Bloom Where You Are Planted

It’s hard to believe that for three quarters of this year we have been in some sort of lockdown. And that after many months of what felt like baby steps towards progress and reopening, that here in California we are basically back to square one with our emergency stay at home orders. To say that life has felt discouraging or disappointing at moments feels like an understatement. But regardless of these setbacks, I truly believe that what would serve us all best right now is not to focus on what has gone wrong this year, but to bloom.

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Bloom where you are planted. That famous catchphrase is what keeps coming to mind for me. I can’t control how many more days we will be asked to shelter at home. I can’t (sadly) have my husband attend any of my prenatal visits. I can’t plan our next trip to visit our families, nor can I even try to plan when to have my parents or in-laws fly out to meet their newest grandson in February. But what I can do, is bloom and grow in spite of it all.

The point of life isn’t to wait for the perfect circumstances to arrive, to then follow through an a dream or a plan. The point truly is to bloom where you are planted. And right now, we are all very unfortunately planted in the middle of an extremely crummy and completely out of our control pandemic. On one hand, it would be easy to just sit around complaining about the circumstances, or worrying ourselves with the constant feed of negative news. Or we could bloom. Yes, in spite of it all, we can choose growth and embrace exactly where we are.

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So that is the choice that I am consciously making in my own life. And no, that does not mean that I am going to stuff down my feelings of disappointment, concern or discouragement. I am letting those feelings flow through me and run their course. But I am not letting them dictate my life, my thoughts or my conversations. I am focusing my energy on my blessings. Because yes, despite this pandemic, there have been so many amazing blessings that have come into my life and our life. We have the blessing of our baby boy who will be joining us in just a few months, our health, this delightfully uninterrupted time together, our abundance, our joy, our laughter, and the knowledge that someday life will be different again.

Yes, life will be normal again some day soon. And while it can be easy to get caught up in the “when” of when that will happen, or the “what,” of what that will look like. . .I encourage us all to let that go, and to simply embrace the here and the now. Embrace life exactly where we are in this very moment, and grow. Show life and show this pandemic that it cannot stop you from finding the good and creating the growth. Although it can feel comforting to look toward the future and picture an even better life, life can be that version of better right now. So go seize the day, and bloom exactly where you are planted, pandemic and all.