A reminder to blossom
The streets of my neighborhood in Brooklyn are filled with the signs of spring. Branches full of pink cherry blossoms, their pink petals covering the sidewalks like confetti. Lilacs perfuming the blocks as I pass by. Azaleas, tulips, and daffodils all in bloom.
Each spring, when the radiance and fragrance of perennial blooms transform the brick and brownstone landscape, I find it's hard not to stop and take in their beauty.
The old adage to "stop and smell the roses" rings true.
I pause near a patch of daffodils, the flowers in different stages of growth. Many are fully blooming with their butter-yellow cups and frilly edges. Some a bit further along in their growth, their petals dried, darkened, or dropped. A reminder of the cycle of growth -- moments of bursting forth from the soil, reaching their tender green stalks towards the sun; the moments of blossoming, the unfurling of petals; the moments of decay, the dropping of petals and withering away; the moments of dormancy, their life no longer immediately apparent, replaced with a knowing that the cycle will repeat itself next year.
I've spent so many of the last few years consumed by the first stage of growth, pushing forward, striving, and reaching. I had fallen into the trap of constant reiteration. Feeling a need to continue assessing how I could be doing more, show up a better version of myself, be kinder, more attentive, spend less time on screens, and spend more time moving and outside. And in this constant pursuit to evolve, I forgot this cycle of growth. I lost sight of the need to pause, to have moments of blossom, moments of decay, moments of dormancy, and moments of rebirth.
The blooms pull me back to what is here right now.
What is true in this moment.
An invitation to pause and marvel in where I am at this point.
An opportunity to celebrate all the ways I'm blossoming right now.
And so I extend this invitation to you.
Can you pause and recognize the ways you are blooming right now?
Maybe it's the space you call home.
Or perhaps a shifting dynamic in a relationship.
Maybe it's a habit you cultivated into personal practice.
Or perhaps it's simply greeting a new day with a sense of possibility.
How might you tap into your own blossoming today?