Is it possible to heal sunflowers when they break?
It seems counterintuitive. When you see the stalk of a 7 foot sunflower broken in two, and lying on the ground. How is it possible for the plant to survive?
With some special care, -- replacing the broken stalk on its stem so that it could once again stand upright, binding the break with garden tape, staking, and watering consistently, -- after three days the sunflower is still green, still reaching for the sun, and still standing.
And after I got over the initial fervor of tending to the sick plant, and felt reasonably confident that it might survive, I started to think.
I’m still standing. And so are you. We’ve all been through difficult times in our lives. The loss of a loved one, a debilitating illness, the break of a relationship. And more. But we picked up the broken pieces, salved our wounds, and put one foot in front of the other, slowly healing as we continued our forward movement. Though nothing is ever the same when one of these things happens to you, the wound is always present, a sense of “normalcy” can return if we fight hard enough.
I was so moved by Gabby Gifford's speech at the Democratic National Convention. She is a fighter. Not only is her life an example of resilience after tragedy, she is using her catastrophe to inspire us. To help us see that we must fight. Even now when everything feels broken. We must fight.
It is the way of nature, to persist against the odds. In the garden. And in life. We must be resilient like the sunflower. No matter how improbable.