Hello all!
Many of you know the wisdom of mindful pruning. Maybe you are a gardener or grew up with one, like I did. Whatever your source of “prune back” wisdom, it’s the right time of year to ask the question: What can I let go of now?
This week’s Musing is inspired by the powerful practice of pruning rose bushes this time of the year and its application to letting go of what no longer serves us in life.
I invite you to share your stories and wisdom related to letting go on our Facebook community page.
May you be blessed,
Permission to Prune
Over the years of loving and caring for roses, the value of pruning has taught me an insightful lesson. Around this time of the year roses need to be pruned back. You’ve seen them in the gardens, private and public, when this annual process has transpired. It almost seems cruel at worst, counterintuitive at best. This pruning takes a rose covered with leaves and any remnants of the gifts of blooming and a large growth effort and renders it back to its essential structure.
The results are rose bushes without the bushiness. Back to nearly the bare bones of the plant. You prune to remove dead branches. You prune to remove branches overtly crossing others. You prune back “suckers,” growth from the base or roots of the plant, not the stalk. These outgrowths do not yield roses to enjoy. They divert energy and strength from the true purpose of the plant.
The annual pruning ensures a healthy rose bush. It is the choice to treat the plant with loving care, moving its energies into the truest, most stable core of it aliveness. So it can grow strong and vibrant, and bloom again, magnificently, under the care and tutelage of the gardener.
How appropriate Mother Nature would orchestrate the best time to do such pruning, which is in the winter. During the winter nature slows down, moves energies inward to gather vitality for a new season of growth and blooming.
You know this question is coming. What needs pruning in your life right now? What is overgrown, dead, crossing paths with other parts of your life? What is sucking the energy from your true mission and purpose? What old beliefs no longer serve you?
It’s the time of pruning.
It’s the time to trust the process. To go within and ask for guidance. Spend time in the silence and ask for answers to what you can let go of now. A price you may have to pay for a larger blooming in the spring. Trust still.
Remember in all things, self-compassion. Letting go is an act of self-love. It is an honoring of the truth and beauty of who you are at the core of your beingness. The gardener, at least most of them I’ve encountered including myself, loves his or her rose bushes. It can be a love/hate relationship as they take a whole lot of care. Sometimes we feel the same about ourselves. It’s all good. The reward is great. The reward is the blooming of such loveliness it can take your breath away.
You are worth this effort. You are.
In the depths of you is a beauty, a magnificence, a splendor only you can bloom. Only you can do this work. This is the great gift. We can and must surround ourselves with all the sun, water, air, ground, nurturing required to bloom brightly. But at the core, we each do our own soul gardening. We each work with Life itself to bloom the gift we are here to bring.
In love, self-compassion and great care, I invite you to prune.
AFFIRMATION
With deep self-compassion and honoring, I open myself to guidance. I open to that still, small voice of my soul. I accept guidance to know what no longer serves me. I accept guidance to see clearly that which can be released, any and all things sapping my energy for growth authentic to my unique splendor. I trust and know this pruning in my life is done with ease and grace. For this grace, I am grateful. For my own blooming, I am in awe of this gift of Life in, through and as me.
