After reading Kathy Slack’s Rough Patch: How a Year in the Garden Brought Me Back to Life, I immediately wanted to speak with her. I had a feeling we’d have a good conversation, not least because her book shares so many themes with my own, A Year of Nothing, which launched this week.
We both write about deeply personal years in which, against our will, we were forced to let go, opt out, and go underground—years that made very little sense at the time. Mine unfolded recently; Kathy’s took place more than a decade ago.
Our situations differed in many ways, and we used different language to describe our experiences—and while I’m not sure the word burnout ever fully captures what the soul moves through in these dark times, it remains an easy shorthand for the culture around us. Beneath the surface, there were striking similarities in our stories. We were both looking back on particularly challenging years in our lives, and we both chose to write them down and open up.
We both lived through turbulent periods in which our worlds were turned upside down, and later wrote about the slow process of coming back to life: emerging from dark, fallow seasons and digging our hands back into the soil of life.
In Rough Patch, Kathy writes about leaving her glossy advertising career in London—a life that looked like a ‘dream’ but was quietly draining her soul: and discovering unexpected solace in her vegetable patch. Her book offers a brilliant exploration of the healing power of nature and the practice of self-compassion, and along the way, I picked up some useful gardening tips and nourishing recipes.
In this honest chat, we discuss the differences between depression and burnout, the importance of deep rest, kindness toward ourselves, how a memoir isn’t a manual, abundance vs ‘success’, choosing to be child-free, and the deeply satisfying feeling of growing your own vegetables from scratch.
Hope you enjoy. 🌱
Other books/links mentioned:
* Kathy’s Substack ‘Tales from the Veg Patch’
* Kathy’s cookbook: From the Veg Patch: 10 favourite vegetables, 100 simple recipes everyone will love
* The Success Myth: Letting go of having it all
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