What If You’ve Been Planted?
Someone awesome shared this photo she took with me today, and honestly, it stopped me in my tracks.
Sometimes when you’re in a dark place you tend to think you have been buried. What if you’ve been planted?
There’s something about this that hits different when you’re neurodivergent. We know dark places. We know what it feels like to be underground, pressed down by expectations that don’t fit, systems that weren’t built for us, sensory input that feels like too much, or executive function that just... won’t.
When you’re there, in that heaviness, it really does feel like burial. Like the world has covered you up and walked away. The frustration compounds on itself. You can’t do the thing, so you get overwhelmed, which makes you more unable to do the thing, which creates more overwhelm. It’s a cycle that feels permanent, like soil being packed down hard above you.
But what if that’s not what’s happening?
What if the pressure isn’t about being crushed but about being held? What if the darkness isn’t an ending but the exact condition you need to grow roots?
Seeds don’t apologize for needing darkness and time. They don’t feel guilty about the germination process. They just do what they’re built to do, in their own time, in their own way.
Maybe that’s what our hard seasons are. Not proof that we’re broken or failing, but evidence that something in us is getting ready. Building strength we can’t see yet. Developing the root system that will eventually support something beautiful.
The thing about being planted is that you don’t spring up overnight. Growth takes the time it takes. And for those of us whose brains work differently, our timeline might not match anyone else’s calendar. That’s okay. Seeds don’t bloom on a standardized schedule either.
When the overwhelm feels like it’s burying you, when frustration has you wondering if you’ll ever break through, when the darkness seems endless - maybe you’re not stuck. Maybe you’re germinating. Maybe you’re exactly where you need to be for what comes next.
The ground doesn’t have to be an avalanche that buries you.
It might just be your garden.
You’re not buried. You’re planted. And…
