Most days I feel incredibly wealthy. Over 20 years ago my artist gallery mate told me someone asked her if I was a trust fund child. “She’s always traveling somewhere, has nice jewelry and looks happy” We laughed while scraping together the money to pay the electric bill (knowing I make all my own jewelry) joking the utility man knew all the artists on the block, and how if we saved all the 24 hr disconnect pink slips stuck on the door we could wall paper our entire bathroom. Of course it wasn’t funny at all. Those pink slips were actually devastating humiliation. But they would also represent an incredibly important life lesson and opportunity to grow and mature. You had two options: #1- buckle,quit, cry & give up, or #2-hunker in, look up, take a breath, regain your strength-learn from it- rise above the humiliation-and try again.

The key however to not repeating the drama is defining what you are rising up from, where you are choosing your path to GO. You have to have a road map in life. Just like a regular map there are a million side roads, but to get to any destination you have to set out towards somewhere. You have to have a goal. If you are lucky in life, you got positive mentoring from your raising. If however you weren’t taught that clearly defined steps towards achieving goals leads to accomplishment that leads to success…the journey can feel more like just surviving- more risky than rewarding.

Its amazing that In the midst of shame some harness the humility needed to rise, and some dont. They stay in a lifetime of struggle always trying to get “somewhere“. The key is “somewhere” …Where is your “somewhere”? Where do you want to go in life? What do you want to do or accomplish? One of the greatest gifts of being older is experience and the ability to embrace the fact that life’s journey is paved w tremendous amounts of failure. It’s only with time looking back those “failures” were just PIVOTS on the road to your success.

“Where is YOUR somewhere?”

Acknowledging and embracing shortcomings is the first step towards manifesting dreams that last. Realizing you dont know everything is not only key for personal growth, but its key to breaking the traps of shame that hold us back from realizing our true potential. So, a person must have failed at a few things to develop the character to know and feel what inner wealth is.

So how does this relate to gardening? Wealth is in the DIRT. AGRICULTURE. NATURE. Its the starting place for everything. Watch a plant grow-plant a seed, give it light, water, good soil, and it will grow to become what it is intended to become-despite the calamities of constant weather and natures unpredictabilities. There is a percentage of loss w every crop. Success is found in the perpetual cycles of nature that continually bless us with opportunities for renewal- on a daily basis, 24/7, for eternity! Air, dirt, sun, seed, weed & time. The same can be said of living life as a human, if we just choose #2 and keep looking up.