Flowering Fridays: Making Space for New Seedlings to Grow

I've learned a thing or two in my 15 years of gardening.

Like:

You need regularly tend to your garden for it to fully bear fruit.

Weeding allows space for the plants you actually want in your garden to grow.

New seedlings need a lot of care and attention at the beginning so that they can fully thrive.

I have been noticing in my life garden that there was a very special seedling that I given some attention, but not enough for it to really take root and blossom.

Looking at it over the past six months, I found it was wilting and stunted in its growth.

It's a project that so speaks to my heart, feels so very "me" and, most importantly, I can see it making a difference for others in the world. (I don't have it all figured out yet, but it will be a kind of guidebook/resource for spiritual seekers.)

As much I've loved inspiring writers through coaching, classes and the like, I'm ready to step into being an inspired writer myself by turning my attention over to my own writing once again.

I had a wonderfully clarifying intuitive healing session with Hiro Boga two weeks ago.

In an hour, she clarified what had been a big ball of stuckness for more than six months.

(yes, she's that good.)

Before our session, I just couldn't see how the new project fit with the Inspired Writer business. Did I launch two separate websites and blogs? Integrate the two into one? Add a third just for flowers?

Aargh.

I felt lost and overwhelmed.

My own intuitive journaling was pointing me in the right direction (let the Inspired Writer go, I wrote back in January). But it didn't clearly come together until my session with Hiro.

As we talked about the new project and The Inspired Writer (this blog and my business), she suggested putting the Inspired Writer on sabbatical so I could focus on my own journey and on figuring out what this guidebook-thingy will look like.

No blog. No website. No writing coaching. Just time and space to create and allow this tiny seedling of a project to grow into something bigger.

Immediately, I could feel my body relax and excitement ripple through my body.

Last week, I wrote about ideal conditions.

And my ideal conditions include space for reflection, research and my own creative cocoon.

While I do like to offer what I create into the world eventually, the initial process is always more fulfiling to me when it's internal, personal and private.

So, starting next week, my intention for the next six months is to explore, write, create, dream and experience what this guidebook wants to be and who I need to be to shepherd it into the world.

So, this might be the last Flowering Fridays ever…or not. I'll see what develops.

No matter how this unfolds, I will always be deeply grateful for the gift of this writing space, for the flowers and to myself for giving my reflections a place to take root.

I have been able to share in these 71 posts all kinds of big and little moments in my life.

I have been able to share how it was to be with my mom when she died, what our house move brought up in me and how I'm learning how to trust and allow and see the beauty that's ever-present. (And how I forget. Often.)

I have so appreciated those of you co-travelers who have taken the time to read my missives and make comments.

I carry your supportive words, love and encouragement with me into this new chapter.

I do plan to keep in touch through periodic newsletters to share discoveries of new resources and updates on my journey.

(If you want to keep in touch, please sign up here. As a thank you, I will send you a Meet Your Writing Muse guided audio meditation.)

I also plan to post on Twitter (@inspiredwriter) and on Facebook. Follow and friend me if we aren't already connected.

It seems fitting that for the first week of spring I am allowing the shoots of this new project to receive the full sunlight, watering and attention it deserves.

As the flowers are boldly emerging in my yard here in Wisconsin, I too am ready to step into a fuller bloom of myself by honoring and tending to this seedling.

I send you so much love and gratitude for being a part of this journey.

And I send you my wishes that you will continue to bloom. grow. shine. in the garden of your life, too.

Tell me, what tender seedling are you nurturing in your life right now? What's your best advice for navigating the seedling stage of a project?

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Image: Daffodil, poking through, front yard, March 25, 2010

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Flowering Fridays is a weekly look at flowers through the lens of what they might teach us about flowering fully in our life. Past editions are here.

