Given the Right Conditions
A reflection on healing, growth and what plants taught me about my own capacity to change.
I've been thinking a lot lately about growth and healing - for us as humans - and how much it mirrors what we see happening in plants.
Have you ever had a plant that was doing so well for a while, and then, for one reason or another, it just wasn't anymore? Sometimes, it can be because it got moved to a new spot and the light, the moisture, the temperature - whatever it is just no longer quite work for it the way it used to.
I also notice it happening when I myself go through a more emotionally difficult time. It’s like I’m not able to connect to my plants somehow or sometimes I simply forget about them.
And slowly, the plant (or sometimes plants) began to wilt. The lushness it once had just was no longer there.
Pruning for growth, for hope that all is not lost.
You take a clipping and place it in water, hoping for roots to emerge, hoping to carry something of this plant forward in a new form. And sometimes, you find that the pruning itself was all that the plant needed. New growth begins to emerge. You give it fresh soil, renewed care and it comes back. It simply needed to shed what was no longer serving it - old leaves, heavy vines, exhausted soil and the weight of what it had been carrying - to make space for new growth.
Sometimes, though, the mother plant doesn't have enough left to survive. And watching something you've tended to reach its end can be quite sad. But then you realize that the spirit of it carries on in the clippings.
Sometimes, we too need a completely fresh start. And when that happens, our past certainly doesn't disappear but it can becomes the roots beneath us, the foundation from which something new can grow. We only need to be willing to be open for change and nurture it.
Our past doesn't disappear - rather, it can become the roots beneath us, the foundation from which something new can grow.
A fresh start
The clipping generally finds its own new roots - it takes on a life of its own. A new plant. And sometimes, that clipping becomes even more lush than the mother plant ever was. Through the process, you've also learned something about how to care for the plant better. You know what it needs, what it can handle and you're able to tend to it in a more attuned, more knowledgeable way.
Parallels from my own life
When I think about my own healing, I see so much of this very same playing out. In the beginning, I didn't even realize I had wounds. I just thought I was the plant that was in the wrong soil, had the wrong temperature, wrong pot, wrong owner. I kept seeing reasons outward that made things hard, not realizing I needed to turn inward to understand what was going on.
It’s when old wounds I hadn't even known I was carrying started surfacing that I understood something was asking to be witnessed. You know that’s what’s needed when you come up to feeling things you can't quite name stemming from experiences you didn't know were still weighing on you.
But that surfacing, as uncomfortable as it was, turned out to be the beginning of something new. New experiences made room for new perspectives. A different way of moving through the world started to become a possibility.
Turns out, I did gain from pain.
As my wounds started healing, I became very aware that from that pain came a kind of growth I could not have imagined from where I was before. These new ways of seeing myself and the world would probably never have been available to me without the struggles I had. Yes, the wounds are still part of me, but they no longer hold me down. They've become part of what moves me forward. I am a stronger and more resilient version of myself because of them - not in spite of them.
And those new experiences - the clippings, as I see them - have led me somewhere I never could have reached had I stayed rooted in the same place, in the same perspectives, in the same story about who I thought I was.
Now, the old and the new live alongside each other. Each experience, each moment of reflection, becomes another layer of growth. Another opportunity to become a little more fully myself.
Of growth and healing
What I've come to understand - through looking at my plants and through reflecting on my own journey - is that growth isn’t something we can just force and make happen because we want to. It happens when the conditions are right. When there is enough light, enough care, enough willingness to let go of what's no longer needed.
Rather than asking myself "why is it so hard to change?", I am now able to reflect on what conditions am I currently in and if they are moving me forward or keeping me stuck in the familiar ways.
I have found that such reflections are a lot easier to answer when you learn to listen - not just with your mind, but with your whole self. With your body, your breath, your movement, your senses. The way you hold yourself in a moment of difficulty. The way your shoulders soften when you feel seen.
I have shared further thoughts about that kind of attending and listening here - How Moving With Awareness Brought Me to Living From the Inside Out
Thank you for reading.