I didn't find flowers, they found me...

It’s late, and I would rather be sleeping. But a part of my story keeps bouncing around in my head. I hope that by adding it here I won’t be pestered by it anymore, and  at the end of this page a peaceful nights sleep awaits me. So here it is…

I have always been a little jealous of people who had “a thing”. Something they were really, really good at and passionate about. I have friends who are good at sports, art, and making people laugh. I admire great musicians, and while I sound pretty good singing in the shower, I doubt any platinum records are in my future. Each time I ever tried a new hobby, it would last a little while and then fizzle. Watercolor, Calligraphy, Basketmaking. It all left me feeling resigned to my less than rock star fate.  It was ok. Really it was. 

You’d think with all these flowers surrounding me that I dreamed of a big huge flower garden my whole life.  The fact is, I never dreamed of one at all. My idea of a  farm had tobacco, cotton, or soybean and every garden I ever helped in as a kid was filled with things you eat- not flowers.  Flowers were things you got on special occasions for weddings,  funerals or to give to someone grieving.  

Around the time of Covid, besides being a stressed out single-mom/teacher, I was also going through a huge life crisis.  Everything I thought I knew about myself was stripped away. I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. It was like I was living at the bottom of some pit and after far too many days like that,  I realized something very significant. If I wanted to be happy, I was gonna have to go out and MAKE my own happiness. Waiting on everything in life to be right, or go right was going to result in me spending the rest of my life at the bottom of that pit. 

For the first time in my life I began to ask myself a very profound but simple question. “What makes me truly happy?” I was disheartened to find I didn’t have an answer right away.  Most likely because I’d spent a majority of my life asking, “What will make everyone happy with me?” 

That’s about the time my best friend sent me an instagram picture of a Crichton Honey Dahlia. That moment was altogether different than anything I’d ever experienced before.  And this time I wasn’t asking what anyone else thought about it. I stopped asking anything.  I was speechless.   I was listening…… with my heart. 

After that moment, I went down the flower rabbit hole and I haven’t come out.  I hope I never do. They are my “thing”, but not because I’m some crazy genius at it. It’s because they make me truly happy, and I look forward to continuing to grow and make that happiness for myself and anyone else that would like to experience it as well. 

There’s also this part of me that feels slightly responsible for passing them on to someone else, like they were passed to me. I’m just the vessel these flowers use to “find” the next generation who is looking for their “thing”.