Mother of Plants

I LOVE PLANTS!

Whether house plants, greenhouses or greenery in nature, I don’t discriminate. From Chicago to Atlanta, I have managed to create jungles in every bustling city I’ve had the pleasure of calling home. I am the self-proclaimed Mother of Plants, birthed from women of the same name.

See, its generational really. The green thumb was passed down to me. Presently, my mother has at least one plant in every room in her home, including a tree in her dining space that has grown entirely too tall for the room it’s been housed in. She taught me how to breathe on them and sing to them, for they are living things and should be treated as such. Both of my grandmothers were the same way. They nursed small plants into green growths that overtook rooms and became more display pieces rather than decoration.

I spent a lot of time at my grandparent's house. Adults are known to say things like “Children are to be seen and not heard”, but my grandmother always had a way of making me feel like I had a place in the world full of unwelcoming adults. She cultivated my wisdom before I even knew what it meant to be wise. She inspired me to think deeply with her old age adages and insisted that I always find new ways to grow. I clung to her and my grandfather equally. He always rose before the sun, and to this day I feel guilty if the sun beats me to greet the sky. He’d venture out into the darkness of the morning to go fishing and later would return with the day’s lunch. When he retuned, he would spend his afternoons in the garden, tending to the benefits of his hard work co-creating with the Earth. Together, not only did they show me what care looked like, they taught me how to cultivate growth with it.

I spent so much of my childhood by their side. While grandpa was in the garden outside, me and Granny tended to the garden inside. She always let me help water the plants. Week after week I would come back to see if or how they had changed. I became obsessed with the growth.

One week, instead of attending school, I was confined to my grandparents’ house with the chicken pox. I can remember staring at myself in the hallway mirror, fearing my skin would be forever damaged by the scratching I had inflicted on it. Granny came to provide comfort as she always did. She sat me down on the couch and proceeded to visit her plant stand as I had seen her do a million times before.

Only this time was different.

She grabbed one of the Aloe Vera leaves and ripped it from the only home it had ever known. She separated the ends, exposing a clear gel hidden in what I thought were empty spaces. She rubbed it onto my abused skin. It was cool, comforting and relieved me of the discomfort I had been feeling.

I had watched her care for these plants for years, I had even helped her. The fact that she would tear apart her hard work and use it to aid in my healing felt like sacrifice, and that sacrifice felt like the purest form of love my young heart had ever known.

Later in my life, long after my grandparents left this earthly realm, I found myself in a relationship that appeared perfect, but was abusive in every single way. Trauma has a way of making you feel guilty for depriving yourself of love as if you chose that road. It then doubles down by making you feel unworthy of accepting the very love you need to heal.

When I finally mustered up the courage to leave the relationship and focus on rebuilding my life, I knew I needed to start from the beginning to correct every wrong that got me where I was. I tried to think of things that made me feel loved and worthy of it. One of the first things that came to mind was that Aloe Vera plant and Granny’s sacrifice. I was immediately reminded of the watering and its ability to provide a source of healing.

I spent my free time in greenhouses, appreciating all the living things that grew from dirt. I had a lot to learn from them. I wanted to be surrounded by them as I had been my entire childhood. I began filling my space with as many as I could fit, and when rooms were filled to the brim, I bought more. I invested my time in their growth and learned to treat myself with the same care.

Breathing, watering, playing music. I never forgot what my mother and grandparents taught me: care can make things flourish and consistent watering can heal.

One day, a plant I had in the window sill was knocked over and eventually died from the trauma it endured. I was reminded that I could’ve met the same fate. I chose not to give up on it. Something in me told me to keep watering it. Week after week, I turned dry dirt into mud before letting the excess water drain away. Week after week I held out faith that what I was doing would make a difference.

Two months had passed and I had grown weary. On watering day, as I made my rounds I decided that particular pot of dirt would be thrown out to make room for a new plant purchase. I looked into the pot one last time, as if to say my final goodbyes and instead was greeted by the tiniest bit of green peering out beneath the soil.

It had come back! Unable to see what was going on beneath the surface, I had been watering this plant with little more than blind faith and yet it had gotten the correct amount of water, sunlight and oxygen, and it grew!

Plants have such a delicate balance and I had mastered it. The thing about plants is as much as they need water to survive, moderation is key. If you over water plants or leave them in stagnant water too long, the roots will rot. The plant will die and you’ll have no idea why until empty its home and examine the roots.

We are like plants. You never know what is going on in the spaces you can’t see until it breaks the surface. There is so much going on underneath the surface of us all. Some of us are growing, some of are rotting, all of us are trying, hoping someone somewhere is willing to carefully water us and believe in our ability to flourish. The time we spend under the surface, establishing out roots, is where the magic happens.

Life began to make so much more sense when I decided to study the resiliency of plants. They taught me I could be resilient to. All I have to do is keep watering myself. Now that I know the power of it, I choose to water the world, fulfilled only by the flourishing of everyone around me and even those I can not see.

I am the Mother of Plants, giving birth to a symbiotic ecosystem with my writing. Inspired by the green life I have cultivated in my home, I foster communities of growth and find happiness in the blooming and healing of others.