Lessons from the year

The lessons Giddy Garden has taught me/us in the past year

This project has been one of the biggest teachers of our lives.

🌿 Community

More than anything, we’ve learned how essential a strong community is. The collaborations, friendships and support around Giddy Garden have made things possible that we could never have done alone. This dream doesn’t survive on it's own, it needs people backing it, shaping it, and holding it with us and we have felt that support and feel so much gratitude.

🌿 Patience

The opening of the venue has been pushed back again and again. We’ve had to learn deep acceptance, not letting the delays harden us, turn into frustration or into collapse. These things genuinely take a long time, and there are so many invisible steps between vision and opening day.

🌿 Boundaries

We had to learn (over and over) that pushing harder isn’t always the answer. Not overworking, even when every part of us wanted to force momentum, has been one of the most uncomfortable but necessary lessons.

🌿 Courage

There were moments when my usual pattern would have been to give up. When emotions were high, resilience was low, and the urge to curl up and walk away felt very real. ADHD means finishing things can be especially challenging, but nothing has ever meant this much to me. So I kept finding the courage to continue, to learn new skills, and to keep taking the next step forward.

🌿 Rest

Perhaps the biggest surprise: slowing down actually works. Pausing, resting, and working fewer hours, when done intentionally, has given me more energy, clarity and capacity than pushing myself to the edge of burn out ever did. Sometimes less really is more.

2025 stretched us in every direction, but it’s also grown us in ways we couldn’t have predicted.