A story about grooming and growth.

A gardener and his seed.

A beautiful quiet garden sits behind a small house.

A seed is being planted in this garden, with utter care and reverence.

It's a very special seed. In fact, there is only one seed like it in the whole world.

The gardener that is planting the seed is clever, handsome and is a master at his craft.

He isn’t your usual gardener.

There’s something about him that has people noticing him differently. They don’t know why or what it is per say, but they do notice.

The other gardeners aren’t sure if they actually really like him, or if it’s just that he wants them to really like him. There’s a duality there that no one can quite put their finger on.

Regardless, the gardeners continue to blissfully plant, tending to their own gardens.

Our gardener knows what he’s doing.

He knows how to nourish and feed his seed so that it grows the way that he wants it to grow.

Where, once breaking through the Earth, the seedling ultimately doesn’t look towards the sun for energy, or the clouds for water, but instead it looks to him, for everything. That’s what he wants.

He’s tender and precise with each movement and equally so with each comment that he makes while tending to his garden. To his seed. He is calculated and charismatic. He can mimic the sun. He is all knowing and seems to only have the best interests of his seed, soon to bloom into a flower, at heart. 

And bloom, she does.

She is a curious, kind, joyful flower that is eager to please. She sparkles from the inside, and this light transfers into the vibrant green of her stem and into the early colors of her petals, which are a soft pillowy peach.

The flower grows to believe her gardener. She naturally turns to him to guide her. She feels weak and withered when he doesn’t water her.

She feels like she can’t grow without his attention, light, and wisdom. 

Having had grown in such a way, she does not know that she can turn towards the real sun for light, for energy. She is blind and very much oblivious to the sun’s natural unconditional love and instead looks only to her gardener.

The sun seems too easy, too available. She likes to work to get her gardener’s attention instead. 

To please him.

When she does, he fertilizes her, and she is riveted.  

She can feel the fertilizer as it is anxiously sucked in by her roots and then, she can feel it surging through her stem as it reaches her petals. All at once, she becomes brighter, more vibrant, almost iridescent. Her pillowy peach turns indigo.

She feels alive. 

It is in these moments that her gardener is the proudest.

He beams with regard towards his flower. He tells all his friends about her, how beautiful she is, and how she is the best flower in his garden. The best flower in all the gardens. His shoulders are broader, his smile wider and he looks at his flower with full eyes, taking her all in.

He’s intoxicated by her, and she feels LOVE. 

The flower lives for this feeling. She needs it, she is addicted to it.

But the gardener knows, that if he only fertilizes his flower, she will become too big, and too bright. She may even grow tall enough that the wall of the garden will be exposed. She will attract attention from other gardeners, and he doesn’t want that.

She is his flower.

So, he only gives her small doses of fertilizer. Calculated, micro dosing. Just enough to keep her straight, but not enough to have her see over the garden’s wall.

The fertilizer is a special treat, that is only given when she isn’t tempted by the sun, wants only his hands to tend to her Earth and can only see his mastery as her vessel.

Then he rewards her.

But to make the fertilizer as satiating as it is, he knows that he needs to neglect his flower as well. 

So, casually, as if nothing else is happening, every once in a while, he will completely forget to water her.

She slowly sinks down towards the ground, as her stem starts to feel weak from the dehydration. She manages to muster enough strength to carefully tilt her petals towards him and she begs her gardener for just one drop.

She is desperately watching him, willing his attention her way. 

He is busy talking to the other gardeners while tending to a new seed. She yearns to be that seed. She wants the attention he’s giving to the other gardeners, to the other seed. She craves it right down to her roots.

She can feel the dirt getting harder and cracking around her, the weakness taking over her stem and just as she’s about to drop her petals, her gardener appears and gives her water. 

She is surviving.

Once alive enough to hold up her head without his help, he smiles at her, and as she looks up at him, she feels a strange mix of deep confusion and utter gratitude.

“Say thank you”, he chimes.

She nods apologetically and manages to muster a quiet, “thank you”.

Then he walks away. She watches him intently.

She can feel the sun on her back, beckoning her to turn towards it, but she can’t.

She knows that soon her gardener will be back to fertilize her. That if she focuses only on him and shows all her prettiest petals, he will reward her. And so, she patiently waits.

