Flourishing Clematis

Amazing...the way the clematis on my balcony is winding its tendrils around the railing, adapting to the unnaturalness of my un-garden garden, making the most of what it has to work with and flourishing despite its inability to be root deep in unbound soil.

Me...i'm not nearly as adaptable nor do i flourish in situations that aren't ideal for my sense of protection.

I'm easily flustered, as i grow older...easily knocked out of the protective sphere i usually surround myself with when not in the safety of my home. I have to think about change when it happens and talk severely with myself, tell myself that change is growth and growth takes courage...and then i often think of Winnie the Pooh and how he dealt with the "things"...



“You find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”





.....and i totally relate to Pooh...to my great desire to just hide away and not take chances....hide my "things".

It was once easy to believe that i was fearless.

But i suspected i wasn't and proved it to myself when i went alone to Paris a couple of years ago. Although it was a great trip, and i would go alone again, i was forced to face multiple fears and anxieties. You spend two weeks alone in a foreign country without speaking a word of French and you're sure to grab the horns of any fearful beast and deal with it.

I came back from Paris no longer hmming and hawing about some of the things i MIGHT be afraid of. I adapted, i admitted, i understood...and most of the time i still remember to understand.

The reason for this posting...self talk perhaps. I'm not flourishing where i am today, doing what i'm doing. I feel uncreative, stifled, down trodden. And oh yeah...look at the years on that age clock...going up all the time...hello Monica...

I need to make some changes, smart changes. Like that balcony adapting clematis...i need to take what i've been given, acknowledge it...and flourish. Time to let the writing muse take over and believe in what she can do...and that what she can do will sustain me.