Follow What Lights You Up

I thought I was making a bunch of unrelated things.

That may be the funniest part.

For a long time, I kept waiting for the Big Idea.

You know the one.

The fully formed vision that arrives with a business plan, a color palette, twelve months of projections, and perhaps a tasteful PowerPoint explaining exactly what the hell you’re doing with your life.

Mine did not arrive that way.

Mine arrived in breadcrumbs.

Tiny ones.

And apparently my job was not to know where they were leading.

My job was to notice which ones made something inside me light up…

and follow those.

The Book That Wouldn’t Behave

Almost a year ago, I knew I wanted to write.

I had stories.

So many stories.

Stories about healing.

Motherhood.

Work.

Relationships.

Nervous systems.

Shadows.

Ordinary moments that somehow cracked open into something much bigger.

The problem was that I didn’t understand how those stories were supposed to become a book.

In my mind, books were supposed to work like Harry Potter.

There was a plot.

Things happened in order.

Chapter one caused chapter two, which led to chapter three, and eventually everybody arrived somewhere important.

My writing did not behave like that.

Mine looked like a patchwork quilt somebody had dumped onto the floor.

A story about a floor scrubber.

A story about trying on clothes.

A story about my children.

A story about heartbreak.

A story about red lipstick.

A story about a hot-water heater.

What the hell was I supposed to do with that?

The harder I tried to force the pieces together, the stickier everything became.

So eventually, I stopped trying to know.

And followed another breadcrumb.

The Website I Bought Before I Knew Why

I bought a website.

Terrified.

Confused.

😂

I knew I wanted somewhere for my creativity to live, but I couldn’t have explained exactly what I was building.

I just knew it felt like the next thing.

So I followed it.

And slowly, the website became a garden.

The stories that refused to behave like one continuous book suddenly made perfect sense there.

They didn’t need to be chapters in one long plot.

They could be individual flowers.

Someone could wander into the Garden, find the story they needed that day, receive whatever medicine was there, and keep walking.

Suddenly the problem I’d been wrestling with for nearly a year wasn’t a problem anymore.

I hadn’t needed to force the flowers into a straight line.

I needed somewhere to plant them.

Another breadcrumb.

Then I Started Making Things

At some point, I became interested in making jewelry.

It sounded fun.

I bought supplies.

I played.

I created.

And pretty quickly—even quickly for me—I realized:

Eh.

This isn’t quite it.

Old me might have called that failure.

Money wasted.

Another hobby abandoned.

Proof that I couldn’t stick with anything.

But something important had happened while I was experimenting.

I discovered polymer clay.

And I liked it.

Actually, the clay itself wasn’t even part of some grand artistic vision.

I wanted tiny teacups for something I was making and realized it would be cheaper to make the damn things myself than to keep buying miniature ones from Hobby Lobby.

So I made them.

And something inside me lit up.

Oh.

I like this.

Breadcrumb.

I started making little things.

Flowers.

Magnets.

Tiny whimsical pieces that made me smile.

Jewelry hadn’t been the destination.

Jewelry had simply introduced me to the material I actually wanted to work with.

Nothing had been wasted.

I just hadn’t reached the next breadcrumb yet.

Adults Deserve Gold Stars Too

Around the same time, another idea had been growing.

Adult Girl Scouts.

😂

Maybe one day it becomes a real group of women gathering together.

Maybe it evolves into something I haven’t imagined yet.

I don’t know.

And I’m finally learning that I don’t have to know.

What I knew was the part that lit me up:

Adults deserve merit badges.

Life is hard.

We spend childhood being celebrated for everything.

You tied your shoes!

⭐

You learned your ABCs!

⭐

You finished your worksheet!

⭐

You made the team!

⭐

Then adulthood arrives and apparently everybody decides we’re done celebrating.

Meanwhile, we’re doing some of the hardest things we’ve ever done.

We set a boundary for the first time.

Nothing.

We ask for help instead of silently struggling.

Nothing.

We catch ourselves halfway through an old reaction and choose differently.

Nothing.

We leave something that is hurting us.

Nothing.

We start over.

Nothing.

We do something absolutely terrified.

And nobody comes running into the kitchen yelling:

MA’AM! OUTSTANDING WORK! HERE IS YOUR BADGE!

Which frankly seems like an oversight.

😂

I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Small victories matter.

Sometimes surviving the day deserves applause.

Sometimes trying deserves recognition.

Sometimes the thing nobody else even noticed required everything you had.

I have always loved celebrating those moments.

Another breadcrumb.

Eighty-Two Cents

Then I walked into Hobby Lobby.

And there they were.

A package of eight little plaque-shaped clay cutters.

Originally $3.29.

Clearanced to…

eighty-two cents.

EIGHTY-TWO.

😂

I looked at those shapes and immediately knew:

Badges.

Not traditional badges.

Wildflower Whimsy badges.

I went home and started playing.

One became bright pink with colorful little stars.

I DID IT SCARED.

Another became blue with a bouquet of tiny flowers growing across it.

BLOOMED ANYWAY.

And somewhere between pressing tiny flowers into clay and staring at my eighty-two-cent clearance cutters…

the breadcrumbs collided.

I saw it.

Oh.

The stories.

The magnets.

The badges.

The gatherings.

The crafts.

The Garden.

They weren’t separate ideas.

I had been building Wildflower Whimsy the entire time.

I just didn’t know it.

The Stories Were Badges Too

Suddenly I looked back at everything I’d written differently.

