Late Bloomer
When I first moved into my apartment in November of 2021, a dear friend brought me a housewarming gift of a pink Christmas Cactus. It was full of bright pink blooms and set in a light pink crinkly plant package. “It’s perfect!” I exclaimed as I set it on my kitchen windowsill.
Fast forward to winter of 2022 and as I tended to my plants (which I now have come to love as dear friends themselves) I noticed that the Christmas Cactus hadn’t bloomed in a long time, like over a year. It didn’t show any buds on the ends of its little finger like tentacles either. I didn’t give much thought to until visiting another friend who had inherited a gigantic Christmas Cactus and had it stored in an upstairs hallway. She told me that Christmas Cactuses could actually bloom twice per year if given the proper conditions. Do you know what those proper conditions are? Well, I didn’t. It’s actually placing the plant into darkness for a majority of the time. Yes, it still needs some sunlight but the darkness triggers it to bloom.
So, as we get to know one another, you may be seeing that everything to me is an analogy or metaphor for living and this Christmas Cactus set me up for one hell of a great message for myself and possibly for you too!
Late bloomer…
I wasn’t a late bloomer when it came to love. I have had a boyfriend since the 8th grade with only a few months here and there of singlehood. I swore that I would never get married after my parents messy divorce and then having a long term abusive relationship in high school. Ugh. That guy. Anyways…I met my ex when I was 18 and we were married when I was 20. Yes, we had to bring the marriage certificate out to Confetti’s and Oasis in downtown Green Bay (I just dated myself…you all remember, those good ole days). We marched down that aisle and marched through life pretty well orchestrated, 2 kids, 2 degrees, then the dream home.
Dark days. Then came the darkness. While I won’t go into the detail this deserves in this post, in 2020…darkness came to call for me. Looking back 2020 was the 20/20 vision for me ultimately exposing the dark traumas that were quite invisible my whole life. I was quite sure that I was a failure, a loser and a fuck up in my career (excuse the language, I will swear in these posts, just owning the sinner/saint in me). My new business shut completely down because I was a speaker who couldn’t speak in public. This was a hot mix of conditioning, abuse and my own internalized shame. But, I was completely burned out with nothing left to give, exhausted and hope was in short supply.
But, through this dark night of the soul, I have come into the light at the end of tunnel and it realized through the teachings of the darkness, that maybe like my Christmas Cactus, the darkness triggered me to bloom…I am just a late bloomer (or maybe not late at all…hmmm). Life is all about the stories we tell ourselves so, let’s take a walk back in time through my career aspirations and instead of being a source of toxic shame, let me show you my blooms!
Investigative Journalist. When I was little, I went to our Church’s Dress Up Day (we couldn’t say Halloween because that was Satan’s holiday) as Nellie Blythe, an investigative journalist from the 1900’s who also traveled the world in 72 days. I could picture myself on the war front, motivating the world to action to rectify the injustices that I would report. Present day, I look at my bookshelf stacked with journals from the past 10 years and I was indeed and investigative journalist in my own right, making sense of not only my own internal chaos but also navigating the injustices that I encountered as a woman and a sensitive soul. Now, I write….I write prose, this blog, curriculums, books and wellbeing messages for my companies.
Caregiver. Do you remember that 20/20 special on the orphanages in Romania? The babies were left on their backs and their heads were flat and they were listless due to lack of care and stimulation? The older kids had shaved heads and were placed naked into showers all together, emaciated with their big eyes bulging as they stared emptily into the camera. I wept that night I saw that documentary as a young girl, moved once again in my soul to take action. I had dreams of starting an orphanage where love would be served. I begged my mom to adopt one of these kids. While I didn’t start that orphanage, I realized today that my calling is to hold people who have felt orphaned, exposed, afraid and feeling so alone and neglected. These are my people, my kindred spirits, my orphans…of whom I am one.
