“Weeds need to be pulled and removed from the garden or else they could choke the flowers to death. The same with life.” – Dawn Onley

By Dawn Onley

If there’s one sure thing that I’ve learned in my 47 years of living, it’s this: Whatever we water will grow.

Obviously, it applies to vegetation and flowers, but it also applies to weeds. No one sets out to water weeds, at least not intentionally. Still, I’ll bet there are “weeds” in our lives that we are watering too much, like self-doubt, fear, worry, timidity, and insecurities. All of these weeds are hindering our growth. It’s time we uprooted them for good!

When we allow these weeds to grow wild, they can block us from experiencing the flowers.

Flowers are a metaphor for blessings, for beauty and love, for joy and contentment. Flowers represent our best lives. Weeds represent drama and stress and sadness and toxicity. Weeds symbolize people or things or situations. They are all around us and look for opportunities to infest our thoughts with negativity and our outlooks with despair. Weeds also symbolize our own thinking.

Sometimes it’s tough to avoid the weeds. They grow faster than we can rid our lives of them. They are in the disparaging remarks. They are in the situations that pop up overnight that cause us to fret and brood. They are in the people who suck out of our cups, who cause us to feel drained and depleted because of all that we give and all that they take. They are in the “I’m not good enough” messages that we tell ourselves over and over again until we believe them.

Weeds permeate every square inch of land until they have overgrown any semblance of order and until they have hidden any sign of beauty. Weeds are neglected and through the neglect, they can create chaos, destroying stuff along their path.

We have to remain mindful at all times of the beauty in our lives. We have to take particular care and attention to water and prune the flowers. We need to cut back the weeds, although we need to learn the lessons that weeds bring us. Weeds are not all bad. Weeds help us to realize our triggers and to emerge victorious from the internal battles that rage and attempt to thwart our greatness. When we do, weeds help us to believe in who we are and what we have to offer this world. Weeds show us how tough we can be if we summon the courage to silence the demons. Weeds build something inside of us that can’t come any other way. Weeds grow, until we do, refusing to snuff out the perseverance that it helped create in us.

Weeds help us to appreciate the wildflowers that dare to grow, dare to resist and dare to cover the fields with an untamed beauty that is as regal as any rose.