“Today my forest is dark. The trees are sad and all the butterflies have broken wings.”

“Depression isn’t a war you win. It’s a battle you fight every day. You never stop, never get to rest. It’s one bloody fray after another.” (Shaun David Hutchinson)

Let’s talk mental health! Especially let’s talk about depression. Before we can go deeper into this topic, we’d like to briefly describe how living with depression feels like (people can have different symptoms).

Depression is a mental disorder characterized by:

– (at least) two weeks of low mood

– loss of interest (normally you enjoyed those things)

– low energy

– pain (without knowing what is causing it)

– low self-esteem

It can get so bad, that you don’t want to go on like this anymore and want to end your life because of the pain you’ve endured so far. We hope writing about mental illnesses, especially depression, will reduce stigma and improve the understanding of people living with mental illness.

Plants have a lot of benefits regarding (mental) health. Conclusions of several studies say, that being around plants or green spaces help people feel more calm and relaxed besides cleaning the air, enhancing one’s life and creating a state of well-being. Other benefits are:

decreased anxiety levels

improved attentiveness, mood and memory

increased productivity and creativity

reduced symptoms of depression

improved cognitive abilities (e.g. less symptoms of dementia)

better self-esteem

Being around our plants will lead to a greater, better quality of life.

Caring for your plants is a constant reminder to care for yourself

Nevertheless life can get hard sometimes and you find yourself not being able to enjoy things which you normally find joy and peace in – taking care for our plant babies is one of those things. We’d like to remind you: it is okay to feel the way you are feeling. You are in survival mode and it is okay to look for yourself first, it is okay to have an extra long nap because of a rough, sleepless night you had and it is also okay that you can’t care for your plant babies the way you did before.

Here are a few tips to help you caring for your plants:

don’t force yourself to care for all your plant babies in a certain amount of time: take breaks, rest a little and when you feel the energy rushing back to you you can go on caring for your plants (even if it takes several days to do so)

create a watering schedule: because of some memory problems you can forget to water your plants, or even worse, water them too much (because you can’t remember when you watered them the last time)

take your time with your most favorite plants – sit down next to them, look at them and try to feel the positive energy coming from the plants

Let us say this: you are a fighter and we are in this together. You are doing great fighting your way back in life! We are proud of you and together we will endure those hard times! With the help of each other and, of course, our plants.