To bloom in unexpected places is an act of quiet rebellion, a testament to the strength of unseen roots.
There are flowers that bloom where no one has asked them to, where no gardener’s hand has softened the earth, where no expectation of beauty was ever laid. And yet, they bloom – tender, defiant, and wholly unafraid of their own splendor.
I think often of how the world marks out spaces for certain kinds of growth. The cultivated beds, the tidy rows, the acceptable places where one is allowed to take root. But what of the wild things? The ones that find their way through cracked pavement, between the iron rails of forgotten fences, in the unclaimed corners of the world?
I have come to believe that I, too, am such a thing.
To be a woman who writes, who dreams beyond the limits drawn for her, who speaks when silence is expectedth – is is to be a wildflower in the truest sense. I have learned that there are those who see such growth as an offense, as if the mere act of existing in unwelcomed places disturbs the order of things. They tell you where you should be. They whisper that certain spaces are not yours to occupy. But the earth itself does not abide by such rules, and neither shall I.
Growth is not always gentle. It is not always easy. Sometimes, it is a battle – a slow, steady stretching toward the sun, even as the wind bends you low. But I will grow in all the places they never thought I would. I will bloom where no one believed I could. And like the wildflowers, I will not ask permission to do so.
