In Bloom Grace Collison

In Bloom Grace Collison @grace.colsn

I can confidently say that I do not have a green thumb.

In the years since I moved out of my parents’ home to the city, acquiring my own living space and having the freedom to decorate it however I wished, I’ve seen many plants of all varieties come and go, smuggled into my room in cardboard boxes full of fresh green leaves and hope. Sadly, they all met their fate a few weeks or months later, taken out most unceremoniously with the rubbish. At the time I put it down to the lack of light in my apartment - they just can’t grow in here! I would tell any friends who happened to come across an empty terracotta pot, or glass terrarium that now only held dirt and pebbles.

I grew a little more disheartened each time I brought home a new experiment only to watch it wither and die before my eyes. Briefly, I had some luck with a mint plant from Bunnings that I planted in a mug in the absence of a pot. It grew a small spindly trail before it, too, upon coming home from a twoweek visit at my parents’ house, shrivelled up - much like my confidence in being able to sustain any kind of plant life in my little room.

I thought myself quite stupid in light of this failure - everyone else can do it! I thought. How many times a day do you see #bedroomgoals on Instagram filled with succulents and leafy greens scattered on every flat surface and climbing every which way? It’s not hard! You just suck!

‘You’ and ‘suck’ are two individually inoffensive words that come up all too often art: @_makip

in my daily inner monologue, or variations of them. And I’m sure I’m not alone. Mental health seems to be the buzz phrase of the moment; almost daily we’re reminded about how we need to be starting the conversation, opening up dialogue, asking each other if we’re okay. Countless times my Mum has told me over the phone (and over the sounds of my blubbering), ‘you just need to love yourself a bit more.’

She’s right, of course, but when you want to write down every tiny thing you’ve ever done wrong and scrunch them all up and drop kick them into the stratosphere, and you’re feeling like that list is as about as long as there are stars in the sky, what sounds like a simple, easily applicable solution can seem insurmountable.

‘Loving yourself’ seems to be another idea that the media loves to chuck around. It’s not a bad concept, by any means, of course it’s not - in an ideal world every single person would grow up seeing their immense worth, seeing their strengths and flaws in balance with each other, and act with the confidence and assurance that they’re just as deserving of this life as anybody else. But for some people, the idea of self-love can seem daunting, and huge; a chore. On top of that, there are so many environmental and societal factors that go into a person’s ability or even interest in practicing self-love - with that in mind, I do want to acknowledge that I’m coming at this topic from a place of privilege.

In some cases, the very same things that influence us to believe that we are lesser are the same things that in the same breath remind us to ‘love yourself! Love yourself’ in our jeans that only go up to a size 12! ‘Love yourself’ when you try our skinny tea, promoted by all your favourite celebrities! ‘Love yourself’ but only with our particular brand of facemask!

And it doesn’t end there. An environment like university only exacerbates a culture that already exists at this stage of life of competition and feeling like everyone around you is succeeding, while you fall behind. That everyone else is not only coping, they’re winning - they’re collected, intelligent, they have plans, goals, jobs, talents, friends. And if you find yourself not being able to tick off these same qualities, you’re failing. All of this mess combined can mean that loving yourself - truly, and not the kind of self-love that Dove wants you to have so you’ll rush out to buy their new moisturizer - seems like a concept so obscure and unattainable that it seems easier to give up. I understand, and that’s where I am.

But I want to introduce a concept to you - a compromise. It’s naive and indeed somewhat insulting to suggest that self-love is a magical cure to the vast range of mental health disorders we (rightly) recognise these days. But what I want to do is encourage you, as someone who has struggled for many years with believing that loving myself is selfish, wrong and too hard, to take a leap of faith and like yourself. Liking things isn’t so hard, right?

If you can look in the mirror and pick out even one thing that you like about yourself, I want you to count that as a win. And it doesn’t have to be a body part, it can be as simple as - ‘I liked that I was kind to the person who asked me for directions today.’ Self-like can mean picking out a nice outfit for the day that makes you feel confident, it can be running

yourself a bath, it can be congratulating yourself when you make someone’s day easier, it can be feeling confident with a new haircut. I’m pretty rubbish at taking my own advice, but if I could - I would tell myself to take the pressure off, just a little bit. That goes for you, too.

If all you can do is like yourself today, that’s a win, and I’m proud of you.

It’s been a couple of years now since I started on my plant-mum endeavour. Perhaps I was a little too ambitious then, or maybe I just neglected to read the care details on the back of the little card that tells you what plant you’ve just bought. Either way, I can laugh about it now. My lack of plant raising expertise is only one small part of me, but nevertheless, it’s a part that I don’t hate anymore.

And that’s a start.