The Courage to Bloom
By Theresa Shay
The tougher side of life showed up in many exchanges I had today: high fuel prices threatening the farm operation, the feeling of being blasted by a fire hose of chaos and violence in the news, fatigue, isolation, financial insecurity. Yesterday was not much lighter. I shoveled snow off my deck A-GAIN and tried to remember a day when I marveled at the beauty of snow. March, as one student said this week at class, is the cruelest month in central Pennsylvania.
We haven’t seen much sun, we have seen plenty of cold, and it’s wet…drippy, drippy wet. Collectively, we are grey and cold and tired.
Walking over to the yoga room, I see the golden bloom of Crocus. She peeks her head up next to a discarded slab of bark from the winter wood pile. Her petals are gathered close, present but protected, wise to the reality that this world is not one that will readily encourage her. Her color stops me because throughout my garden beds, brown dominates, and this is not that!
Green, too, is rising out of the dank, cold earth: spikes of Daffodil leaves, rosettes of Autumn Joy, a few blooms on my new Hellebore at 151, and a number of Tulip leaves that the deer are munching down nightly, threatening the flowers yet again. (They didn’t bloom last year for the same reason.)
But there, below the wood pile, flashes golden Crocus: bright, sunshiny, proud, eager to shine, waiting for the day when it is safe to open.
I am ready for warmth, the sounds of peepers, the trill of toads. I long for the ease of sitting outside without a coat, fresh air filling my lungs because I am blessed to live in a place where I breathe clean air nearly every day. I want the garden to start producing, the farmers’ tables at market to overflow with freshness of the local variety. I desire heat. I need sun.
I can want all this with passion and fervor, but the timing is not up to me. God willing, the warmth will come, the garden will produce, the sun will shine. But for now, this is not that.
I must accept what is present with the same energy I long to see in the world. I am not here to contribute more upset to the collective angst that is March in 2026.
I move, instead, toward courage to bloom. I push through the darkness, months long, like Crocus, emerging entirely saturated in saffron wraps. I reach up, alongside the old, cold, lifeless bark, with the knowledge that my brightness and my beauty are not to be contained. I glow like golden pollen, built to encourage flowering. Nourished from below, guided from above, I bloom quietly and spectacularly, even if no one passes this way, even if I look nothing like the landscape around me. The sufficiency of Presence provides the courage to bloom.
Theresa Shay is the founding director of TriYoga of Central Pennsylvania, where she teaches weekly yoga and meditation online and trains others to teach TriYoga®. Each week, she shares wisdom cultivated from decades of TriYoga study and practice.
Learn more about her here. Theresa can be reached at Theresa@PennsylvaniaYoga.com. Find her on Instagram @theresa_of_triyoga for more inspiration and light.