Why We All Need A Secret Garden

I ran through thickets and jumped over rocks lining the green pond to solve my problems as a child. When a boy I had a crush on called me four-eyes, I vented my rage and pain by swerving around the horse hoofprints in the mud. When my best friends gossipped about me, I caught and befriended frogs. When my father spoke cruelly to me, I walked up and down the causeway my mother had created for me between the pond and the river, pretending I was a wild horse.

I often tell people that I grew up in the woods. I lived on a dirt road on a river, surrounded by trees on every side. When I had friends over, we rarely played with dolls inside—instead, we made up stories as we ran through the horse and deer paths in the woods. My greatest memories are contained in those trees, at the top of the boulders, and within the rosy bramble.

When I met Mary Lennox in Frances Hodgeson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, I knew I had met a kindred spirit. My mother worked hard and raised me like the maid Martha Sowerby did for Mary, and my father was something akin to the gardener Ben Weatherstaff, though not nearly as friendly. Though I didn’t live in a great manor with hundreds of doors like Mary, I did live in seclusion. I learned early on how to play by myself, and I found great joy wandering my mother’s bright flower beds and befriending any animals that would listen to me.

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