Break Out Of Your Shell in Order to Blossom

According to the calendar, Spring is here, but we are experiencing a late cold snap which has pushed back the usual warming weather we’d have by now. However, I am ready to counteract the coldness by giving my bit of nature a little nurturing.

A week ago my annual seed planting took place. I prepared the trays and sat at the table surrounded with baby food jars filled with all kinds of seeds I had saved from my garden last year. Armed with a pair of tweezers, I gently placed each tiny vessel of life into a cell filled with Seed Start mix and watered them. My husband set the trays into the grow-light stand in our kitchen, which will coax them with warmth and light to burst open and reach upward.

These are some of the seeds I have collected from my own garden.
Clockwise from top: Loofah, Lupine, Squash, Coleus, Tomato.

I love planting seeds. It amazes me how something so small can contain what is needed to create a plant that can grow tall and covered with blooms or produce an astounding amount of fruit to feed us. I get such a deep satisfaction from nurturing those tiny seeds. Whenever I plant them and think about their natural process, it always makes me come up with metaphors for living with chronic pain/illness.

Digging a hole and putting the seed into the bottom of it is kind of like a funeral. The seed has been in a sort of suspended animation, waiting in this lesser form for its opportunity to transform into an elevated state. If the buried seed receives what it needs, it will fracture the shell restraining its energy and flare into life. If all the conditions are right, the resulting green shoot will burrow through the soil and burst upward toward the sun as a seedling to begin its journey to become what it is meant to be. 

“Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you. 

It is meant to, and it couldn't do it better. 

Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition.” 

~Florida Scott-Maxwell 

Just like the seed, we need to shatter the barriers of pain/illness which restrain us so we can achieve our full potential. How can we do that? We need to be honest about the things which are holding us back and face them head on. Are you doing what you should to care of yourself? Are you following your doctors orders, managing your symptoms properly, balancing your life without overdoing, and not isolating yourself from life as if you are buried alone in a hole?

Life holds no guarantees, neither for us nor for the seed. But if we provide for ourselves the right environment, the proper care, and we nurture our body and our spirit - we can push past those restraints and grow. Perhaps we can transform ourselves beyond our imagination, like a seed into a flower. With positive energy and attitude, even though our pain may never be healed, life can be bigger and brighter outside of our self-imposed shell.  

Help your nature with a bit of nurture, and let your soul blossom!

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You may enjoy my seed planting blog post from last year:

~Seeds have needs... just like we do