Gardens: Secret Garden

Children's Garden, at the Good Samaritan Hospital.

Going to the doctor's is hard enough, but it's especially difficult for women and their children. On a recent trip to a local hospital for a free women's healthcare event that promoted breast cancer awareness, 

I saw this little garden out the window, and you know what? It made me feel better, like this was a place that cared about people. One of my favorite charities is Splashes of Hope (http://splashesofhope.org/), an organization that creates beautiful healing spaces, because as artists, they realize that an environment not designed for our senses is one that cuts out a huge part of our life. They give children spaces that make them feel more connected to the outside world by joyfully filling their senses. 

Leonard Nimoy, (SPOCK!) is very active for a hospital in California (http://www.leonardnimoy.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1558:the-healing-arts-&catid=27:interviews&Itemid=14) that did just that: it created galleries out of empty wall space for their patients, so they could stroll down the hallways and look at the art. One women fighting cancer said it gave her a reason to live, because she wanted so badly to get better to go outside to look at a landscape like the one she passed by every day with her portable chemo IV drip in her arm. The greatest gift we can give one another is the gift of hope, a reason to go on living, because we know we're not alone.  

What do your gifts do for others?

http://www.pinterest.com/mariedoucette/gardens-and-green-walls/