From Breakdown to Breakthrough
How to bloom for beginners.
I’m not the kind of person who says, it could always be worse. I know that all too well. I have started over so many times in my life that I’ve grown tired of the process. Yet, I’ve realized that life has its seasons, and the one I’m in is all about the growth before the bloom. While I’ve been here before, no two blooms are ever truly the same.
I’m an enthusiastic, if inexpert, gardener — the kind of person who can easily go down a rabbit hole searching up “permaculture,” “homesteading,” or “how many chickens is too many chickens for a backyard brood?” I branched out from houseplants to herbs, from herbs to vegetables, from vegetables to fruit and flowers. I’ve learned so much about the growth process that I think equally applies to the personal growth process.
It’s Really F*cking Hard
I could tell the story of how I once worked in my orchard for so long on a hot day that I am sure I gave myself either heat stroke or heat exhaustion. It took weeks to recover because I didn’t have the good sense to call it quits and choose a different day. Even on a mild day, the work that goes into growing something isn’t easy. It takes time, attention, and effort.
The same is true of personal growth. The truth is that we can drop a seed, and sometimes, it does the work of growth beneath the surface. Without any nurturing, it pushes through and blooms anyway. That can happen with people, too, but it often takes real grit and labor to make an intentional change in our lives. It takes learning, trusting the process, and making real changes in our behavior. Then, there’s the self-awareness, vulnerability, and accountability that comes with lasting change. None of it’s easy, but it all leads to growth.
It Looks Like Nothing Is Happening
I can’t count how many times I’ve planted a seed, watered it, made sure it had the sunlight required, and then practically willed it to push up to the surface. Sometimes, it looks like nothing at all is happening, but that’s not at all true. It takes time, but it also takes the kind of work that no one else sees and few would applaud.
Looking at my life right now, it probably looks like all struggle and little reward. My anxiety has been at an epic high. I’ve put on unwanted weight. I can rarely relax under the strain of trying to dig myself out of the hole I’ve found myself in. It sure as hell doesn’t look like growth or blooming. It looks like slogging through the dark in hopes I make it out alive. But beneath the surface, much is happening. I’m trying to trust the process while being an active participant in it.
It Takes Consistent Attention and Nurturing
One thing that I’ve noticed through every crisis I’ve survived is that my body will shut down on me if I don’t take good enough care of it. I can’t just put stress and caffeine in my body and hope it keeps running efficiently without a break. Just like a plant, I know I need attention and nurturing, not just sweat and effort.
I have to remember that my needs are similar to that of a plant at a very basic level. I need to stay hydrated. That’s an easy one to check off our lists if we remind ourselves of it. I need to eat well and not just eat mindlessly or for comfort alone. I need rest and regular exposure to sunlight and fresh air. People might be more complex than the average houseplant — unless we’re talking about a calathea — but there’s enough crossover to make it a step in the right direction.
It Takes Time
Growth takes time. It rarely happens overnight. The truth is that we can’t force ourselves to reach that next level of growth any more than I can force my little dwarf fruit trees to get bigger and yield some fruit. People say that timing is everything, and it’s true. Author Elizabeth Gilbert said, “You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.” If we’re doing everything in our power to participate in the manifestation of what we desire, then there’s little else we can do but wait and practice patience.
It Might Require a Change
Blooming is a change in itself, but sometimes, to get a plant to bloom, we might have to make a change. We might have to change its environment and move it indoors or outdoors. We might have to give it more sun or less, more water or less. We figure out what it needs and try to give it that.
Why don’t we do as much for ourselves? Sometimes, the biggest changes require a change. We might need a new environment or new social support that encourages us and doesn’t drag us down. We might need a healthier outlet to cope with life, or we might need to start making better choices right wherever we are. If something isn’t working, we might want to look at the bigger picture and identify the obstacles to our growth. We might not be thriving because something is missing, or we getting too much of something else. Every single person is different, and it might take some trial and effort to figure out which changes benefit us and help us align with the growth we want to see.
We Have to Believe, AND…
I have never been able to believe a plant right out of the ground. If I could do that, I would have had a whole field of sunflowers last summer. But belief isn’t the only thing we need.
We absolutely do need to believe that our dreams are possible. If they don’t feel possible, we’ll need to either dream a new dream or adjust what we’re doing to make the current one feel likely. But we have to also do something. That’s where the and comes in. Passive growth can happen, but it’s a risk. If we want to thrive, we’ve got to do more than wish, hope, and dream it will happen. We’ve got to work for it, too.
From Breakdown to Breakthrough
Which brings us back around to the start. Yes, we have to believe in what we want and that we have the resources, tenacity, and pure grit to make it happen, but we also have to roll up our sleeves and figure it out. If I’ve learned one thing from years of struggle, it’s that no one else is going to roll up and tell us how to make our lives better. And if they do, they’re probably selling something.
I’ll be frank: I had a breakdown. I spent a day crying and trying to figure out what I was going to do. I spent weeks dragging myself out of a deep depression only to find that I had anxiety attacks every time I went out in public. I had a mental health crisis the likes I hadn’t seen before, but I also had something else: I had a breakthrough.
It happened slowly. I kept trying and kept pushing. I kept looking for ways to make things better. I made myself sick and then pulled back and remembered to take better care of myself. I kept going even when every single day was hard.
But the breakthrough was this: My priorities became clear. My dreams crystallized. I could see what I wanted, and I could also see how far away it was and how much work it might take to get there. I began making practical decisions. Small ones. Tiny steps in the right direction. It took some of the weight off my shoulders to know that I was doing what I could when I could.
I gave myself an attitude adjustment. There’s much that I cannot change about my current situation, but I can adjust my perspective. I can choose optimism in the face of hardship. I can look for beauty and kindness every day rather than focusing on the many things that can and often do go wrong. I don’t take out my stress on other people, and I stay committed to what I want and what I know I need.
That’s the real growth moment. It’s the moment we accept what is, make peace with it, and then work like hell to make the current reality align with the dreams we’ve kept close to our hearts. We learn to take a breakdown and let it transform our worlds with a breakthrough. We take back our power and find ourselves inching ever closer to peace.
When we least expect it, we bloom. Everyone around us sees the bloom and assumes it is easy. We know that it never was, but we know it was worth it, too.
