There are days when it feels like I’m stuck in thick mud—heavy, slow, unsure if I’m moving at all. Other times, it feels like I’m underwater, holding my breath while life rushes by above me. I’ll look around and wonder how everyone else seems to be blooming while I’m still circling the same ache. Why do I always land here? Why can’t I seem to break through?
But the garden reminds me: not everything that’s alive is always visible.
Some growth happens deep in the dark.
Some healing lives in silence.
There are seasons where nothing above the surface changes. The soil looks still. But underneath, roots are anchoring, reaching, holding on. I’ve started to see myself that way—less like a late bloomer, more like someone learning to stay.
Staying is a kind of courage too.
There’s this pressure to always be moving, achieving, flourishing. But what if right now isn’t for blooming? What if this season is for rooting? For resting. For feeling everything and still choosing not to give up.
That counts. That’s growth.
Even the days that feel like failure might be laying groundwork I won’t understand until later.
Even the moments when I spiral, but catch it a second sooner than last time—that’s something.
Even when all I can do is breathe and be gentle with myself—that’s enough.
We don’t always get to see our becoming while it’s happening. A plant doesn’t burst into bloom in a single day. It unfurls slowly, shyly, sometimes only after many quiet weeks of just holding on.
So if your days feel heavy and your hope feels small, let me remind you:
You are not broken.
You are not behind.
You are growing in ways that don’t have leaves yet.
And that’s okay.
This is a space for that kind of growth—the invisible kind. The in-progress kind. The kind that happens while the world tells you to hurry, but your soul says: not yet.
Here, we grow like gardens.
We tend gently.
We honor the root.
**What is taking root within you?**
Mandy, Wild & Free 
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