Bloom…

Bloom ~ A Beautiful Process of Becoming…

Walking down 34^th Street toward 5^th avenue at 8:30 in the morning, the top of the Empire State Building covered in clouds. The mist was enough that hoods were on or umbrellas were up but it wasn’t really raining. The temperature was such that people were confused as to what to wear. There were winter jackets walking next to bare legs, and light jackets. There were strappy sandals next to riding boots, wool hats next to baseball caps. Spring had sprung after a snowstorm and nature and people were both struggling to move from the death of winter to the rebirth that spring offers. The fog was dense but up in the sky, not at street level. There was this eerie feeling not seeing the tops of buildings.

The walk back at 1pm was less confused. The sun had broken through much of the fog and the top of the Empire State Building could be seen. The hats and hoods were off, the umbrellas down. There were more ankles showing and less heavy coats. The temperature had hit over 50 degrees, spring had sprung, almost in just a few hours.

Is spring here to stay or will there be another blast of winter? Are the flowers that were planted in fall ready to push through the ground and blossom? Are you ready to bloom, to become the you that you want to be? What do you do if you feel you are not sure you fully used winter to plant yourself so that you would bloom in spring? The plans for digging down and planting the right seeds so that what you want blooms in spring may not all have been accomplished, yet spring is here. What did we plan to do in the winter to ready for spring that may not have come to fruition yet?

Here’s the good news, not everything you plant blooms at the same time, and until frost is gone at night a lot cannot be planted. So, there is time. There is always time, we can plant and bloom in cycles. Instead of the years of beating ourselves up to feel that we didn’t ready ourselves for growth and becoming, this year let’s decide to think of it the way we think of gardening. Some flowers and plants bloom later than others so that there are beautiful colors, smells and fruits and vegetables all the way until the first frost in fall. Some things take longer to germinate than others. If we keep this in mind and remember that blooming is a beautiful process of becoming who we want to be and how we want to be, we will not get discouraged. We will be encouraged by the ongoing growth. We will see spurts of growth and water and feed those. We will trim off the dead leaves to make space for new growth. We will bask in the sunlight and allow it to create life and love within us.

A process of becoming takes time. It cannot be accomplished overnight. This is a process where we grow, we stop, we grow, we stop. At the stop points we reflect and perhaps make a change in the growth pattern. Just like with a plant, where we trip leaves and branches, remove the weeds around the plant to give it room and time to grow, we need to do that with our own growth.

Plants do not get discouraged if things aren’t complete on time, they take their time, they bloom when they are ready and not before. We need to be as patient as the plants and allow our germination to take whatever time it needs. There is no timetable on our growth, as long as we keep growing.

For me, I didn’t get as organized yet as I wanted to over the winter. I also didn’t lose the pounds that I gained after Mom’s death yet. I didn’t move on from a broken heart the way I need to yet. I did accomplish some of the seeds that I planted and for that I am grateful. I have reduced my judgements of me and others, I did half the organization I wanted to do and I fell to the depths of grief and am on my way back up.

As spring begins to take hold more, these other ways for me to bloom will continue to grow and I will continue my process of becoming. I do not need to rush just like the plants do not need to rush. I am learning to enjoy and love the process instead of rushing through to the other side. I am watching what is changing in me and around me and realizing that it is all falling into place at its own pace. Perhaps not the pace I am used to, however the universe knows the right pace!

Bloom, a beautiful process of becoming.