Almost every story contained a victory.

Not necessarily the kind of victory people announce.

The quiet kind.

In The Wrong Handle, I questioned a belief I’d accepted without investigating.

Badge.

In How to Catch a Shadow at the Clearance Rack, I traced a behavior back to the belief underneath it.

Badge.

In The Morning I Wore Red Lipstick, I took up space instead of trying to disappear.

Badge.

In Reset, Regulate, Re-Enter, I learned that having a reaction didn’t mean I had to stay inside it.

Badge.

In The Medicine We Pass On, I watched healing travel into the next generation.

Badge.

In The Love I Thought Was Only for Everyone Else, I finally included myself in the unconditional love I’d spent my life giving away.

Badge.

I had been writing about merit badges all along.

I just hadn’t called them that.

And anyone reading those stories who recognizes themselves in them?

They deserve the badge too.

Damnit.

😂

Maybe they don’t need to buy anything.

Maybe reading the story and recognizing,

I’ve done that too,

is enough.

The medicine can remain free.

But maybe somebody wants the physical receipt.

Maybe she wants I DID IT SCARED stuck to her refrigerator.

Maybe she wants BLOOMED ANYWAY somewhere she can see it every morning.

Maybe she wants something tangible that says:

That thing you did mattered.

And suddenly the products weren’t separate from the writing either.

The story names the victory.

The badge honors it.

The journal helps someone discover it in herself.

The gathering gives us somewhere to celebrate it together.

Different expressions.

Same root.

I Had Been Following the Feeling

Looking backward, I can see something I couldn’t see while it was happening.

There was a trail.

Writing led to stories.

Stories led to the Garden.

Creating led to jewelry.

Jewelry led to clay.

Clay led to magnets.

My love of celebrating small victories led to merit badges.

The dream of connection led to gatherings.

And eighty-two-cent Hobby Lobby cutters somehow stood in the middle of all of it and said:

Girl. LOOK.

😂

None of the breadcrumbs contained the entire answer.

That’s important.

If I had picked up the first breadcrumb and demanded:

Explain exactly where this is going before I agree to proceed,

I might never have moved.

Instead, I kept asking something much simpler.

Does this make me come alive?

When the answer was yes, I moved toward it.

When something stopped feeling alive, I let myself pivot.

Not everything I tried became part of the final thing.

But almost everything taught me something about the final thing.

Jewelry wasn’t a mistake.

It introduced me to clay.

The book wasn’t a failure.

It showed me the natural shape of my stories.

The scattered essays weren’t disorganized.

They were flowers waiting for a garden.

The Adult Girl Scout idea didn’t have to arrive with bylaws and membership cards to matter.

It revealed something fundamental about what I believe:

People deserve to have their becoming witnessed.

The path wasn’t random.

I simply couldn’t see it from inside the walking.

You Make the Map by Walking

I think sometimes we believe purpose should arrive as certainty.

We wait for the five-year plan.

The calling.

The business model.

The finished vision.

The giant flashing sign from God saying:

THIS WAY, JASMINE.

Preferably with arrows.

Maybe balloons.

A PDF wouldn’t hurt.

😂

But perhaps sometimes direction feels much quieter.

Curiosity.

Joy.

An idea you can’t stop thinking about.

Something that makes your chest light up.

Something you find yourself doing when nobody is making you do it.

Something that makes you say:

Oooo.

Maybe those feelings aren’t the entire map.

Maybe they’re breadcrumbs.

And maybe we don’t have to know where every breadcrumb leads before we’re allowed to pick it up.

I didn’t build Wildflower Whimsy by sitting down and deciding what Wildflower Whimsy needed to become.

I built it by following what felt alive.

One story.

One website.

One craft.

One tiny teacup.

One magnet.

One ridiculous idea.

One eighty-two-cent package of clay cutters.

One Oooo! at a time.

And then one day I turned around…

and there was a trail.

Not random.

Not wasted.

A garden.

I had been planting it the whole time.

Maybe that’s the invitation.

Stop demanding that every passion explain itself before you allow yourself to explore it.

Make the weird thing.

Write the story.

Take the class.

Plant the seeds.

Buy the eighty-two-cent cutters.

Follow the thing that makes something inside you lean forward.

You don’t have to know whether it’s the destination.

Maybe its only purpose is to introduce you to the next thing.

And then the next.

And then the next.

Until one day you turn around and realize:

Oh.

There it is.

The thing I thought I was searching for.

I’ve been building it all along.

Maybe we don’t always find our path.

Sometimes…

we make the map by walking it.

🌼

Closing Reflection — Before You Leave the Garden

What has been lighting you up lately?

Not what sounds impressive.

Not what seems practical enough to justify itself.

Not what you can already explain.

What makes something inside you lean forward and say,

Oooo.

Maybe it’s writing.

Maybe it’s gardening.

Maybe it’s learning to bake bread.

Maybe it’s painting something badly just because painting sounds fun.

Maybe it’s an idea you keep returning to even though you still don’t understand where it leads.

You don’t have to turn every interest into a career.

You don’t have to know whether the next breadcrumb is the destination.

Sometimes its only job is to introduce you to the breadcrumb after it.

So ask yourself:

What is one thing I feel genuinely drawn toward right now?

And then:

What would one tiny step toward it look like?

Make the thing.

Take the class.

Write the page.

Buy the ridiculous eighty-two-cent cutters.

You don’t need the whole map.

Sometimes you make the map by walking.