The Backyard Is Everywhere
or Practicing Buddhism as I go
The house I’m selling has the most beautiful shade in the backyard early in the day. Morning into early afternoon, it’s perfect for an active pittie and her mom to sit still before the heat makes it nearly impossible to enjoy the outdoors.
I wouldn’t have known, if you’d asked me six months ago, when this yard gets the best light. Not because I never spent time back here, but maybe because I never did without being pulled into a trance by some task, deadline, or low-grade panic.
Now, being here feels different. Being still. Fully in my body. Watching Zara pace the grass, staring down chipmunks as they scurry up the back trees. The backyard feels magical. And maybe I couldn’t fully experience that until right before letting it go.
I can’t speak for any cancer survivor except myself, but since starting this unwanted path, I’ve been drawn to Buddhist teachings.
Recently, I listened to the audiobook Radical Compassion by Tara Brach and learned the story of the Golden Buddha buried beneath clay. I recommend Radical Compassion, especially if your inner voice can be brutal. Her RAIN meditation is a balm.
For most of my life, I misunderstood detachment. I thought it meant distance. I thought it meant loving things less. But I’m starting to believe it means something much deeper.
Detachment isn’t the denial of love. It might be the clearest way to let love in.
Here’s how I see it now:
Detachment lets me be in my body, in my backyard, in real time. And what I’ve realized is that the word my is the problem, not the backyard.
The grief I’ve felt about losing “my house” is coming from ego. Nothing is being taken from me. I am not being evicted or exiled. I am choosing to sell. It’s a conscious decision. It is the right one. Homeownership, as meaningful as it has been, is another job. It’s a job I never truly mastered and can no longer carry.
Zara, Briggs, and I will still have places to land. We’ll still have backyards, quiet corners, and room to be together or apart. Safety doesn’t come from a specific patch of green. It comes from how we show up for one another.
Technically, this backyard is mine. On paper. For now. But it isn’t any more mine than the green in the town center or the beaches along the coast or the mountains that stretch across New England.
The backyard is everywhere. It exists wherever and whenever I am present in nature.
Detachment allows everything to widen. When I stop tying people or things to my identity, I feel less isolated and more connected, like I belong to something larger than myself.
And before you challenge me on this, especially with a nearly 14-year-old, Briggs, whom I’ve loved unconditionally since before he arrived, this is where I turn even more fully toward a truth I believe with my whole heart:
There is no such thing as other people’s children.
Yes, he is our son. His dad and I created him. But he is also our son in the sense that all children belong to something greater than the family they are born into. I have to trust that he will be seen, protected, and cared for by a much wider world.
That’s what I want for him.
That’s what I want for me, and you, too.