Monday Musings: Feeling the Feelings

"Instead of resisting any emotion, the best way to dispel it is to enter it fully, embrace it and see through your resistance." — Deepak Chopra

Image: Purple (swoon!) raunculus plant, bought last week at grocery store, March 2010

Flowering Fridays: Ideal Conditions

This week, I noticed the green darts of daffodils and tulips poking through the (finally)  snow-free soil in our yard. Groups of them have bravely sprouted up and are now several inches high.

I wonder how the flowers know the ideal conditions they need to bloom.

You don't see any daisies or irises out this time of year.

Oh no, they are still snuggled safely under their winter blankets, quite content to allow their bold, early-blooming friends be braze the finicky winds of March.

But the tulips and daffodils, well, this is their season. I imagine them peeking out in the brisk Wisconsin air, and bellowing, "Man, this weather rocks."

I think part of what makes flowers so beautiful is that they know their ideal conditions and honor them.

The columbines bloom best in moist soil, under the dappled shade of trees.

The poppies, prima donnas they are, love to be in full sun.

Lilacs are pretty flexible in any soil, but they need regular pruning to bloom their best.

Knowing their ideal condition is what helps these flowers grow and bloom fully.

I'm giving two presentations tomorrow at the Fox Valley Power of the Pen Writer's Conference — one called The Magic of Your Muse: Creative Flow and the other on Social Media for Writers.

The background for both is around identifying your ideal conditions — how do you like to work? what kind of environments do you flourish in? what support do you need to really thrive?

When I talk with writers, I'm never one to advocate a one-size-fits-all approach.

Instead I see myself as a seed giver of possibilities, asking some questions and sharing some ideas so that the writer can then identify what will work best for them.

Like all the flowers that exist, there are myriad ways to be a writer. Each unique. Each needed. And each perfect that person.

Some writers are early birds. Some need a deadline. Some love coffee shops. Some need a writing buddy.

There is no right or wrong way. Only the way that works best for that writer, based on natural inclinations and preferences.

What's interesting is that sometimes writer (and you and me) get the misguided belief that our preferences are wrong. That somehow our innate desires are wrong.

But imagine what would happen if the tulip waited to bloom until August when it's so hot and dry.

It would wilt over in a heartbeat.

Sure, it sometimes take creativity to find ways to meet our ideal conditions.

I'd love a little studio in Paris with large windows that look out on market and a park about now.

(And I truly believe if I really, really, really wanted it I could make it happen. But Wisconsin is our chosen home for now.)

So instead I'm meeting the part of my ideal condition that needs lots of light and outdoor beauty by putting my desk in the sunroom, surrounded by windows and looking out at the woods and the river that flows belows.

What's important here is that we honor our inner-knowing of our ideal conditions as part of our unique essence, and then get creative and committed about about making space for them in our lives.

I am enrolled in a really powerful six-week teleseminar class with a wonderful and very talented coach, Laurie Gay, called Guerilla Weight Loss.

I was drawn to her class because I was tired of hating my body and obsessing about what I could and couldn't eat. I missed truly savoring food, and noticed (some 18 pounds later) how much I used food to comfort me as I grieved everything that has happened over the past six months (this, of course, isn't a recent pattern, just one that I turned to in my moment of pain).

I am learning a ton about feeling my feelings, really noticing my hunger and fullness and discovering how to feast on life instead.

This week some of our homework was around identifying the conditions that are ideal for "thinness."

For me, I identified a close circle of friends, time for play, purposeful work, sunlight and outside time, self-love and exploring as thin-producing.

Staying inside, working until 2 a.m. when my body wants sleep, self-loathing and making no time for reading as downright oppressive.

I so believe we each have a customized "sweet spot" of conditions — the right soil, amount of sunlight and water and environment — in which to thrive.

Whatever it is you want to "bloom" in  your life, think about the ideal conditions you might allow yourself to nurture your dream most fully.

Tell me, what are some of your ideal conditions in which you thrive?

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Image: Tulips my sweet husband brought me last week, March 2010

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Flowering Fridays is a weekly look at flowers through the lens of what they might teach us about flowering fully in our life. Past editions are here.