By now, if you’ve not seen Orange is the New Black (OITNB), then where have you been?! 

No, I kid, but this quote has stuck with me since the particular episode aired in 2016. The episode entitled ‘Toast Can’t Never Be Bread Again.’ Has a scene where Red, feeling particularly crushed, given the sheer amount of trauma and anguish the inmates had just experienced in Litchfield over Poussey’s death, she colsouls her closest companions in the Garden and reads a passage about “the garden as a metaphor for humanity”.

It’s taken from Anne Lamott’s book ‘Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life’:

“The garden is one of the two great metaphors for humanity.

The garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things.

The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe.

It’s part of an urgent territorial drive that we can probably trace back to animals storing food.

It’s a competitive display mechanism, like having a prize bull, this greed for the best tomatoes and English tea roses.

It’s about winning; about providing society with superior things; and about proving that you have taste, and good values, and you work hard.

And what a wonderful relief, every so often, to know who the enemy is.

Because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time.

And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth, and growth, and beauty, and danger, and triumph.

And then everything dies anyway, right?

But you just keep doing it.”

The last lines of this quote resonate with me all the time, life is absolutely shit, and there are enemies around every corner, but it’s the little beauties of life (of the garden) that make it all worthwhile, or more aptly worth the pain of living. The beauty of life keep us moving forward, to make growth and a future that is even better than before.

(Well that’s what I read anyway!)

Also kudos to Janeway (sorry Katherine Mulgrew) she recreates an extraordinary character with Red (Galina Reznikov). Brutal and strong, but heartfelt, warm and motherly when needed.