From Acorns To Oaks: Choosing Hope Over Fear

Headlines feel heavy. Fear and anger flare fast. So we slow down and take our cues from a wiser teacher: nature. Starting with a squirrel’s cheeks full of acorns, we trace how small, steady acts can grow into strong, shade-giving change. This is not a call to ignore pain; it’s a practical guide to channel it. When you can’t fix everything, you can still look someone in the eye, put the phone down, and offer a moment that shifts the tone of their day—and yours.

We talk about community over monoculture and why diversity is the backbone of any healthy system. Using invasive species as a vivid metaphor, we unpack how pretty, fast, or convenient choices can smother the very ecosystem we depend on. From mile‑a‑minute vine to the notorious Bradford pear, we show how observation, persistence, and speaking to the right person at the right time can redirect outcomes. Sometimes it’s a hard conversation with a neighbor; sometimes it’s persuading the store manager who influences dozens of decisions. Strategy is empathy with a plan.

Destruction has a second act. Fire can devastate, but controlled burns and traditional practices open space for dormant seeds to awaken and for soils to renew. Renewal takes patience, and patience isn’t passive. It’s knowing when to pull the invasive, when to plant what feeds pollinators, and when to let the field rest. If the news leaves you raw, try a short walk, a curated feed, and one intentional act of kindness. We’re gardeners of a shared plot, and while Mother Nature bats last, we bat often. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a lift, and leave a review with the one small act you’ll plant today.

Chapters

• 0:00 Naming The Feeling
• 0:36 Anger, Fear, And A Reframe
• 1:28 Small Acts And Acorns
• 3:08 Intentional Kindness In Daily Life
• 3:50 Nature As Community
• 4:33 Invasive Species As Metaphor
• 5:38 Bradford Pears And Consequences
• 9:37 Speaking Up With Care
• 10:56 Fire, Renewal, And Patience
• 13:17 Stewardship And Hope

