Letters to my daughters (March): PLANT

Image: Todd Kent @unsplash

My darling girls,

What can I say to you about what is happening in the world today? What can I do to protect you from the horrors of what is unfolding before our very eyes, glued to screens, watching in real time? What do I need to tell you, to help me make sense of it all too?

There is nothing I want to share with you about war.

There is no need to share with you the inhumanity of what I, we, the world is witnessing. We are having to ask ourselves ‘how can this be possible?’ whilst reminding ourselves that war has unfolded in your lifetime a number of times. It is a stubborn stain on humanity, one that blemishes other people’s lives, over there.

But it’s a bit closer today. It is on a doorstep of sorts. That’s not to make it any more serious or awful. It might affect us though, comfortable in our homes. And in doing so, will we be more aware of its ill, its tragedy? What does that say about us today - so comfortable as not to truly understand or be alert to the plight of others?

But I cannot, and I will not, share with you today the unfairness of having to escape that comfort for your LIFE. Escaping your home. For your life. My darlings, can you even begin to imagine that? I hope upon hope that you will never have to.

In fact, today, all I can do is plant hope.

All I can do, my darling girls, is share with you the strength and the courage that families on not-so-distant shores will need to survive the next tragic period in their lives. I can’t even quantify; I’ll never know how much they’ll really need. But you need to know that hope and strength and courage is real, and it is yours if you need it.

It’s early spring again. A hope-filled time. And time to plant our seeds.

Do you remember, little one, a couple of years ago - when you poured all the sunflower seeds into the pot – not saving any of the hundreds we had harvested from last year to go around the other pots we had prepared? All the seeds. In one pot. And we laughed.

We laughed when they came up – all of them – bursting through the soil to emerge winking into the sunlight of spring. We laughed when I thinned them out, smiling at the naivety of your toddlerish gardening. Hundreds of sunflower seeds bursting with their tiny magic, in one too-small pot.

The race to the sunlight, the energy contained within each tiny speck, the wrestling strength from each shoot as it rubbed shoulder to shoulder with other hopeful potentials: all of it beautiful and positive and true.

We shouldn’t have laughed. You were onto something.

This year – we need all the hope and potential and strength and beauty we can get. We need to fill our pots to the brim with sunflower seeds. We need that hope to spill over, to represent the bigger and better things in life, to encourage us to feel, to act, and to engage. We need to see ourselves as part of the whole, not solitary, each tucked into our own pot. None of us are safe if some of us are in danger.

And this time we might cry. We might remember the loss and the heart-aching trauma that families around the world are facing in light of these monstrous actions.

I know that us planting seeds will do nothing of any use to anyone in the midst of crisis. But they offer you and me a symbol of hope, of strength, and of courage. Let’s dwell on that and learn what it can do.

And it is that which we will spread and share across the world if we all commit to feeling and sharing it as one. Tidal waves of hope and beauty and love permeating borders and meeting our friends abroad to lift them towards a better future.

Like those sunflower seeds you planted, prophetically, all in one pot – we will grow and stand together in the soil, shoulder to shoulder, as we all reach towards the sun.