BUY YOURSELF THE FLOWERS.

Tip #39 (one of my favorites) - buy yourself the flowers

This post is part of a series I’m writing from mid-June to the end of 2024 or whenever it ends, on things that helped me rebuild my confidence, sense of self, and increased my delight in my life after massive difficulty in multiple areas. For full details and post links to all 110 things, go to this post here.

Tip #39 - BUY YOURSELF THE FLOWERS

Way back years ago when I was an active Mormon and had the duty to teach the young women (usually I had the 14-16 year old classes), I really liked bringing flowers with me to the lessons.

Please forgive any part of this memory that might be smudgy by now if you were there, but this is how I remember it.

I never quite felt like I could hang with a lot of the sweet spirit content that was so often the message for the duration when other folks taught and when I was a kid having those classes at church on Sundays, in the early morning scripture classes in high school, and on the Wednesday night activities (Mormons keep you busy, and to be fair I did learn a lot there).

Anyway, I felt like my teaching style was…different.

I couldn’t get behind the full vibe of saying aloud that motherhood and wifehood were the primary responsibilities of us as women because I didn’t really believe that but didn’t know how to express that at the time either.

I couldn’t really get behind some of the talks that seemed to express that anything you did to keep yourself looking nice or to shave your legs this often or develop hobbies and interests was to entice the right boy just enough that he’d pick you for eternity.

I couldn’t quite get behind an outright negation I was feeling of the church things at that time either though, so it felt like a struggle to get my feelings and thoughts across sometimes.

But I loved being able to talk and connect with that group, and felt like if we could have good conversation that got them, and me, to engage with a thing in a real way, that would be a win. We did, and it often was.

Flowers are nice to look at and buying them for Sunday lessons felt like a justifiable reason to have some on Saturdays.

They’re one of the things I started with that helped me figure out some things for myself.

This is a DUH thing, but it’s also got a lot of layers to it.

Onions have layers.

The fact of a handful of flowers chosen for and by one’s own, has layers.

Hang with me while I piece them out.

In an environment where much much much of the teaching, the learning, the home, church, world-building since birth view of the world is based on “how am I to give of myself to increase the value of the lives of those around me - specifically my future husband in a heteronormative way”, I felt a lot of pressure.

Of course, others in my similar situations didn’t interpret things as I did, but of course and as always, we’re each the product of our exact circumstances which have been impacted by the specific and unique and exact circumstances of a myriad of other people.

And so.

There I was, for decades, most of my life, thinking that to be of worth meant I had to give myself, offer my skills, my life, my support, my love, in just the right ways so that I would qualify myself to be picked by just the right one at just the right time and then the happily ever after of eternity would be ours.

It’s still difficult for me to word all this the way I want to convey it.

Obviously, that type of partner support, that ideal companionship isn’t a bad or toxic thing to want, or to pursue, on its own, is it?

The problem came in when somewhere along the way I also picked up the idea that that was the only proof of my worth and value.

The problem intensified when I picked up the idea that it was somewhat of a self-qualification because, God will do what God does when you do what He wants in a good enough way.

The problem became, for me, even more toxic and overwhelming when I internalized that to mean that because I felt things were hard and difficult and not good and because I was not feeling success, was not finding that ease of the chosen, it meant I was not doing good enough because otherwise certainly heaven could see my good works?

Weren’t we talking about flowers?

Yes. We still are. Here’s how.

That baseline for my self-worth meant that flowers were something someone else gives you when you’ve done well, when you’re worthy of them.

That baseline for my interpretation and how I internalized what relationships between men and women were supposed to be meant that I had to unlock the level of goodness in myself, the level of incredible wifery, the level of glowing sweet spirited nature, that then the man in my life would be able to get me flowers.

I thought I had to earn my flowers in that type of a way.

And with that in mind, and the idea of buying myself flowers was incredibly ridiculous.

Not only did I think it was ridiculous, but it struck me, for years and years and years, as an incredibly selfish thing to do.

I really thought you had to be the type of soul that had flowers bestowed onto you - that God had something to do with it - and that to buy them for yourself was shortcutting in the way assholes on the freeway zoom past everyone who has been merging with consideration.

