Time to Bloom Again

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, the "Late Bloomer," and New Adventures

“I find most all of us are Late Bloomers in one way or another. You’re a Late Bloomer if you raise children, because your children, you might say, become your whole creative life in many ways, and you bloom right along with them for decades, including into and through the years of your elderhood.

“You’re also a Late Bloomer if you’ve been working for a living in an area that is not kind to your soul. Then one day, because you change livelihoods or you find your way out or you run for daylight, as we say, you then have a chance to develop a whole new side of your gifts—or all of them or any of them—in a way you never have before.”

--Clarissa Pinkola Estés, conversation with Sounds True about The Dangerous Old Woman

Do these words resonate with you? Do you feel like a “late bloomer”? Or maybe a better term would be a re-bloomer. I feel like I’m starting a new blooming season, so this really spoke to me.

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The other day I met up with my friend Marie-Louise in Kirkaldy, Scotland, for a nice long chat. She talked about listening to Clarissa Pinkola Estés’s “The Late Bloomer,” which is part of her series The Dangerous Old Woman. I’ve been trying to get my hands on a copy and have had to be content for now with a two-part conversation she has about with Tami Simon on the Sounds True podcast.¹

This morning, I heard her say that the Late Bloomer is a mother—or that is how I heard it—and I had to stop and listen. Because I remember waking up when my daughter was 17 and realizing that I had stopped growing. It was as if my life force had gone into her for all those years, and I felt depleted, as you do during pregnancy when your body is using all of its resources to grow a new human being. But it doesn’t stop when they become their own separate person. Estés frames the raising of children as “your whole creative life,” which is perhaps a nicer way of putting it.

And when I was in some sense “done” raising my daughter, I felt my soul yearn towards a new kind of creativity. I needed to be creating something—but what and how?

We don’t talk enough about the major transition from actively involved parenting to intermittent parenting from a distance. Many of us feel a huge crater open up inside usus and wonder how we will fill it. Of course, figuring out how to fill it is a time of tremendous opportunity and renewed fertility.

Estés also says, “You’re a Late Bloomer if you’ve been working for a living in an area that is not kind to your soul.” (I would add living somewhere that is not kind to your soul.) This resonates with me as well. Academia was not at all kind to my soul. Nor were the heat and humidity of New Orleans.

I certainly “ran for daylight” when I left my old life, and I’ve seized the opportunity to develop new sides of my gifts, mostly by writing to you and pursuing an MA in Creative Writing.

Estés goes on to say,

“The drive to grow . . . and to bloom is inside of us in genome form in the psyche, pushing for us to develop all our gifts. Sometimes it really is a matter of time. We’re gathering the learning, the parts, the strengths; we’re gathering the right moment, the right atmosphere, the ‘good enough’ soil to plant ourselves in, the able root system.”

It’s been three years since I gave up tenure and left teaching. It’s taken some time to find some fertile soil to grow in and to start to bloom. (She uses the analogy of the Saguaro cactus, which can grow a tall trunk for 20 or 30 years before it begins to grow arms and flower.)

I was amazed to see this poppy growing right up out of the pavement. What a perfect metaphor!

A while ago I heard Elizabeth Gilbert speak about how she dealt with the very destabilizing effects of publishing Eat, Pray, Love. We think we’d love to experience that kind of blockbuster success, but it can throw us off as much as a very negative experience would. The nervous system doesn’t know the difference, really. She felt knocked off her feet, ungrounded, lost, which is rather like how I felt when I moved to Manchester and started having vertigo.

To find her footing again, she said, she had to reconnect with the earth beneath her feet. She grew a garden and became obsessed with digging in the earth and growing things.²

I thought, that is what I need—a garden. Although I’ve never had much success with helping plants grow. But I need at least to get out of the air and back down to earth. I’ve been living in apartments up 2 or 3 flights of stairs, and my apartment in Manchester is up 4 flights. I don’t think I’ve lived on the ground floor since I left New Orleans. No wonder my head was spinning, I thought.

What I’ve really been yearning for is a cottage or a little house with a patch of garden to sit in and to grow a few plants. I won’t go all out like Gilbert (her obsession led to The Signature of All Things). But I will enjoy settling down to earth again—partially for my happiness but also for the sake of the novel I’m trying to write.

When the question of where you will live next is hanging over your head, it’s difficult to embark on a creative venture—because writing or creating is itself so full of uncertainty. It’s as if you need a container for all of that exploration.

The world has to stop spinning, and you have to stay put and have the stability and comfort of a nest in which to hatch your eggs and watch them grow. That is a terrible metaphor for writing a novel, though. It feels more like casting a line into murky waters to see if anything will bite.

Over these past three years, I’ve not really found my footing creatively. I tend to produce in spurts, but I find it hard to focus over weeks and months, which is what writing a novel takes.

But I’m very happy to say that I’ve found my little house, and I’ll move in in August. I can’t wait to share more with you as I settle into a more peaceful life. There is something very special about this new place, and about how it came into my life, but I’ll wait to tell you more about it once I’m actually there.

A glimpse of the sea in Burntisland, Scotland, where I’ve been doing a bit of housesitting

In the meantime, I’ll be back in Manchester for two weeks and then off to see my daughter in Paris. (By the way, if you’d like an apartment for a couple of months in Manchester, let me know! I’m looking for someone to sublet it. It has a great canal view—see last week’s post below.)

We’ll be living the Paris dream for a whole month—writing, hanging out in cafés, walking in the parks, visiting the museums—and best of all we’ll be doing it together. I get to be a mom again for a while, but now that my amazing girl is grown, we’re building a new kind of relationship.

What are you up to this summer? What’s blooming in your life? Or not blooming? Do you feel like a late bloomer or a re-bloomer? What conditions are necessary for you to write or create? I’d love to hear your thoughts, as always!

Sending much love and sunshine!

—Anne

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In case you missed last week’s post:

Healing and Creativity

1. Part one: https://resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/clarissa-pinkola-estes-the-dangerous-old-woman-part-one/ Part two: https://resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/clarissa-pinkola-estes-the-dangerous-old-woman-part-two/

2. My daughter shared the podcast with me, from The Psychology of Your 20s: https://omny.fm/shows/the-psychology-of-your-20-s/271-overcoming-our-purpose-anxiety-ft-elizabeth-gi