More Than Just Flowers.
During the time when when I was struggling with panic after Wells accident my therapist asked me to envision when I felt my safest. She wanted me to reach back to when I was an adolescent for a place that made me feel protected and calm. I was instructed to imagine the colors, the fragrances, the sounds. From there I was led to envision what body felt like when I was my adolescent self in that safe space. How was I breathing, how was I holding my shoulders, what was I thinking about, what was I feeling.
Her hopes were that I could find small pauses in the cycle of panic I was experiencing through mimicking how my body felt in that safe space. A sort of fake it ‘til you make it trick for the brain. Her intention was to bring a little more awareness how my body was holding on to trauma, but what she didn’t realized is how she led me to understand the reasoning behind so many greater decisions in my life.
When I envisioned where I felt my “safest” there was one clear place that immediately came to mind. A spot where I felt happy and content to just “be.” A place I was enveloped in a simple ease. When I picture being there, a calmness filled my thoughts and I felt connected to a larger cycle of life.
The safe space I envisioned was myself seated in a sea of gently waving grass colored in the soft green of early summer. I’m resting against an old oak tree over looking a pond in my childhood pasture. There is a warm glow from June sunshine streaming through the new growth of leaves. The soft light radiates down forming small halos around the tips of upward stretching prairie grass. It is a place that at first glance seems quiet and unmoving. It isn’t until you are still yourself that you can note the infinate activity nature is orchestrating around. It is here watching the repeated refrains of nature where I my anxieties always felt right sized. Watching the
I always knew spending my childhood feasted beneath these trees watchings the seasons pass held a special place in my heart. What I hadn’t realized is how my subconscious was leading me to create a space that held a similar role in my current life.
Somewhere deep down I knew needed a space with where I could right size my problems. I needed a space I could tune into nature on both a microscopic and also a grand ever lasting scale. A place to watch a caterpillar devote his entirety to his task of nibbling milkweed leaves until it was his time to change. In the same way I need to see the minor workings of nature, I also needed to witness the process of an entire season changing repeatedly for decades or longer. I needed to watch a barron iced over lanscape change into a flood of blooms and growth and watch it cycle back into seed and barron ground again within the course of 6 months. I needed to be reminded of how things are ever changing but somehow are ever the same.
These thoughts and visions and feelings were so abstract - so far from a “business plan” when I started True Blue Flower Co. I wanted to have a flower farm - yet there was something that kept pulling me away from all the sensible decisions for best way to grow flowers. I felt this pull telling me that is was so much more that just growing flowers. I picked a place with the worst soil but the best view because I knew it was about more than just the flowers. We have grass inbetween all the rows instead of mulch or fabric because of the feel because its about more than just the flowers. Half of our rows have milkweek patches in the middle because its about more than just the flowers. Having U-Picks open daily sunup to sundown is because something deep inside me told me it was about more than just harvesting flowers. I wanted people to feel they could come here whenever they needed it instead of at my convenience.I wanted to let anyone visit during U-Pick hours even with purchasing a bouquet because I had a sense its about more than just the flowers. Subconsciously I felt I wanted to replicate the “safe space of my youth. I knew there was somethings so healing in growing and tending flowers and if I could merge growing flowers with the calm that this spot on the hill gives it would be magical.
Deep down I kept hoping it would be about more than just the flowers but my confidence in this vision has ebbed and flowed in the first four years of starting a business. This spring shortly after Wells’ near drowning I was at a loss. I was floating in a sea of overwhelm and in those moments True Blue Flower Co. felt like just flowers. I didn’t want to spend any time away from my kids for just flowers.
But somehow this incredible community came together and continues to remind me that it is about so much more than just the flowers. When you all came together to help plant thousands and thousands of plants on Mother’s Day weekend I was in disbelief. Usually I am good and articulating feelings, but there is a sense of gratitude that I will never be able to express in regards to this. Before you all came to help me plant I really had no desire to be around people. It’s not that I wasn’t grateful for help and kind words, but I was two weeks out from an something that brought out emotions and thoughts I don’t think I could survive feeling ever again. At that point I was barely capable of eating or sleeping, let alone talking and sharing emotions with 60 people and then directing them to help in places where I needed help. But I was so desperate. I knew if I didn’t ask for help planting, I wouldn’t have flowers for the year. I could live without the flowers, but something told me seeing the fields-my safe space- sit barren would be harder to overcome.
What I though would be a day of overwhelm and something to just “get through” became the biggest moment of healing I have ever experienced. I felt as though I was embraced in the warmest hug from hundreds of people - some of who I’ve never even met. Ever since this I have felt that the fields are not fully mine, but rather belong to anyone who needs “more than flowers” at the moment. A place for you to feel joy when you have joy and a place to feel sadness when you have sadness. A place I will care for and maintain and pour my heart into. A flower farm at the front, but my desire is to give you a place to use as your happy place and feel welcome too. And these things may seem abstract. I know they might not make sense on a business plan, but the true intention of True Blue Flower Co. is for you to have a safe space for you to be your genuine, true blue self. We just happen to sell a few flowers to make that vision work.
So this is just a long winded note to say How thankful I am for all of you who visit or purchase flowers or follow along. I understand to some it is just flowers - and I appreciate that too! As for those who have sent sweet notes and messages saying how the fields feel like something more, thank you. Thank you for appreciating the space that I have poured my heart and soul into for the last four year. I never tire of hearing the sweet memories you make here. And to all those who helped me re-envision that it is about more than just the flowers, thank you.