Find peace in the Healing Gardens
Like many people, Deb Marqui of St. Charles draws strength and inspiration from nature.
"There is a reason for that. There is a rejuvenation that happens. There is a stillness. There is an energy that you absorb," she says.
Walking through the woods on her property, studying the flowers in her garden, finding meaning in a fallen tree - it all helped her through two successful battles against cancer.
Knowing other people could use the same thing, she opened her land - and her heart.
From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. the second Sunday of each month, from May through October, Marqui lets anyone who needs some time in a peaceful setting to wander through her woods and gardens. You can walk, sit, draw, read, pray.
"People who usually come are very into gardening. They just feel in connection," she said of Healing Gardens, opened in 2004 at Stone Hill Farm, 37W249 Dean St.
There are no set tours or activities. Marqui does have pamphlets explaining how she came to opening Healing Gardens and pointing out some of her favorite sites.
Such as those woods, where her now-grown children used to ride dirt bikes.
She meditates winter mornings in her bedroom and realized one day she was ready to "do something" with the woods. It occurred to her that people would benefit from being in it.
"Every fairy tale has a woods experience," she says, likening her fights with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, then breast cancer, to fairy tales. One of her favorite spots there is where a box elder tree split, with half of the trunk falling over. It is partially supported by four other trees. She's labeled it "Surrender."
"That's just how it was with me _ people kind of held me. Life is about surrendering to what is, to reality," she says.
Another fallen box elder reminds her of some women, breast cancer survivors. The gnarled tree is still alive, shoots springing from the fallen trunk. "Honest to God, they thrive, these women," even though their bodies have been misshapen by cancer.
There's statues of the Virgin Mary and St. Francis of Assisi (Marqui grew up Catholic), but people of all faiths are welcome.
The Perennial Path garden brims with forget-me-nots, allium, hollyhocks, buttercups, salvia, Virginia bluebells, balsam - "it's like a picture to me," Marqui said.
A spot to the west of that is Melissa's Place, inspired by a single mother of two who died of tongue cancer. Marqui helped Melissa write a letter to her children, the last words of which are displayed on a sign: "Draw me a picture, sing me a song, dance me a dance, LIVE!" People often leave mementos of their departed loved ones in this garden.
Marqui, who works part-time as a psychotherapist, is the main keeper of the 2.25-acre site, although her husband and children help with tasks such as rototilling.
"There's a new field, eco-psychology. If we don't live peacefully with the Earth, we're going to be in terrible straits. We are human beings who live on this Earth that has an Earth soul," she said.
That doesn't mean she doesn't fight nature sometimes. There's a fence around her rose and tulip garden to keep deer from snacking on them. And wild garlic mustard, an invasive weed, is her nemesis in the woods. She cleared out one stand of trees because it provided a hiding place for coyotes, one of which attacked her dog, Sophie.
Marqui asks visitors what moves them. One widow told her the sole survivor of an apple orchard reminded her of herself - "just hanging on."
Another said a stone etched with the word "trust," placed in a path on a slope, "was God speaking to me about trusting life."
For Marqui, nature constantly reminds her that it is important to make the most of life right now, even though she has been in remission from the lymphoma for 12 years and the breast cancer for six. "That's the greatest lesson that nature has taught me ... I try to live in the present moment, in the now, because that's all I have."