On Saturday afternoon, I was weeding my garden (hello, yes that’s me un-showered, great hair, dirty gardening shirt). The weeds were winning and I was trying to free my strawberries from their clutches!
While I was digging, I realized there are two kinds of strawberries in my garden! There are wild strawberries – they have shallower roots, sharper shaped leaves, and tiny fruits that are NOT sweet. My more cultivated ones have much deeper roots, rounder, softer leaves, gorgeous blooms, and oh-so-tasty fruit yields.
The wild strawberries look like cultivated strawberries and even have little fruit blooming right now. And when they are in with the regular cultivated strawberries, they *almost* look the same. It takes me a minute to see the difference between them.
Here’s what feels important: the wild strawberries are IMPOSTERS in my strawberry patch!
And it occurred to me that lots of people in this world are like these imposter strawberries! You’re doing good work. It’s “fine.” Life is fine. You’re existing here. Maybe you’re using a lot of your gifts and talents and trying to “grow” where you are.
But when you really dig down, something’s not right. Your life is not as sweet as it could be. Your world just doesn’t look “quite right.” The work or the culture or the people or the leadership don’t quite fit you.
You don’t FIT IN HERE.
And if you made some changes, if you replanted yourself with different work with a different culture or with a totally different job, then you could be more authentically YOU.
You would thrive and grow and you would produce the sweetest fruit for the world.
When we’re where we’re not meant to be, we can be sharper, our roots + connections are shallower, and we don’t thrive, just like the wild strawberries in my cultivated patch. They don’t quite fit.
Now, I think the opposite of my analogy works too – maybe you’re MEANT to be sharper, wilder, and less “sweet” in order to be your authentic self! Maybe you’re drowning in the sameness – the sea of cultivated berries. And it’s time for you to leave the neat and tidy cultivated world and BE WILDER!
Either way, you know where you don’t fit, where you don’t belong.
And figuring out where you DO BELONG and where you DO FIT is the greatest gift you can give yourself and the world!
Might it be time to take a closer look at where you’re planted?
Warmly,
Angie
PS: Sometimes going out to go in is the just the right thing!
If you want to go OUT in nature with with me to receive your own insights, consider joining me for EMERGE: A Quiet Retreat to remember who you are and who you can be! (June 2 – 4)