S.O.S

THEY LIVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

photo by I&I Collabo

Imagine you wanted to plant a garden. 6 summers after moving into your current home you finally actually decided it was time.

That was me. This June, I walked into WalèMart looking for tomato and squash plants like somebody’s country cousin.

I was on CPT time so of course and it was very late in the season. By the time I pulled up, the garden section looked like a plant nursing home instead of a nursery.

The big, leafy tomatoes with little green babies already growing? Gone. There - Terminal Tomatoes.

The squash plants standing tall like valedictorian? Gone. There - Zombified Zucchini.

What was left looked like it had been through three famines, two heat waves, and a hostile corporate takeover. Leaves yellow. Stems bent. Soil dry as an airport Popeyes biscuit without the margarine spread.

And what did I do? I picked up three of them.

Halfway to the checkout I stopped and laughed.

“Whyyyy oh why are you always trying to save something?”

If that wasn’t the story of so many us women, I don’t know what is.

We don’t just buy the struggling squash plant. We become the struggling squash plant’s life coach.

We walk into jobs few want because “it’s a quiet opportunity.” We volunteer for committees that everybody else somehow forgot to sign up for. We tend and nend broken systems, become the office go-to girl, cover everybody’s shift, disregard disrespect with a smile, and then wonder why we leave on Friday wanting to….(get creative!)

Somewhere along the way we confused and then convinced others that value equals avail.

Somewhere we learned that if we could just resuscitate just one more dying thing, somebody would finally see our worth.

But lovely one, listen here.

Everything with potential is not your professional or (ahem) personal assignment.

Just because you can resurrect it doesn’t mean God wrote your name on it.

You are not the emergency contact for every struggling workplace, every dysfunctional team, every underfunded project, or every person who suddenly “needs your wisdom” after ignoring your expertise for years.

We’ve all had that supervisor who looked at us like, “Yeah, you’ll figure it out.”

Yes Ma’am and, where is the budget? Where is the staff? Where is the support? How has this situation panned out in the past for y’all?

Don’t hand me a dead plant and call it leadership.Because at the end of the day, it is living people’s lives and livelihoods that are on the line.

Now, did I buy those tomatoes?

Absolutely.

Because we are bad mamajama’s and we are talented, and stubborn, and have big beautiful hearts full of hope and vision, and already have an unlimited supply of mineral rich, luscious soil and fertilizer at home.

Or did I buy them because I wanted to save them, saw their potential and knew they could grow? 

Or was it because they were all I believed I deserved, all I could find at the time and was determined to finally grow my damn garden this summer,finally?

Let’s stop treating ourselves like women who should be grateful for whatever is left on the shelf.

You are not the “pick me” candidate. You are not the backup plan. You are not the fixer of every mess simply because you’ve become good at surviving them.

The healthiest gardens don’t grow because one determined but exhausted woman keeps reviving dying plants.

They grow because they’re planted in good soil from the beginning.

May this be the season you stop proving you can survive impossible conditions and start expecting to flourish in places that were prepared for someone exactly like you.