I repotted my monstera a few months ago. It’s the same plant with the same soil in the same spot. It’s just in a slightly larger pot.

I think that’s how the people around us (for the most part) want us to grow. Just a little bit, and in predictable ways, and always in just about the same conditions.

But there’s a huge problem with that. That implies there was always freedom to grow from the beginning, that conditions were always good for growth from the start. It implies we are always what we will be.

And I don’t buy that.

In my young life I was taught to believe that we are always going to be the person we were at age 13, that people don’t deviate much from that. I lived in that shadow for so long. But at age 13, I was dealing with a trauma response I didn’t know how to manage. For so long, I thought I just was this person who was dealing with a lot at a young age. It made me question myself, it made me follow the wrong people’s examples. It made me deviate very far from the real-me.

But I’m not that kid. I am more than an adolescent trauma response. It took me years to unlearn that, undo that. It took me even longer to build and learn the tools I should have learned all that time ago. And it took me the most time to build trust in myself, and to say that I’m actually ok, I’m not living in this shadow anymore. And I can just be the weird wacky caring connected person who’s truly inside me.

That was BIG BIG growth. That was like Redwood tree-level growth. That was a rocket ship to Saturn-level growth. And it wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed in the same soil.

Our relationships, especially very old ones, may not have enough room for us to grow into our true selves as we get older. So maybe we all need to see each other as dynamic, changeable people. Maybe we need to get curious and get to know each other again on deeper levels. I challenge us all to cultivate the relationships we want to have by reexamining our judgments and assumptions about people. And revealing more about ourselves to each other if we feel safe. Let’s all grow in big ways, together.

And P.S. My monstera seems really happy in its new pot.