Is “Bloom Where You’re Planted” Always Good Advice?

We explore how growth depends on environment, using plant climate zones to rethink belonging at work, at home, and in relationships. A late mini turns into a clear call to honor seasons, stop forced pushing, and choose the right climate to thrive.

• grow where planted versus choose where you thrive
• hardiness zones and how plants model limits
• translating zones to belonging at work and home
• handling climate shifts from leadership changes or loss
• rejecting comparison and honoring essential nature
• practical cues to pause, prune, and replant
• invitation to support the book launch team

If you would like to be part of my launch team: maryrothwell.net/nature knows

Transcript

Late Mini And Life Update

Mary 0:00

Hi, and welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets. So if you are one of my diehard violets, you probably have the Monday episode, the mini episode, downloaded automatically. But I'm a little late. It's actually Monday morning at 9 a.m. Eastern time in the U.S. This usually drops at 4 a.m., but I'm just recording it now because we are in the middle of packing up one house, moving to another house, and downsizing. And if you've ever done that, you know that means getting rid of a lot of stuff because the house is smaller and I no longer have an office as a separate entity or a separate location from my home. Anyway, so all that to say, I am a little behind, but I did not want to miss a Monday mini. So I'm gonna talk about growing, growing emotionally, growing cognitively, spiritually, in all of these ways. I'm gonna say even growing physically, and by that meaning, you know, creating a body that is healthier, stronger. And I'm thinking about this particular thing a lot for two reasons. First of all, my book has now just finished formatting. They formatted the cover, and I'm going to tell you, and I'm probably biased, it's one of the most beautiful book covers I've ever seen. So if you don't follow me on social media, I would say jump on Instagram or Facebook. It's under Mary Rothwell for both of them. Um, one might still be Mary Rothwell Integrative Wellness, but you can find me there, and I will soon be showing the cover of my book. And that's that's a big deal, you know, for me. It's my first book formatting. I want it to look beautiful. There are beautiful illustrations in the book, 21 of them that my sister did, actually, 22 of them that my sister drew. So the other thing is it's spring here. So I have so many plants that are already peeking out of the soil. And one, there's a saying, grow where you are planted. And I don't know if you've ever heard that, but I love it on one hand, because we can find a million reasons to, I don't know, an excuse to say, well, if only this thing would happen, life would be better. So for instance, if only I could lose 10 pounds, I would just feel so much better, or I would meet that soulmate, or if I just had more time, I could hone my skills and get that promotion. Um, if I just didn't have to get up so early, I would exercise more. So we can always find a reason to not grow in the conditions that we have. So I think it's really important to grow where you're planted. However, there's an entire chapter of my book devoted to figuring out where do you belong and where are you gonna grow the best. And the the entire rest of the book is really predicated on kind of that concept. So for those gardeners in the audience, this is not going to be new information. But if you're not a gardener, it will be new information. So there's a concept of climate zones. And climate zones are assigned to outdoor plants. Actually, you probably can find them on most plant tags, even if you are growing an indoor plant, and a plant tag is just the little plastic or wooden thingy that's stuck into the plant that tells you all about it, what kind of sun it needs, or shade, moisture, when it blooms, all of those things. So the climate zone is based on the coldest temperature that a plant can tolerate. And the reason that is important is because frost will kill a plant if it is not hardy enough for that zone. We have plants that can tolerate warmth. And so there's a lot of areas where the climate is warmer than it used to be. And in fact, the climate zone for where I live has increased a whole climate zone. So that means it used to be zone six, it's now zone seven. And the higher the number, the warmer the temperatures, not only in the winter, but in the summer. This is important because not only do cold temperatures determine when a plant is going to die or not survive, but there are also plants that need a certain number of cold days in order to bloom beautifully the next season. And I won't go into all the science of that. But when we apply this to humans, we start to really hone in on where in my life do I feel like I belong? And that could be at your workplace, could be in your family, could be in your relationship, it could even be at the gym you go to, or it could be the church you attend.Anywhere where you feel connected to people, you feel like that is the zone of your belonging. And I will say plants don't have just one zone. I mean, there might be, I guess I'm never going to say there isn't one, because nature continually surprises me. But typically there is a continuum of zones. So for instance, it m the plant tag might say this plant will survive in zones three to seven. So we know what the coldest temperature is, we also know what the warmest temperature it wants is. So we can grow in a lot of different zones or environments in our life. But to truly thrive, and that's what we want to do, we won't, we don't want to just survive, we want to thrive in our lives. So we want to think about where do I feel at my best? And that might mean that you need to make some changes. So let's say you are in a relationship, and we'll we'll say a partner relationship, and you don't feel as though that partner supports your growth. Or maybe it's just that that partner does support your growth, but the relationship itself needs to have some tending. So in that case, you can improve the environment. In the other case, you might feel like I'm this climate just isn't working for me. Or I had a situation where I was in a work climate that totally changed. And that's typically what happens. We start in a climate where we feel okay, and then something changes. So for me, it was my work environment that I had a supervisor that was wonderful, very supportive, and he retired and someone else took over. And it changed drastically to the point that it wasn't nurturing anymore. And so it was a really hard decision because I loved the work I did, but I left that. I left. And so it's not always that dramatic that we actually have to leave, but sometimes we might decide, I can't, this isn't workable. I need to leave. Other times that can create a drastic climate change are let's say that someone really important to you dies. Well, that's a whole climate change because the warmth you got from that