Transcript

Mary: 0:00

Hi, and welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets. So I've been thinking a lot about what I'm going to talk about today, in the sense that I knew what I wanted to talk about, but I'm trying to think of how I want to talk about it. And so I'm going to default to what I often default to when I don't know what direction to take. I'm going to talk a little about nature, but I want to talk about nature in the context of what is happening right now in the world a bit generally, but specifically what is happening in our United States. And I'm going to be honest, I have days where I really struggle. A lot of the things that are happening now, seeing it, reading it, it's actually painful. And it can feel discouraging. There's a lot of fear, and there's a lot of anger. Anger is typically a secondary emotion. So I'm guessing a lot of people feel anger because they're actually afraid. Anger is very powerful and it is not bad. But anger can consume you. So I'm going to try a little bit of a reframe because I don't always know which direction to go. I can tell you that what I have to psych myself up for when I feel really discouraged about big things that I see happening. I try to remind myself first that everything truly does start with something small. And I know that we can think about small as being insignificant, but very few people can create an enormous impact in an instant. You can always think of exceptions, but 99% of the time, there's something small. So let me first talk about that in this in the sense of nature. So what I've noticed a lot recently are squirrels running around with nuts in their cheeks because they're digging them up. They're digging them up because here's this is when they need them for their food. So squirrels make me think of acorns. An acorn grows into an oak tree. So something that you can close your fist around fully becomes enormous and strong and brings tremendous good into the world in the form of oxygen and shade and food for dozens of caterpillars and all kinds of pollinators. That starts small. So let me tell you the other thought that occurs to me and which kind of sustains me a little bit right now. And I'm not saying I don't get discouraged. I get discouraged and I feel angry and I think constantly, what can I do? What can I do? And I just keep reminding myself, I need to start with one thing. When you change one thing, if you are kind to one person, if you take a minute with your cashier or the person that you're ordering your coffee from to actually look at them, take a minute, put your phone away, look at them in the eyes and say, Hey, how's your day going? And listen to them, joke with them, compliment them. They will have a different day because of that small interaction. And so will you. You can go through the world just putting out the angry vibe, which is going to hit somebody else and they're going to absorb it. Or you can, for that one person in front of you, try to be intentional. So the other part of that when it comes to nature is nature is all about procreating. It will do anything to get that seed into the ground. It will do anything to get that offspring to live. And there are an awful lot of seeds and offspring that don't become the being that they were supposed to be. But nature does everything to support itself, support its ecosystem, and be a community. Nature is a community. You can't plant the same tree over 20 acres and expect it to survive. It will not survive. So when I think about what's happening now, I think there's one species that exists that willfully and intentionally kills itself, hurts itself. And that's humans. So when this happens in nature at large, in beings that don't have the executive functioning to function based on greed or pettiness or cruelty intentionally, what happens is there can be a situation where unwittingly an invasive species comes in. So hang with me here for a second. I'm going to put a little frame on this. So an invasive species in the plant world is when there's a plant that is now part of the ecosystem that doesn't belong there. It planted itself there, or some well-meaning person planted it there. So I'm going to talk about one that I know. And in my area in Pennsylvania, there's something that I call mile a minute. I'm actually not sure of the Latin name, but it is a vine that grows viciously fast. It covers and smothers native plants. And it can take over whole swaths of forest. That became an invasive because somebody thought that the berries were pretty. Well, first, it smells awful. And second, it is not a strong tree. So in a good wind, the branches would break off. It was a mess. And then they realized it started to seed itself into native forests and again outcompete native species. And for a long time, gardeners knew this. I knew this. And I would tell people, you can't plant that. Like, be careful. Please don't do that. And people are like, oh, but it's so pretty and I just love it. Well, now that Bradford pear tree has been put officially on the invasive species list. So it's not going to be planted anymore. But how long did that take? So here's what I'm trying to say. When a plant becomes so invasive that it smothers things, or it kills off other plants, or it doesn't allow pollinators to thrive because those pollinator caterpillars can't survive on the foliage of that plant. More and more people start to see this is a problem. And then more and more people realize I can't keep planting this or I can't keep nurturing this or I need to yank this out of my garden. And what I believe is happening is that the people that may have thought that plant was pretty or attractive are now recognizing that it's actually lethal. And they are deciding if it's in their garden, they're going to get rid of it. And if it's not, they're going to take extra care to make sure that it doesn't end up in their garden. And so what good gardeners do is they also start to tell other people, be careful about that plant. Now, I'm going to tell you, not everybody is receptive. So for instance, I was at a garden center one time. English ivy is overrunning the woods where I live. It is growing up trees, it's killing them, it is smothering any potential native ground cover that I could plant. Very, very invasive. The man behind me had a whole flat, which is like many containers of the same plant. He had a flat of probably 28 English ivy plants. Could I have said something to him? Yeah. Should I? Maybe. Would it have changed his mind? I don't know. What I chose to do instead was go to the manager of the garden center and talk about the dangers of this, of where it's planted, and perhaps they might give a warning. Because I can't imagine English ivy at any time in the near future is going to be put on the invasive species list, at least here in the eastern United States. And if it's planted in the right place, it and it can stay under control. It's fine. That's rare, but it's fine. But talking to someone with a little more authority so that potentially they can then help people make a good choice about what they're putting into their garden. So one last thing. I want to talk just real quickly about destruction in nature. And one of one type of destruction is a forest fire. And we have seen recently with climate change devastating forest fires, especially recently in California. However, Native Americans used fire, especially burning prairies. Even now, we do sometimes controlled burns of forests. Because what happens after fire is all the seeds that were buried that didn't have the light to grow can now start to grow. And it creates the ash and the things that are left behind can improve the fertility of the soil. So there are a lot of things that come to life after devastation, like a forest fire. New things exert themselves. Things are able to grow that couldn't grow before. So if you're having a hard time right now, like I'm having a hard time right now, try to think about the example of nature. That first of all, it's a community, it's an ecosystem. And when there's a monoculture, when plants try to take over and be the only plant, first of all, the other plants see that, or the gardeners see that, but it also can't support the ecosystem. It can't support the pollinators. So it becomes barren. And then those plants would eventually die off anyway. So you can be a steward of your land. You can spot the invasives, you can help people understand the invasives. And when someone seems to finally be receptive to getting more information about what they've planted, maybe you can be the one that helps them reevaluate what they want in their garden. So I hope that you can find a little bit of hope, take some time in nature, make your interactions with other people intentional, try not to scroll, curate what you allow into your eyeballs each day, and try to just step away, talk to people that you care about, share your frustration, and know that Mother Nature always bats last. I believe that she wins the true ecosystem, the true rhythm that is the nurturing part of nature, it does win. It just nature doesn't go fast. And sometimes it takes a long time for the invasive species to be conquered. But they they are, in the end, they are. So those are my thoughts for the day. Until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.