If you’ve been fortunate enough to get out to the woods in the past few weeks, you may have also been lucky enough to come across a patch of trillium. With its beautiful three-pointed blossoms in white, pink, or maroon, trillium is one of the earliest woodland flowers to emerge. Trillium is also called Wake Robin because it awakens as the robins return.
Like all spring ephemerals, trillium depends on timing. When daylight strengthens in spring but the trees have not yet leafed out, the sun’s rays are able to reach the forest floor and prompt trillium to emerge and blossom. In just a few more weeks when summer’s heat has kicked in, the flowers and leaves will have withered away and won’t be seen again until early next spring. Suddenly here, then suddenly not.
Trillium can teach us about cycles and timing. While it may seem like trillium exists for only a few weeks out of the year, down in the soil the trillium’s roots and rhizomes remain. What happens in times of rest is essential in keeping the plant healthy and capable of blossoming. And at the same time, what happens during those few weeks of flowering affects the plant’s growth in months and years to come. Trillium can be quite fragile and picking just one flower can damage the entire plant and limit its growth during the next year.
Just like trillium, our lives can feel like a delicate balance. We also need time for rest and nourishment to remain whole. Whether you have experienced the stay-at-home measures for Covid-19 as an essential worker or as someone who has remained at home, the changes in our daily lives have sparked many to evaluate their time, schedules, routines, and resources - where and how time and energy are spent. Like many, your pre-Covid norm may have been marked by busy days and weeks, finely orchestrated schedules, and the chronic feeling that there is always more to get done. For some people, the stay-at-home measures have created an opportunity to slow down while for others they have merely created different pressures and made it more difficult to find ways to “get away.”
Whether you are feeling that you have more time and space right now or even less, trillium teaches us to honor our energy levels as they ebb and flow. Check in with your physical and emotional self. Rest when you need it. Take breaks, both physically and mentally, when you need them. A physical break may involve taking yourself out of an environment that feels task-driven, letting yourself rest, or giving your body the physical movement it has been deprived of. A mental break may involve letting go of an issue or challenge or even giving space to an idea or goal that you are working on. A walk, a nap, or some yoga may do wonders.
Perhaps our best work is being done when we give ourselves the space to slow down and let our thoughts and feelings settle. Whether it’s the resolution to an issue or the development of an idea, project, or plan, slowing down can allow them to be nourished into being. Then when the elements of our lives align, we can spring into action, just like the trillium blossoms in spring.
Trillium also teaches us about honoring our own timing and not anyone else’s. In spite of its distinctive, eye-catching blossoms, trillium is not a competitive plant. It is a slow grower and can easily be taken over by more aggressive plants. However, when it is able to grow without being encroached upon, trillium can be very long-lived.
Maybe the most important lesson of trillium is to focus our energy on growing where we are. With the presence of social media, it can be hard to not compare ourselves and our lives to others. Yet comparison can be one of the quickest ways to destroy our happiness, like plucking the blossom from the trillium plant. When we get stuck in the trap of comparing, we begin to lose the joy we find in our own successes and experiences. We feel more self-conscious and less likely to trust ourselves in taking steps forward.
When catching yourself in a moment of comparison, it can help to recognize that when we see someone else’s success or happiness we are only seeing one moment in time. We don’t see the up and down journey that brought them there or the argument they had five minutes after the blissful photo was taken. It can be easier to share in others’ joy when we trust that our own moments of joy and success come at their own time. Feeling critical or judgmental is a great indicator of the need to come back to ourselves to attend to our own feelings and needs. Trillium teaches us that while happiness can feel fleeting, growth is a long-term process.
I hope that you will get the treat of coming across trillium one spring day if you haven’t already. And whether you’ve experienced trillium in person or not, I hope that you will tell yourself the following more often.
I honor my own timing.
I honor my own cycles. My energy levels, my emotions, and my physical body communicate to me about what I need.
I allow myself to rest when I need rest.
I allow myself to engage and grow freely when the timing is right.
I choose to be happy for others when I see their successes and I allow happiness to come to me.
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