Blooming Where You Are Planted

In this first episode of The Written Willow, we explore what it means to grow in places that feel barren—where support is scarce and the timing feels all wrong. I reflect on the quiet strength it took to keep going after the loss of both my parents, and share a poem I wrote called "Resilience". This episode is an invitation to rise anyway...to bloom even in your Winter. 

Thank you for resting beneath the Willow.

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Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to the Written Willow. I'm Dominique Maria, and I'm so glad you're here. Today's episode is all about blooming where you're planted. No matter the conditions. We're going to talk about what it means to grow during hard seasons when the environment doesn't look supportive or even survivable.

I'll be sharing a poem and reflecting on one of the most defining moments of my life, a moment when I had to choose to grow, even when I didn't feel ready. Let's begin.

All right, let's get into it. This first episode is really special to me, not just because it marks the beginning of this podcast, but because it's rooted in something very real, something I haven't always shared publicly and something I don't usually lead conversations with. I lost both my parents at a young age.

I was nine when I lost my mother, and 23 when I lost my father. Even now that still feels surreal to say out loud their absence left to silence in my life that no words can ever really feel. In everything I do, I feel the ache of not having them. But in that silence, something still called me to grow and that's where this poem came from.

It's called Resilient, and it's about the quiet kind of strength, the kind that sprouts up even when it has every reason not to in the harshness of winter we are, nothing's about popped a tiny little thing. Resembling a sprout, though everything around advised it shouldn't be there. It stood steady and proud.

Gleefully without a care. You know, when I wrote this poem, I wasn't thinking [00:02:00] about being strong. I was thinking about how strange it feels to have something grow in a place that seems barren or desolate. How strange it is to still want to grow even when everything around you feels frozen and the odds are against you.

I think grief is like that. Life moves on and you're not sure if you're ready to move with it, but something inside you still rises somehow, some way anyway. And the truth is you don't need perfect conditions to grow. You can wait for the perfect opportunity, the perfect timing, the perfect everything. But you know what?

You'll probably be waiting a long time, or you could decide to bloom anyway, and that's what I did not perfectly. Certainly not gracefully, but intentionally, day by day, one step at a time, and maybe that's where you are too. Maybe you've been waiting for a sign or for someone to give you permission, so let this be your permission.

Better yet, let you be your permission. This poem also holds a second meaning for me. Sometimes I refer back to it when I find myself stepping into spaces where others might not think I belong. It becomes my way of reclaiming my space. A quiet way of saying, yes, I belong here. I'm here because I'm meant to be, or else I wouldn't be.

We don't always need to look around and take inventory of who else is in the room. Sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is simply focus on ourselves. That's how we grow by turning inward, not by measuring ourselves against others or wondering how we are being perceived. Because the truth is we all experience self-doubt, even the people we think that have it all together.

Imposter syndrome doesn't just live inside us. It lives in rooms full of people who are trying to prove they belong too. But you do belong. And sometimes showing up like that little sprout gleefully without a care is the most honest thing you can do. And so I wanna leave you with a question. Where in your life have you had to bloom when it didn't feel easy?

And what part of you is ready to rise? Even if the world around you isn't ready for you yet. That's the end of today's episode. Thank you truly for resting beneath the willow with me today. If this episode made you feel something or simply gave you a quiet space to breathe, I'd love if you'd subscribe, leave a review or share it with someone who might need it.

And if you feel called to support this channel. Any amount helps. You can find the link to do that in the episode description. Until next time, me, the Wisdom of the Willow be with you.