In 2012, I had taken to hiding and sobbing in a meeting room at the London advertising agency I worked for. I held a senior position at the company and, if I had been found, it would have been deeply embarrassing. But most days, I woke up feeling as if a lead weight was pressing on my chest; I would spend my commute overwhelmed by an inexplicable feeling of sorrow. Every ringing phone in the office felt like an electric shock. Hiding in the barely used meeting room, hoping for respite had become a regular occurrence.
But respite didn’t come. Despite my picture-perfect life – high-flying career, happy home and good health – my mind unravelled. I was signed off work with depression and, initially, spent weeks curled beneath the duvet with the curtains drawn, unable to face life, and consumed by shame. The good fortune of understanding bosses and private health cover meant I had access to drugs, therapy, doctors – whatever I needed. But real healing, hope and even a whole new career eventually came from an unlikely place: a vegetable patch.
My ever patient mother first coaxed me into the garden, where I sat among the dilapidated veg beds and put my hands in the soil. I watched the bugs, the weeds and the lettuces that had gone to seed. And there was silence. The constant chatter in my mind was quelled.
Over the course of a few weeks, I returned to the patch, eventually sowing some old lettuce seeds my mum found in a drawer, and marvelling at the alchemy of nature that transformed these lifeless kernels into food. I found a packet of radish seeds too, and within weeks I was picking actual radishes, which gave me the added satisfaction of eating something I’d grown.
I became engrossed and, as my recovery progressed, I sowed anything and everything, creating a haphazard and chaotic garden. When you feel as if the world is falling down around you, seeing a seed turn into supper is very comforting. It reminded me to hope.
A few months after being signed off work – despite the neighbouring pigs escaping and eating the pumpkins, despite forgetting where I’d planted potatoes, and despite my wandering attention – I had grown an abundant, generous harvest.
The first meal I cooked with entirely homegrown ingredients felt momentous. It was nothing more than a simple broth with onions, borlotti beans, carrots and cavolo nero, but it felt like a real achievement. As I sweated the onions, I thought about when I had planted them in the patch and how that one job had exhausted me for days. I podded the borlotti beans, remembering how dark and hopeless the world had felt when I sowed them. The carrots were tiny, gnarly and encrusted with mud, but I scrubbed them clean and tumbled them into the broth. An unlabelled tub found in the freezer, which I hoped was a chicken stock I’d made months ago in better times, turned out to be just that. As I added the baby cavolo nero leaves in the final moments of cooking, picking off a snail that had clung on despite washing, I realised that cooking this homegrown food made me feel more connected with nature than I had in years. That connection was grounding; it was my medicine.
Although I was still dependent on others for so many things (shopping, organising medical appointments, the daily logistics of normal life), feeding myself using homegrown produce felt galvanising and empowering. Here was a meal made with things that didn’t exist a few weeks ago. I had done that.
I took a mug of the steaming stew to the veg beds and clutched it in my hands as I admired the garden. In time, this stew set me off on a new path. I quit my adland job with no idea what I would do next. But, guided by my newfound passion, I went to chef school and got a job picking crops in an organic market garden. I started a blog, sharing recipes inspired by my harvests.
In the veg patch, things continue to be ramshackle and tumbledown. I never had ambitions to be totally self-sufficient; as long as I can occasionally turn something I have grown into a meal, I am happy.
I still feel the same sense of awe when I see a seed has germinated – and I still make that same stew every year, to remind me what I can achieve, and how far I have come.
Rough Patch: How a Year in the Garden Brought Me Back to Life by Kathy Slack is published on 6 February (Robinson, £18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com. P&P charges may apply