relationship isn't there anymore. Or let's say that, you know, we tend to underestimate our physical environment, but our home environment is so, so important. So let's say that you live somewhere where you love the neighborhood and it just feels good to live there. You have connections, and then they run an interstate very close by, or one of the situations where I currently live, because we haven't physically moved yet, that's going to happen in a couple weeks. Where we currently live is pretty rural, and there are starting to be huge swaths of farmland being sold and homes being built. And the closest highway is already, I can already see in the six years I've lived here, how many changes there have been in congestion and how much it takes 10 minutes longer to get home from the office where I that I have right now. So that's not where I want to live. I would rather move to a city and be able to walk and have those connections to people. I'd rather immerse myself in a neighborhood and in a community than to have it grow up around me and feel stifled. That's just me. Other people, that might not bother you. And so that's the final thing I want to say that whatever feels right for you is okay. You know, we so often start this comparison thing, and it's so much harder. Well, I'm gonna know. Let me let me take that back. It's so much easier now to compare because we're seeing people on the world stage through social media, or we're seeing curated images of celebrities or even friends where people tend to post the best version of themselves, or the fun pictures of vacation. They don't talk about how they had a terrible meal or they missed their connecting flight. You know, we don't often talk about that stuff. I think we're starting to do that more, but point being, don't compare yourself to someone on social media, or your mom, or your sister, or your best friend, because everybody is different. And that's what I'm gonna leave you with that there are hundreds of thousands of species of plants in the world. And we don't look at a plant. For instance, let's say a rose. I think everybody knows what a rose looks like. If a rose isn't thriving because it's in the shade, because roses need a lot of sun, we don't look at the rose and say, my God, I don't understand why I can't just adapt and grow there, right? Or roses are very prone to disease and pests. One of the reasons I don't grow them, because I don't want to grow the engineered kind. I want to grow the old-fashioned roses. So I don't really grow them because I don't want to spray them. I don't really use uh toxic sprays in my garden. So they're very prone to disease and pests. So when a rose gets black spot, which is a fungal disease that models kind of the um the leaves of the rose, we don't look at that and say, I can't believe it didn't take care of itself and it's sick. And the other thing that a rose doesn't do, any plant doesn't do, is when it does get a disease, it doesn't try to push through and keep blooming the same. When a plant has a difficulty, it goes dormant to certain, to a certain degree. It will shut down certain of its functions in order to survive. And it will also kick in protections for other plants around it. And I'm gonna go into those things in a future episode because they're so fascinating how plant communities protect each other in the way that I think we should do for each other. But a plant can teach us when we encounter difficulty how to handle that, not to keep pushing through and thinking I'm not trying hard enough. It's honoring your essential nature, like this isn't working for me. So that goes back to if you're living in a situation where you feel like your light is dimmed or you're not able to bloom. And I think about blooms as like the gifts we give to the world, whether that is through your work as a parent, as a partner, as a spiritual leader, whatever that is, if you can't bring your full gifts to the world, then you may need to look at what is happening around you, what is happening or in your environment. Are you in the right climate to support your growth? Or have you just had a huge climate change? Is it temporary? Or is it something where, as mine was with my work, it will never be sustainable again. I can't wait it out and let things find homeostasis again. It was never going to go back to what I needed. So those are my thoughts for today. I was just pondering all of that because I love being outside and seeing the plants come through the ground and start to their leaves starting to unfurl. It's actually a beautiful day here in Pennsylvania today. It's gonna be 72 and it's sunny. So even though it's only March 9th, I'm gonna take that because I know it's gonna get cold again. And one quick note before I end, because I have been talking about my book. If you want to be on the ground floor for this, and what I mean by that is I need more people to be on my launch team. And what a launch team is, is just basically people that want to support the book, want it to start as strong as possible when it comes into the world. And so you will get the ability to buy the book before it is available anywhere. You'll get the ability to buy the book at cost. I don't make a profit on this. The point is to get it physically into the hands of as many people as possible, and it's a physical book. The ebook will come later, but I love that it's a physical book because I am a physical book lover. You will get to see the beauty of all the illustrations and you'll get it at cost. And sort of the quid pro quo of that is that you will then read it and you'll have a couple weeks to post a review. And if you are an Amazon user, and I actually buy from a lot of book, different books, I love to buy used books, but Amazon is sort of it's the place right now, for better or for worse. So going onto Amazon and leaving a review is what helps a book come into the world strong. Because anything you're buying now, right before you go to a restaurant or we're buying different things now for our home, like rugs and lamps and things like that. So we look at the reviews. So when the book launches to the general world, people are gonna want to know what do people think about this book? And you can help create that. So if you would like to be part of my launch team, and I'm also giving away note cards and signed copies. I made had note cards made with some of the beautiful illustrations from the book. I would love for you to be part of it. The link is in the show notes, but you simply go to maryrothwell.net forward slash nature knows. The name of my book is Nature Knows Grow and Thrive Through the Wisdom of Plants. So the website where you can just take a minute, all I need is your first name and your email, not the whole shebang. You can always unsubscribe later if you want to. You always have that right because I do not like spammy inboxes. But again, you can go to maryrothwell.net forward slash nature knows. And again, sorry that this drops so late on a Monday. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.