Sometimes what you grow is yourself.

Messages from wise friends in the spring.

I was recently chatting with a friend in Scotland and she was describing for me how the plants I had given her the last couple of years were thriving and blooming. It made me so happy and nostalgic. I loved being the person who gifted you a strawberry plant or two from my wonderful surplus. I loved taking rose cuttings and proliferating the beauty I found around me amongst my friends and neighbours.

When I told her how much I missed growing things in this phase of my life, her ever so wise words stopped me in my tracks—sometimes you are just growing yourself.

I love words that give you a sigh of relief and then a clear recognition about something in yourself. Sometimes you are just growing yourself. Of course!

I’ve been finalizing the layouts of my books of letters I wrote from my time in Scotland and I was a little bit shocked to see how much of THIS story I was learning two, even three years ago. I’ve been tending the seeds of this story for such a long time. Learning how to become someone who writes fiction is a big growth burst for me. Scene by scene, word by word, like each root and leaf, it is growing into something that isn’t quite recognizable yet.

I forget often how slow, quick, and astonishing growth can be. But the daily tending is what gets me to the big show at the end whether it’s a new climbing rose or a completed novel. And at this time, for me, I’m growing the internal things.

It was a little shift in perspective that helped me a great deal. Maybe you’ll find value in it too.

Susie