot—our immediate relationships, our creative work, our emotional wellbeing, our actual daily life—suffers from a lack of focused presence.

As I shared with a reader recently: "Very few of us have the support to pause and process grief, change, or uncertainty at a pace that feels manageable. We're expected to carry on, even when our bodies and hearts are asking for nourishment and rest. We are all carrying too much."

The exhaustion is real. The overwhelm makes sense. We’re trying to be caretakers of the entire world when what we (and the world) might most benefit from is to nurture our own small, meaningful patch with consistency and love.

What Our Gardens Actually Need

Here’s what I know about both literal gardens and metaphorical ones: they don’t thrive under divided attention. They need steadiness. Deep watering, not surface sprinkling. Real connection, not rushed check-ins.

Our nervous systems aren’t built for constant crisis or relentless information. They’re built for slowness, for presence, for the kind of grounded focus that allows something meaningful to take root and grow.

A year or so ago, I found myself unable to write, stretched thin between ongoing recovery from a brain tumor, a house move, and the steady churn of the news. It wasn’t until I reclaimed time for space, silence, journaling, and walking that I noticed shoots of creativity return. Presence restored what productivity (and perimenopause) had drained.

This isn’t about disengaging from the world. Not at all. I deeply believe we have a duty to care for one another, to stay awake to suffering, to act where we can. But I have also spent years publicly learning that trying to respond to every crisis (or continually signal our awareness of them) often means we spread ourselves too thin to do any of it well.

It’s about choosing depth over dispersion. Responding to what’s truly ours to carry, rather than reacting to every headline. This focused presence allows us to respond with greater integrity and effectiveness, instead of constant urgency.

The Wisdom of Small Plots

Your tiny garden might be your closest relationships, where being available matters more than being impressive. It could be your creative work, where regular effort means more than likes and shares. Maybe it’s your local community, where your attention has real ripple effects.

Or perhaps it’s your inner landscape: the boundaries that protect your peace, the rituals that anchor your day, the daily decisions that move you toward steadiness.

This might mean having an unhurried meal with your child. It might be writing for 30 minutes before checking your phone. It could look like watering literal plants, sending a voice memo to a friend, or just taking a walk without a podcast playing (something I’ve been trying lately). These small acts of presence build the soil of a meaningful life.

The beauty of small gardens is that they’re actually manageable. They’re knowable. You can see and respond to what needs care. You can watch something grow that wouldn’t have, had you been trying to care for everything else instead.

This feels especially true in midlife, when many of us are reevaluating how and where we spend ourselves. We’ve seen how scattered focus rarely leads to deep satisfaction, and we’ve become wise enough to choose depth over breadth.

An Invitation to Tend

Your tiny garden doesn't need to impress anyone else. It doesn't need to scale or trend or solve everything. It just needs your genuine and consistent attention.

In a world that profits from our distraction and overwhelm, choosing to care for what’s directly in front of us becomes a quiet, radical act.

Perhaps, to some, this sounds like over-simplification. A convenient way to retreat.

Maybe so. But it’s what I come back to time and time again. Whenever my busy mind wants to bury itself in hopelessness or spiral in anxiety. I think about my small but solid circle. The little patch of soil in front of me. And I know, without the need for any kind of external validation, that investing my energy into such a space is enough.

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I'm curious: what does your "tiny garden" look like right now? Where are you choosing to focus your energy instead of spreading it thin? I'd love to hear how you're learning to care for what’s truly yours to cultivate.