I live in Texas on a horse farm, and I had access to open grass. I let myself go. I left the house barefoot and quickly stomped to the grass. I can vividly remember pacing that field for fifteen minutes, back and forth, sometimes talking to myself, always thinking, never able to stop moving. I wouldn’t say I was breaking down, but I did feel like my spirit was broken. I was exhausted. But the adrenaline flowed.

 

It wasn’t long until I noticed my breath had eased and I wasn’t walking with as much force as I started. Still, I kept walking.

 

My heart rate started to decrease and my mind slowed. I started to actually feel the grass on my feet. It was magical—this momentary scaling back of the anxiety within myself. My feet in the grass and the tactile feeling of something other than the fire building inside me gave me a small sense of relief. It wasn’t perfect, and I was still spinning, but I could breathe.

 

One thing about anxiety for me is it’s made me very in tune with feelings in my body. Pacing through that field that day, I felt composure wrap me from the bottom up. Like the bottom half of my body began to anchor itself to the earth. In every sense of the word, I felt grounded.

 

Still, I kept walking. Dare I say it felt nice?

 

I did a lot of walking in that grass during that time in my life. That field became my safe space, and every time, without fail, I left that field breathing easier than when I entered it.

 

In an effort to distract myself, I started a garden. It was larger than it should have been, and I took on more than I should have. My modus operandi was to distract myself when anxiety clouded my mind. If I could occupy every waking moment with a task, my mind didn’t get to take control.

 

Being called to the land is a centuries-old story. But this was all new to me. I instinctively knew I felt better in that garden, but I had absolutely no idea why it was calling to me so strongly.

 

What I knew was the beauty of what I was producing, the still quiet of the garden surrounding me, and the constant need for work wasn’t just filling me. It was filling holes within me. It was healing me.

 

I have grown tired of life sometimes. It’s a sad realization when you find you’re just phoning it in, and you might even like it that way. I’ve spent so much time rehashing the past, concerned over a future that doesn’t exist, and mostly trying to understand why people act the way they do. It’s exhausting, it’s disappointing, and it can be debilitating.

 

And so, I made my mental plan for checking out. Grace became a resignation—a quiet, passive acknowledgment that if I didn’t let something go, it would eat me alive, stealing the present moment out from under me. Resistance seemed baked into everything I did, and it colored my view of the world with darkness instead of light.

 

For many of us in the gay community, trauma feels like a thread woven into the fabric of our lives. There’s often pressure to be grateful for the pain because it shaped who we are.

 

I’ve come to believe that’s a form of cultural gaslighting. I don’t have to be grateful for what hurt me. Gratitude doesn’t need to stretch that far. Joy isn’t about gratitude for the trauma, it’s about reclaiming the power that trauma tried to take away.

 

Joy is a quiet but powerful reclamation. For those of us who’ve faced trauma, it’s not about erasing the pain or pretending it didn’t happen. It’s about building something beautiful in its shadow. It’s about choosing to create light even when we have been left in darkness.

 

When I stopped resisting the world and started building resilience within myself, everything changed. Resilience isn’t about fighting, it’s about showing up, tending to what matters, and finding light in the dark.

 

I know how anger and resentment can burn incredibly bright within ourselves and our communities.

 

Joy is different.

 

Joy is a quiet, sustainable resistance. It’s what anchors us to today but keeps us moving forward. The future can be dark if you let it, but if you find joy right now, there can be nothing but light on your path.

 

The truth is, it takes more energy to fight. It takes more muscles to frown. It takes more energy to fight invisible battles and to worry. But joy can be light. It isn’t effortless, but it’s always the easiest choice of all.

 

The truest act of resistance in the modern day is resisting the urge to resist at all. Because that is the resistance that will build you up instead of bringing you down.

 

Growing food and flowers has filled me with an abundance of perspective about the power we give ourselves by living in the present. Ever since I’ve lived on land with my horses and animals, it has seemed like the world is on fire. Tempers flare, bridges burn, and you cannot escape an every-person-for-themselves mentality.

 

But the garden has taught me that the quietest acts of resistance—tending to a plant, finding your joy, staying present—are the most powerful. These are the things that keep us whole.

 

Joy is not about ignoring darkness—it’s about choosing light despite it. The act of planting seeds in the dirt, spreading love amidst the chaos of the world, even when the future seems uncertain—this is resistance. When you’re in the garden, there is only right now. All you can do is plant, tend, and trust. Somehow, that turns out to be enough.

 

My mental health journey in the garden turned into an entire business and community in my corner of the world. And along the way, I’ve returned barefoot to the same field many times. We plant our best crops in it, and it has rewarded us profoundly throughout the seasons.

 

I try and remember to pay it back to the earth and give some reserves to my future self often. When I’m feeling really good, I like to walk the property barefoot, sending my joy back to the source, and bottling up a little for when I may need it soon. 

 

Because even if a present moment is filled with struggle, you are always right where you need to be, right where you want to be, when you commit to the journey.