Marta, I was very touched by the sad tone in what you wrote about
The Secret Garden's effect on you. I also felt that way when I first read it, and later when I viewed the 1975 BBC-TV adaptation (the best one in my opinion).
I've read and watched it since, and each time its beautiful messages sink ever deeper into my being, and the lingering sadness about my own childhood begins to blend with satisfaction for the hopeful turn the book has begun to point me towards.
One point that resonated with me isn't so much that it turned Mary's life around, but that we all have our own secret gardens. No, they don't always need to be started from scratch. Indeed, this wasn't how Mary's originated either. The garden's base was already in the ground, and some of its key elements were still present, though some of it had become invisible; what Mary was really about was renewing the promise of her inner spirit, symbolized by the dying and/or dead plants -- tangled and confused just like her own life had become.
Slowly she found out about the old secret garden, and was further excited to learn that often old roots, shoots, and stems of certain species can even exist for years underground until, if tended to, they can be nurtured back to 'new' life above ground. They don't always need to be created from seed, but what's there can be renewed. The analogy with one's own spirit found made me realize anew that's what we're all trying to do -- renew ourselves.
In a way, we've all been tending our own inner gardens, taking what we can find and care for, then crafting them into new/old creations that can blossom and bloom. Even the tiniest suggestion of hope can surprisingly appear, as when Mary first hears Robin, and remarks, "that's a nice cheeful song; please sing it again ... please." This just after the lowest ebb in her still young existence.
Our "piece of earth" can take many final forms, if we allow ourselves to be on the lookout for new possibilities. So something else that struck me about the story was how it began to focus on the potential of each of our secret gardens. Or at least it did for me. For instance, Mary tells Dickon, "but let's not make it a perfect garden ..."; then it would become static, and she wanted to see what other beauty might emerge on its own. Plus the effect of it began to have a growing impact on every character in the story.
No question, I still grieve terribly that my younger parts didn't have an easy go. But Mary's chance didn't come along, either, until she found herself bitterly alone. More by instinct than design, she just quietly, carefully, and playfully went about growing things. For me, reading and seeing her experience has helped shift my perspective from dire helplessness to consider the possibility of hope, even if it shows up not as I expected. Mary had assumed the roses were all dead, until Dickon pointed out that they were 'wick' -- "still alive on the inside, as much as you and me."
For me, I'm trying to cultivate an attitude that even if remnants of my dead or decayed inner garden are still present, there's still 'wick' that I can find to renew my own long-lost inner garden. Maybe something better can grow from it after all.
I hope you too will find your life to be such a garden, whatever the current circumstances and state of hope (or its absence).
