Do you remember that grey Sunday? The one where the sky released long awaited rain, and your eyes did the same. You hated that day. And ever since, you’ve frowned at the rain. Frowned because it reminds you of a day spent in sorrow. A day where everything seemed broken. A day where you sat uselessly among the pieces, willing them back together. And at the end of that day, when you found yourself alone in the living room of your house you took a breath and said ‘that’s enough’.

Do you remember that bright blue Monday, three weeks later, when you ran out of ways to distract yourself? The day when all the trivial little hobbies in which you had entangled yourself stopped being enough? And before you knew it you were standing at the base of a wave of all the emotions you had managed to keep at a bay. You looked up at it towering over you. And when it crashed you were taken by it – dragged under and thrown up to curl on the bathroom floor and sob. Then you took a breath and said ‘that’s enough’.

You want to be ashamed of all those tears. I can feel the hesitancy in your fingertips. You don’t even want to admit them. But I want you to remember. 

I want you to remember because I know you are starting to feel what I could always see. 

Growth. 

Before those tears, there was ground that had become dry in your life. There were plants ready for planting, but had nowhere to grow. You couldn’t know it at the time, but those tears were preparing good ground for growth.

Now, delicate seedlings are emerging and they need you to nurture them. They will need your patience and they will again need your tears to grow stronger and sturdier, to establish themselves in the garden of your experience. The garden that is growing towards greater wisdom, greater kindness, greater fulfilment and greater peace. 

So, when you find yourself at that breath, the one where your tears have finished watering some new soil, I no longer want you to whisper, that’s enough.

Whisper these words instead: 

Keep growing