Archeologist. I also wanted to be an archeologist back in the day. Inspired by Indiana Jones, I couldn’t imagine the thrill of discovering artifacts from another age! It would be like time travel to peek into their world. I was the child and am now the adult who is ALWAYS looking down for treasure! My bags are heavy on the way home from a vacation as I have collected many rocks or shells as my treasures. As a child, we would dig on our neighbor’s property and find buried bones of dead cows or horses (sad face) that had passed on. I was determined to find an arrowhead or an agate (both of which were no go’s so far). All this to say, that I am an “excavator” - I must dig down in the earth to find the messages lost in time. These are my treasures. Learning about generational trauma both from a scientific standpoint and also from a spiritual standpoint, has been a total game changer for me. It has helped me cultivate a sense of understanding about myself that couldn’t have been attainable without such a throughout excavation to find the treasures that were buried so deep.
Oceanographer. Yes, I think I was bit into treasure (maybe still am?) For this career aspiration, I wasn’t actually interested in the fish or coral and ultimately dropped it as a goal because I was afraid of sharks. I was interested in the BOOTY! The shipwrecks and treasure at the bottom of the sea was what interested me! Using metaphor, I have swum in the depths people, where it is very very dark. I recovered my own gold and treasures from the wreckage…back from the pillagers and plunderers. The pressure was immense, just as under water, you are crushed and you cannot breathe but…I am rich.
Environmental psychologist. In high school, we had an “interesting character” for our school Librarian, Mr. Pearson. For all my “Ocompton” folks, you know what I mean. But, one thing I won’t ever forget about Mr. Pearson was what he said to me when I told him that I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. He told me I should be an “environmental psychologist.” I had no idea what that even was, nor do I think there was a college within Northeast Wisconsin that offered such a degree, maybe California or New York, but not Wisconsin (sadly we are about 20 years behind such curves). But, he said that this person would assess how the working environment impacts the employee’s health, wellbeing and productivity. It could be looking at the lighting, office arrangement, schedule or culture that made an impact on the person and ultimately the company. And, boy oh by…is this exactly what I do for a living! I have spent about 15 years doing this just for companies and I know this…environment wins…every single time. This wasn’t the only arena of which I have worked with and learned about environment. It was in my personal life and also in my client’s lives, that I learned…environment matters. It wins. You cannot recover in the same environment that made you sick. I will drop that right there.
Teacher. Lastly, I was going to be a teacher. I had completed block one in education at the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay, including my first semester of student teaching when I heeded the advice of the teachers I was working with saying “Run, bitch run!” and dropped out the program. They advised me to try a business degree…anything other than teaching. Plus, I felt Closter phobic around all the tiny humans chanting “Miss Jesse!!!” encircling me with their snotty, dirty hands (little did I know that as a nurse I would be suctioning snot and wiping butts, but that’s a story for another day). I realized that this late bloomer is a teacher. It’s in my blood. I learn, I share. This is my lifecycle. It gives me joy and purpose to share these little insights (or big ones) that drive me to live out my best life, sharing even my darkest and vulnerable lessons that only come from my lived experiences.
Nothing is ever wasted. I have come to believe this as my truth. Nothing can be rushed, it comes in perfect time and with its own season. And, I also understand that I have gotten everything I have ever wanted, realizing this in my forties, I guess I was a late bloomer but I am ok with that. Are you a late bloomer too? Is it high time to re-write your story?
***Also, update…on the Christmas Cactus. Don’t take life too seriously or count everything as an omen. Well, I can’t at least, or I’m screwed. I am laughing out loud as I write this, thinking of the incident I am about to recount. About a week after that picture was taken and this analogy built in my head as post, I touched the cactus and the whole finger tentacle thing with the old bloom at the end actually just fell off! Like, came out of the soil, done, dead. I was mortified! But, realistically isn’t that the way we’d want to go out? In full bloom, used up, spent, giving it all we had…arms stretched out towards the sun in all our beauty. Amen.
