Thrive, Survive, Barely Alive

Like plants, we need the right conditions in order to thrive.

I had a cactus once, 10 years ago before the houseplant renaissance we are now experiencing. I'd just left university and in my first 'adult' flat with two friends. A plant to look after now I'd crossed the threshold into adulthood.

When I think of a cactus I think of a plant born to survive. Hardy, covered in spines, hardly needs water. Easy. The problem was that I lived in Edinburgh and I kept my little desert cactus by a breezy window to exposed to the freezing temperatures and fog that rolled in off the sea. Not long after I got this cactus it started looking unwell, then I helplessly watched it deflate like a balloon over a few weeks.

I didn't think much of this until I tried again with houseplants last year. I got a beautiful, delicate plant, it's lime green leaves almost luminescent. The plant looked so alive and transformed my shabby downstairs toilet. You may guess what's coming but this isn't a sad story, this time the plant survived, then thrived but only after coming back from the brink of death.

Now 30 I was determined not to kill this plant. Everyone knows its plants, then dogs, then kids. If you can't look after the first, you can't move on to the next. So, I took my poorly plant to one of the many boutique plant shops that had sprung up in my neighbourhood. There, a friendly knowledgeable plant person told me it had too much light and too much water and the soil was the wrong type. Basically everything you can do wrong with a plant. I repotted the plant and moved it to the shade and watched it come back to life.

This plant was not deficient, it was not 'not trying hard enough'. Obvious statements perhaps, but it dawned on me like an epiphany. What if I was a cactus trying to grow on a breezy windowsil? The previous year I'd quit my job in what can only be described as a full-on nervous breakdown, so this was a much needed revelation. Since then I’ve been working on repotting myself, of figuring out what I need to thrive. It’s a process, barely visible sometimes, but I feel myself coming alive, unfurling in my growth.

We accept that plants require certain conditions to thrive, we generally don't make moral judgements of a plant, put in the wrong place, failing to grow. So why do expect, require, all humans to thrive in the same conditions? Granted, we are adaptable creatures, evolution gave us two legs and general intelligence, but that doesn't mean we can thrive under any old conditions. Many of us are dandelions that can grow wherever they are put, but many of us are living in conditions that make us weak.

You are not deficient, or not trying hard enough.

You are a plant in the wrong place, a cactus on a breezy window in Scotland, but you have the capacity to thrive.

Figure out what kind of plant you are, what conditions you need and repot yourself. Easier said than done but it's a great start knowing you have the potential to be so alive you can transform the space around you.