Seasonal changes have two forms in our lives- there is the season we ascribe to a given time frame often determined by imposed measures of time like calendar months or with the progression of equinoxes and solstices. There is also the seasonality of the land with whom we live which is informed by general weather patterns, the growth of flora and fauna, the shifting patterns of light, and the stirring of body and spirit in concert with the places we are rooted. 

Here in south central Texas the wildflowers have a predictable procession. I can tell you the likely weather, length of day, character of the sky, likely animal friends visiting my home-all based on what flowers are in what proportion at any given time of year, especially along the highways. There's a relationship there, a dance between all these aspects of the environment that provides the cues for certain flowers to bloom and those flowers in turn inform other aspects of the environment from what insect life is available to pollinate other plants and feed other animals to the changing levels of nutrients in the soil as they return to feed the earth from which they spring.

Of course, now there is climate chaos. There is weather all out of season or disproportionate to the Earth's hungers. Animals following their natural cycles come to this place and find their usual foods unavailable or find their predators too numerous or their prey too few because that which fed them is not growing. There is a sweetness to the beauty of a sudden profusion of flowers that is touched by the sorrow of knowing the imbalances that gave them birth. This knowing that has developed from almost four decades of living in Texas no longer can be relied on to pattern my own days.

But the flowers still bloom. And they are still signposts as much as they are a bittersweet wonder to eyes and hands and hearts. They still tell us about the weather and the soil and the rhythms of the land with whom we live. And we can begin to know not only the stories these flowers tell us but also our own signposts. What flowers spring up in you, nourish and delight your heart when the weather of your life is in time with your own rhythms, your own needs? What grows when the weather is heavy, turgid with unshed tears that cannot water your life until you shed them? What blooms in you when the soil of community is toxic with spillage from yourself or others?
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In this flourishing month, with the Flower Moon shining in our lives, I encourage you to reflect on what is growing in the soils of your own bodies, hearts, spirits, and communities. Hear what they are saying about your life and about what you may need to feed your flourishing. And set to work-and play and rest- with heart and hands full of the flowers that grow when we are in meaningful relationship with ourselves and our world.

I’ve been thinking a lot about growth and growing in this season of our lives… We are many of us in a time that involves many stressors, adverse conditions that reduce our access to the things that nourish us: relationships, genuine leisure time, a sense of basic safety in our environment and interactions, financial security. It is a time that has brought (and continues to bring) loss and grief and fear as well for many of us, if not for ourselves than for people we know. It is a time when both the literal and the cultural seasons- rhythms and rituals and ways of being- are increasingly distant from what our bodies and minds and spirits remember, long for, even need.

During these times, our bodies and minds naturally draw inward to conserve resources and protect us. Thinking, learning, engaging, relating, navigating social and emotional and physical and vocational spaces and activities and relationships all take literal resources in the form of physical and mental energy expenditure. Much as many plants during fall and winter draw their sugars into their roots, concentrating them there and focusing growth on that underground network that anchors and nourishes life, promoting resilience in the plant, so, too, do we feel a prompting to sink back into our center, to conserve energy and concentrate our resources in the areas where nourishment and safety are. And, much like those same plants do as life edges towards spring, it is in sinking back into our roots, and growing our contact with the sources of nourishment in our lives, that we, too, are able to expand into profusion, flourishing in the seasons where resources are more plentifully available to us.

There are a few glimmers of understanding I’m sitting with here. We have all heard of greenhouses and growing things out of season; when we do that, we call it “forcing” and that term is particularly applicable here and now in these strange seasons in our lives. We can force plants to grow and produce out of season only by tricking them with controlled access to light and temperature and water and nutrients. When we try to force ourselves to grow and produce while resources are limited and conditions are adverse, we are not generally as successful as we would be otherwise, and by preventing that time of sinking back and concentrating on growing our roots we are not as resilient nor as abundant as we could otherwise be. This applies to ourselves and to the people around us coping with various degrees and forms of adversity, toxic stress, and trauma. When we force growth in periods where we/they could better thrive through sinking back and consolidating energy in our roots, we/they literally, physically lack access to the resources necessary to sustain that growth. Struggling to learn, to relate, to regulate is an **entirely natural and biologically based result of a process that exists to keep us alive.** It is **not** therefore a reflection of failure on the part of ourselves/them.

The other glimmer is what this implies about the work before us and within us at this time. There isn’t a map here, nor any clear threshold to cross that delineates here from there or safety from risk/adversity/loss. We don’t have many places and relationships and means for containing and regulating our individual, much less our collective, trauma and stress. It is certainly not something we focus on creating in our culture at large, nor teaching ourselves and each other how to do in our own persons, families, or communities. But what we do have is the ability to ask ourselves some questions, keeping in mind that the answers may apply broadly across areas of our lives or may vary depending on what aspect of our lives we are getting curious about:

-What nourishes me? What is the soil I can root into and use to sustain myself and promote my resilience when it’s time to flourish out in the world again?
-In the areas of my life where I have no choice but to continue to produce, how can we set up conditions to be as favorable to that as possible? Where can I draw my resources away from so they are more available to these areas?
-and to step to the left of the climatological metaphor because we can: How can we “companion plant” by sharing where we have extra resources to support and nourish others who may have extra resources that can support us? Who brings nutrients to our soul? Who has broad leaves that shelter us from things that would take what we need? Who provides a sturdy place to wind ourselves as we rise up reaching for the light? And who do we provide these things to? Where can we provide to others the things that we do well (because it’s awfully hard to be a sturdy place to rise and also be low to the ground with broad leaves protecting)?

These are just a few of the things I’m sitting with tonight and questions I’m asking myself and my clients and my loved ones. And let me recommend curiosity as the starting point here. When we get curious, there is a release of the critical, a playfulness, even a softening of resistance that we make space for in ourselves. We are not interrogating ourselves or others in our lives. We are inviting ourselves to be seen and known; that takes some basic trust with ourselves and it's ok if that trust is hard or new. As we get curious about these things, I invite us all to allow whatever answers come, and to pause before we give ourselves a litany of new tasks to accomplish.

Perhaps something here will spark a glimmer of your own.

May you be well. 💚🔥💦🌼

An initial version of this post was originally shared on Dr. Amy’s blog at www.rootedflame.com on 12/20/2020