You 100% do not have to bloom where you are planted.
By: Lakay Cornell, She Her
Tags: Inspiration, Empowerment, Language

A few years ago I attended a womxn’s entrepreneur event. It could have been any women’s entrepreneur event you’ve ever been to. We started with a small batch breakfast and craft coffee punctuated by a call to seize the day so inspiring it resembled a church service. After shuffling from break-out session to break-out session, we paused for a lunch of organic something with grass fed something else on artisan bread.

I know you have all been to events just like this one, and so you know a local successful business womxn shared her tips for having it all while we ate; we shuffled off to more breakout sessions; and we ended the day with a vendor fair, photo booth, and happy hour catered by a chef I adore — partially because she is the best in town and partially because she shares my love of a well-made charcuterie board.

Also like most events for womxn entrepreneurs in the pre-COVID days, the decor was Instagram worthy with boho garland and inspirational messages in the latest script font everywhere, including the center of every table in the room we convened for food with a side of you got this.

This particular event I was attending with one of the most thoughtful, intentional creatives I know, who is also a feminist poet, dedicated to making sure every word in every poem she writes means exactly what she is trying to say.

We started towards the front of the room, carrying our food and all the tree-killing handouts from the morning sessions. Anxious to have my hands free again, I put my stuff down at a table that would leave us perfectly poised to soak in all the successful energy sure to come from the lunchtime keynote.

With her signature laugh that all at once puts you at ease and tells you that you are missing something very key to your survival, my friend told me we needed to find a different table.

She nodded towards the inspirational message framed in the center:

Bloom where you are planted.

And then she said something that clicked in my soul they way hearing the perfect song for the exact mood you are in does.

I one-hundred percent do not have to bloom where I am planted. I get to dig up, uproot, move, reroot, and bloom where I am nourished.

And so we moved.

Words are my thing. Understanding what they do to us and the power they have to do for us is my jam. And as my soul played the rhythm of her words over and over for the next few weeks, I honed in on the unseen power balance that is solidified when we are told to bloom where we are planted and we listen.

For many of us, our mothers and grandmothers believed they had no choice but to bloom where they were planted — they became experts at making the best out of bad situations and being strong womxn in spite of a whole host of realities.

My own grandmother lived in a house next door to her husband because she couldn’t divorce him and she couldn’t live with him. My mom has never left a job without one waiting in the wings, regardless of whether she is being nourished or not.

And yet, during those same eras, living with those same expectations, womxn have refused to be that one flower that comes up through the crack in a hard sidewalk and sparks life. Instead, they have done whatever they had to do to to create a life that gives them life.

They have created underground railroads to bring their friends to safety even when they were told it was too risky. They have left abusive husbands in the middle of the night, kids in tow. They have gone down dark alleys to unmarked addresses to end a pregnancy. They have walked their black children into recently integrated schools with white people literally throwing things at them. They have spoken out in support of the education of girls, even when it meant getting shot.

They have also crossed the border from Mexico into the US in the dead of night following a coyote, hoping and praying that everything they have sacrificed for that moment will not be lost, and that they will at last get to start creating that new life they have dreamed of.

And still this belief that we should grace up, dig in, and turn lemons into lemonade prevails. It is such a strong current in our culture that the womxn posting this phrase on Instagram or using it to decorate a conference are the very womxn who desire freedom and empowerment for us all. They, too are fooled by the curvy words and flowery sentiment.

As twitter puns, well-timed one-liners, and serious conversations turned to the We may actually have to leave moment last week, I saw numerous people responding that even talking about leaving this country to find something else reeks of a privilege that many do not have. This is more well-intentioned folks perpetuating the myth that we have to be given anything to get up and go when it’s time to go.

While there is no doubt that privilege, access, inclusion, and equity are in a gut-wrenching spiritual battle right now with patriarchy, gaslighting, and straight up lies, I need ya’ll to hear me when I say this one thing:

Womxn have repeatedly found the means to get to some place better when we were ready. Womxn who leave their abusive husbands in the middle of the night often do so with zero dollars in their pocket. Right now, in our country, there are tens of thousands of womxn who are launching companies with no capital, starting podcasts with no college degrees, and just generally kicking ass and figuring it out as they go.

What I am not saying is that it is simple. I have watched my brother pull many a root from the ground in the hot Florida sunshine, and it is no small feat. The tropical plants at my mom’s house have roots that go under the driveway and wind around like that yellow brick road that also leads to a womxn realizing she had everything she needed all along.

They touch every part of our existence here. And still, it is possible.

The sad reality is that the only truth here lies in the fact that we are capable of uprooting and moving on. There is no guarantee that we will succeed and find that better life, or even that we will survive.

The beauty that flourishes at the intersection of these two truths is that the power comes not in succeeding, but in the uprooting. It is this power that we give to our daughters and to their daughters and to their daughters, just as it was given to us.

Each time a womxn refuses to smile when her heart is breaking, keep silent when she is passed over for a promotion she deserves, or ignore her uncle at a holiday dinner when he squeezes her ass, our power becomes greater and their shrinks.

And, as I love to say, With great power comes…

great power.