The sun can see this happening. The sun knows. The sun is also waiting. 

Her sun isn't going anywhere.

on one particular day, after not being watered and watching her gardener tend to a new seed with love and reverence, she feels a little twinge.

A tug at the very bottom of her roots. It’s calling her.

This new feeling is gently pulling at her base, asking her to notice.

She’s never noticed this feeling, so she pauses, and she starts to pay attention.

This feeling guides her to stop looking out towards her gardener and instead, to look inside.

There, she learns what her roots feel like in the dirt. What they feel when the Earth is dry or too wet. What they feel like after being fertilized and what they feel like right before. She learns about her stem and petals in the same way, from the inside out.

With her gardener still around her, she starts to discern between the big highs and the big lows. She notices that even after being fertilized, that yes, she gets a huge boost but that it doesn’t last long and that right after she’s left with the same stem, the same Earth, and the same petals. 

And then her gardener leaves again.

The constant warmth of the sun stays steady. It doesn’t change. It is always there, and it doesn’t waver. 

After feeling her roots and learning about her stem for some time, she allows herself to subtly turn towards the sun.

She’s curious and something tells her to look.

She does so just enough so that her gardener won’t notice, but also enough to start to really feel it.

To allow herself to grow in microscopic ways from its natural unconditional light. 

The sun feels like her. It lights her up and warms her from the inside, out.

It feels like her natural beauty, not the iridescent and overly resonant kind, but the subtle, quiet kind.

She gets more comfortable being with the simple warmth of the sun’s energy. She notices that she sometimes feels bored and that at other times, her sun feels really safe to her. This is new, she thinks to herself.

She can feel this is what she needs.

She starts to recognize how her roots and stem are feeling too. When there is a shift, she can feel it. When they are startled, she notices. When they are still and not distracted, she notices. When they are stimulated, she can feel the quiver as it vibrates up the length of her stem.

Even though she can’t always understand what her roots are actually telling her, she knows they aren’t lying to her. She knows that she can innately trust her roots and her sun.

So, one day with that knowing, coupled with a deep fear and lots of uncertainty, she decides to turn completely towards the sun.

She is scared.

But she starts to see that she doesn’t need her gardener. She doesn’t even need the fertilizer.

All she needs is the sun, the Earth, and the rain to water her for her to live. 

That she's not surviving anymore, but that now she’s learning to thrive. 

This feels different and unexpectedly uncomfortable for the flower. She feels deep grief and a weird longing for her gardener. She isn’t sure she can live here for very long, that she may need her gardener after all.

And then she remembers that safe feeling, so she perseveres, and she decides to keep her petals facing towards her sun.

Here, she has time to feel the nuances of the dirt and her roots. That all she needs to do is to feel her surroundings and not wish for the gardener or the fertilizer but to surrender to her new coordinates. To learn how to be with it all, without wishing it away. To miss her gardener and still know that the sun, the clouds and this Earth is truly all she needs.

That she is exactly where she should be, and that she will never turn back.

She still doesn’t like it when the Earth around her gets too dry, or her petals are being pulled by gravity to the ground.

She fights the urge to look back, to desperately ask her gardener to water her. In those moments, she instead closes her eyes and remembers her insides. The way the twinge first taught her to notice.

And so, she feels all her parts from her roots to her petals and she breaths deep.

She feels the warmth of the sun and she remembers that the rain always comes but that it sometimes takes a little longer. She knows that being here is in some ways harder. But then she remembers the empty feeling that followed the fertilizer and the desperation she felt waiting for her gardener to tend her, and so, she stays.

She knows that here she can rely on her own knowing, her deep seeded roots and that she is the keeper of her vessel.

With time and practice, the flower consequently grows into the most beautiful flower she could have ever imagined. 

She intimately knows her roots, stem, petals, the Earth around her and the sun that warms her from the inside out.

She isn’t the biggest, brightest flower, but she is the most strongly rooted, secure and confident flower.

She now knows that her sun is actually her light, her intuition, her soul, and that all she needed to do was turn towards it to grow.

And so, she grows into the flower that she was always meant to be. 

From roots to petals, she is whole, and she is beautiful.

xo