The Dandelion I Needed

Life has been such a whirlwind that I’ve felt thrashed in its wake. Beaten, torn, like an old rag doll that the family dog appropriated just to sharpen its hunting skills.

The kids have been sick - very sick - for 5 weeks consecutively between them. Now, I have pneumonia, and one child has double pneumonia. I’m basically bed-bound. Before this point, I was already hanging by a thread, & yesterday it broke.

Oscillating between overwhelm, panic, frustration, and insomnia is agonizing. Living the life I’ve had lately, it feels like there’s no relief anywhere to be found. No joy. No color. Just week after week of suffering, sleepless nights, and petty fights between two people who have exhausted all of their love and kindness and have nothing left to give.

I’ve had 4 breakdowns in three days. It didn’t help that I had my first EMDR session only two days before coming down with my illness. EMDR is helpful, but it brings up some strong emotions sometimes which interestingly, segued into my sickness swimmingly.

I learned through my sessions that I am afraid of being alone still. Of feeling abandoned still. Of becoming nothingness. Sickness and the prospect of death in ceasing to be who I am is the perfect trigger to these concerns. It’s been brutal to be coughing so much that I wretch as I gasp for air to sob.

Fight or flight has consumed me over the last 3 days. Nothing I was doing to cope was working. So, I decided to do the one thing that helps most - be one with nature, with my mother maker.

As I shuffled along, attempting not to set off my raging cough, I looked to the earth which made me. The leaves rustled intermittently, until a large gust of wind whisked a hundred away into the light blue sky, as though the breeze had done this a trillion times, simply because it has. A riveting and magical part of the life cycle of a leaf.

Are the leaves happy? Or sad? Do they know their time is already past? We know that trees and their leaves can ‘feel’. When the umbilical lifeline is snatched away instantaneously by the wind and the leaf falls eventually to the ground, awaiting its new iteration, does it even know?

Thinking about the leaves I realize that even though they’re dead and on their way to the next life, it still is a life. Maybe not ‘alive’ like we would once think, but of life. Maybe, just maybe that is enough.

As I puttered along, I did some exercises of trust between body, mind, and spirit. I nurtured all of myself as I worked through the discomfort of shortness of breath and chest pain. I felt the sun, warming my cool skin. And then I felt that crisp autumn breeze - the same one which carried with it this time even more crumpled leaves. That’s when I looked down, and saw it.

A dandelion. Not just a dandelion, but the dandelion I needed. Yellow, tall, bright, and teeming with confidence. Last night, it was 33 degrees and yet, this little dandelion opened once more, as courageous and hopeful as ever. The last one in the whole lawn, as if to say, “Just because the odds are against me, doesn’t mean I won’t bloom anyway.”

I picked it delicately. Immediately I had remorse, as I’m sure it’s one of the last resources out there for the insects. But I thought about it and maybe its purpose wasn’t for the insects - maybe its purpose is for me. To show me that we can bloom against the barriers. We can beat the odds.

Have you ever really sat with a dandelion? Stroked it? They’re surprisingly soft, and the feel of the petals is quite soothing. I sat with it. I apologized to it for cutting its life short, although the mower would have eventually. I smiled at how brilliantly yellow it shone. In that moment, all suddenly seemed right in my world. Calm relief, if only for those moments.

The dandelion resides now on my nightstand, my cheerleader, my strength. The symbol of hope and faith that again one day, it’ll all be beautiful and calm. That I will still get another opportunity to bloom in autumn under the chilly sun.