Sometimes I imagine people as flowers in a garden. Every colour, shape & fragrance just waiting to burst free. Some are delicate & graceful, only living a day & withering with the hot sun or bending with the first breath of wind. Whilst others stand strong & robust able to withstand all of nature’s passionate expressions.

I see the shame, blame, fear & hurt stopping the petals from appearing. It takes courage to stand tall & bloom whilst social media shouts out our inadequacies.

I remember that comment about me being too loud, too stupid, too … & instead push down my creative expressions. I watch others to see how they do it & try to emulate them. The safe way. The right way. So very exhausting & unfulfilling.

But it would be a sad & boring garden if we were all the same flower. If we all sang the same song & painted the same picture. If we all did things the “right” way without realising what is right today may be wrong tomorrow & it doesn’t actually matter.

Does it not occur to us that there’s a reason we are all different & to not express this uniqueness is to withhold the gift of ourselves to the world?

When we try to please others our stem becomes twisted, our leaves dull & distraught covering our unworthy face so the sun cannot bless us.

It seems absurd to imagine a flower holding back it’s joy of blooming & hiding from the sun. Instead it shouts, hello sun my old friend thankyou for your blessings!

But this is what we do.

Practice: imagine if you were a flower. What is your colour, shape, fragrance. Are you too scared to bloom? Imagine yourself worthy of the most spectacular outpouring of petals, soaking up the sunlight as is your gift to receive. Share this gift of yourself with the world