Thriving in a new place

In March, we planted eight rose bushes in our front garden raised bed that Tim created, surrounded them with bulbs, mulched and hoped. They all thrived bar one, which remained as two brown sticks above ground. We delighted in watching the different colours of roses as the others bloomed, and the bulbs sprang into life, and a few months ago, I went to dig up the sticks and replace the rose.

Under the soil, there was a tiny pink sprig of life, so with the dead wood pruned, she was planted in a pot on our back porch. Over time, green shoots emerged and this week she rewarded us with four delicately perfumed, beautiful purple blooms.

Tim asked me why she didn't thrive in the front, and my reply serves as an analogy of both our lives.

Sometimes, we can only thrive in a new place.

We need to be brave enough to face the truth if we are not thriving in our lives, uproot, choose a new pot, and plant ourselves with hope.

It takes much courage to make a big change, and not everyone will understand.

We both lived lives that were dominated by someone else's way of living and in submitting to this, we became lost.

It takes courage and energy to gather what little sense of self is left, to refuse to fall into victim thinking, to make different choices and to create a new life.

Nothing is ever wasted, and it gifted us as a couple, a shared understanding that wove into a new way of living.

Life is now built on collaboration, a team effort, with one plus one creating way more energy than two.

We are thriving in a new place and blooming.