I Don't Even Want a Houseplant

By Sarah J. Hauser

To celebrate ten years of Coffee + Crumbs, we’re sharing a few favorite essays from the archives.

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Author’s note:

We recently moved out of state, and a friend at our new house said to me, "Wow, did you bring those plants with you all the way from Illinois? I can't believe they made it."

"A few are still struggling. I'm not sure they'll survive," I pointed out. But still, most of my plants did make it. I don't credit this so much to my green thumb as much as to the Instagram plant educators (@happyhappyhouseplant is the best!) who have made it their mission to help people like me keep their leafy, green plant babies alive.

Yet as I look back on this essay I wrote over three years ago, I'm reminded of a time when keeping a plant alive for any length of time felt like an insurmountable task. It wasn't because the watering and pruning and potting proved all that difficult. It was because any failure, even failing to keep a plant alive, made me feel like I was a failure. I couldn't risk failing at one more thing. So I couldn't even have a houseplant.

Thank the good Lord he's brought me through that dark season, and the plants in my new home are somewhat of a strange, silly testament to overcoming that darkness. I still have moments—even days—when I struggle. But I'm not where I was three years ago. Regardless of my bad parenting days, my struggling plants, and all my other missteps, I am not a failure.

If that's something you need to hear, too, I pray I am one of many voices who can remind you that you are loved, cherished, and needed. And you, friend, are definitely not a failure.

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I’ve never been great at keeping plants alive. Every year, I eagerly purchase tomatoes and cucumbers, lettuce and green beans. I block off time on a weekend to put them in the ground, optimistic this will be the year I finally make salads and sauces, sides and stews with what I grew in my own backyard. Last year, the tomatoes withered by July and a rabbit ate the entire lettuce plant within twenty-four hours. We got a few green beans and a cucumber—a successful crop, I suppose, if you compare it to previous summers. But there are only so many side dishes you can make when you harvest two or three green beans at a time.

Indoor plants fare even worse in my house. I’m over-ambitious and under-attentive when it comes to all things botanical. I’ve been told certain plants are “impossible to kill” or “easy to maintain” according to those with green thumbs. They obviously haven’t met me.

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Will medication help? Do I just need to eat better and exercise more? What if I’m just a depressed person? What if nothing can fix me? What if this doesn’t work? What if the side effects are terrible?

The questions swirled in my mind for months. I talked it through with friends, my counselor, my doctor, my husband. No one gave me an easy, prescriptive answer. There are no guarantees when it comes to health—especially mental health. But after too many days of barely getting out of bed, after too many phone calls to my husband asking him to come home from work, after the tiniest incidents pushed me into a pit of dark thoughts I struggled to escape … well, I knew I needed to take the next step. 

It’s been a year since I called my doctor and said, “I think I’ll go ahead and try the medication.”

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“I remember being in your stage of motherhood. I didn’t even want a plant.” 

My counselor empathized with me as I shared how I struggled to meet the needs of my kids without feeling completely wrung out by the end of the day. The three of them, these children I longed for and loved, took it out of me. Feeding these three mouths, changing three sets of diapers, doling out snack after snack after snack, making exponentially more decisions in a day than I had before kids ... I was exhausted. Even when they started sleeping through the night and the twins were finally potty-trained (which was a whole adventure itself), I found myself cracking when one more request would be made. If someone needed me to open a granola bar, if my husband asked me if I could run to the post office, if anything extra came up, I crashed like a house of cards.

I couldn’t handle the weight of motherhood. And I, too, could not imagine owning a plant. 

It wasn’t the actual work of taking care of a plant that scared me so much. It was the feeling of failure. Everyday, I was hit in the face with what I believed to be failures. I yelled at the kids. I let them watch too much TV. I needed my husband to come home from work, again. I couldn’t stop crying at the dinner table for no apparent reason. Let’s not forget that time my son fell out of the window. 

Failure. 

Failure. 

Failure. 

I didn’t need another example of failure withering on the shelf in my family room.

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“How have you been feeling?” my doctor asked. The paper crinkled underneath me as I shifted my weight on the table. There’s a reason therapists have couches. Talking about mental health under fluorescent lights while sitting on a paper-covered table doesn't exactly put the mind at ease. 

“I think I’m doing okay,” I said. Every day for months, I’d taken a tiny pill, praying and hoping I could feel like a person again. It wasn’t a magic pill. It hasn’t reconciled arguments with my husband or folded the laundry, paid the bills or healed grief. I’ve still had to live my life. I still pray, go to counseling, and ask for help. I still deal with side effects, and I’ve had to call my doctor when the dosage doesn’t seem to be enough.

But there in that office, I said I was doing okay. And I actually meant it. 

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“Maybe I’ll pick up one of these,” I thought. We were in Home Depot, and the display of indoor plants caught my eye. I stopped, picked up a pothos—supposedly the easiest houseplant to keep alive—and decided to give it a shot. What’s the worst that could happen? I’d just be out a few bucks, maybe. 

That, right there, showed growth. My enneagram-six-worst-case-scenario mind saw the worst case accurately. If I couldn’t keep that silly plant alive, I wasn’t a failure. It wouldn’t bring me to tears. My worth didn’t rest in my horticultural skills.

This all sounds ridiculous, I know. But depression does that to you. It did to me, anyway. Every little thing can so quickly cause you to spiral. It attaches a hundred-pound weight to what you’re already feeling. You can all too easily see your own fears and failures while you look at browned leaves and drooping stems.

I placed the plant in my cart and picked out a simple gray pot to go with it. We’ll see how this goes.

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I’m at my kitchen table with my kids. They’re coloring on a giant tablecloth coloring mat while I type. From here I can see the gray pot on my mantle, the pothos I bought months ago still alive and well. It’s a little scrawny, to be sure, but it’s holding strong for the most part. I even learned how to divide it, and it’s since grown two more plants, one soaking up light on the ledge of the bay window and the other sitting on top of the piano.

I have a struggling fiddle-leaf fig in my bathroom, along with a thriving anthurium, an aloe vera plant, and some other sort of succulent. On the shelf above those plants sit a few fake ones that I purchased years ago when I felt maxed out in my caretaking capacity.

I bought some natural fertilizer, and I’m working on my tendency to over-water. I have an app on my phone that helps me diagnose plant problems. I use it often. Even so, I tossed a few plants in the trash the other day. They didn’t exactly thrive with my “more is better” watering philosophy, especially since I put them in a pot with poor drainage. But I’m learning. I’m getting better. And when I threw those dead plants in the trash I thought, “Oh well. Now I know.” 

A year ago, I would have cried over those plants—not because I felt attached to them at all, but because my worth was. I would have said I failed, that if I couldn’t even take care of the easy-to-maintain, impossible-to-kill plants, there must be something wrong with me. I’d let down the plant, and that was just another piece of evidence I must be letting everyone else down. 

Instead, I shrugged, calculated the fact that I lost about $14 in my plant investment, and kept pruning and watering the rest of them.

There’s no quick fix for depression. I’m still fighting spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical battles that come with it. But there was once a day when I couldn’t handle the thought of having a plant. 

Today, I look around my house, and I count ten.

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Sarah J. Hauser is a writer and speaker living in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, four kids, and loud rescue dog. She loves to cook but rarely follows a recipe exactly, and you can almost always find her with a cup of coffee in hand. She is also the author of All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry (Moody, 2023). Find more writing and recipes to nourish your soul at sarahjhauser.com.

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Thank you for supporting women and the arts. We are still here, ten years later, because of you. ❤️