I know.

I know.

Now, I really do know.

And then, when I was teaching that class of young women, this flowers as proof of holiness idea finally captured me as ridiculous.

These young women were worthy of flowers already.

They didn’t need to wait for some dude to decide they could have some.

They could buy them themselves.

And so could I.

So I started to teach them they could.

And I started to believe I was worthy of my own flowers too.

The idea of flowers as gift is a delight to me.

To think some long aeon ago whatever primitive version of us that was around then might’ve seen some flower, it brought them joy or an “aha!” or that specific fluttering type of feel you get in the soul when you see something beautiful like a smiling baby, the eyes of your beloved, or exactly what you’re craving to eat being placed before you, and said or thought I must bring this to my buddy/lover/best friend/child because they must see this too.

I think that is the coolest.

Look at this beautiful thing, it reminded me of you (another beautiful thing).

And as such we give flowers for celebrations, for accomplishments, for tender periods of mourning when we want to help people feel loved, for times of connection, for recognitions, griefs, new babies, specific hardships, we give flowers for life times.

And why could we not extend this practice to give to self also?

And why could we not extend this practice to be one of no particular reason?

Just because they are beautiful and we are alive and that is beautiful also?

That is a good reason too if you want to call it a reason or really feel you need a reason on the permission slip.

I’ve kept in touch with a few of those young women who are now full adult women with incredible lives and souls and joys and interests and things they’re learning and doing.

I see them buying themselves flowers and I hope they know how worthy of all the petals and all the beauty and all the things that bring them joy just as much as I know I am now too, and just as much as I hope you know that you are also.

There was another side effect of this that I didn’t expect.

When I started being in the dating world again, I didn’t need to wait for a dude to get me flowers.

I LOVE getting flowers, duh and obviously so don’t let that sway you lol, but you know what I mean.

The why isn’t he doing this and the well if he wanted to he would so because I don’t have flowers on my table from him that means he must not want to give me flowers and how dare etc. garbage that happens in dating quite often….all that was gone for me.

I could buy my own flowers and deserve my own flowers.

That made receiving them when they are given to me even more of a joy actually.

It is an affirming, wonderful bonus, but not something I am waiting for others to give me.

Because I have finally come to understand my value, I can accept the flowers of others better too.

The act of another walking into a grocery store (or wherever) with you on their mind and choosing something with the specific intention to delight you?!

Ugh that’s some good good shit.

There’s a book I read with an exact similar theme as this very important life lesson - Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies, in which the author Tara Schuster details her difficult childhood, her struggles with self worth and trauma and emotional ups and downs and her journey through life as it has been so far.

Her thesis is the same as her title, and the same as this post.

I really loved it, you should go find it and give it a read if this idea vibes with you.

I read that book when it came out in 2020 - which was right when I was alone in the summers of covid, right when I was in the process of reevaluating my entire life, right when I was regrouping and rethinking and analyzing everything that had happened to me.

I already knew I was worthy of flowers by that point but it wasn’t yet an automatic thing for me.

It took time, actually did, it was a practice, a joy collection, a specific thing I did to go out and find flowers I liked, spend the $15 of however much, and bring them home again.

For months it was a significant thing, the way feeling pleasure after a drought feels like a significant thing.

An indulgence, full stop.

While the joy of the practice has not lessened at all, the feeling it had then of dipping my toes into something I once felt in my bones was forbidden for me, is no longer there.

I love buying flowers and feeling that I am finally aligned inside and out, from the brain to the heart, that I am deserving of enjoying them, and providing that for myself.

I love grocery store flowers.

I love Costco flowers.

If you hang with me on Instagram you might’ve picked this up from the way flowers feature in my stories and sometimes take up lots of slides in my posts.

That’s the background.

That’s what a bunch of Safeway peonies mean to me.

That’s the layers of it.

What more gorgeous way to honor your self, your singular being, your efforts, your imperfections, your endurances, your boldness, your freckles and eyes and hands and brains, than with another miracle of the world like some little bursts of pure saturated perfect flowers.

Go pick some out.

They’re as gorgeous as you are, and you ARE deserving and worthy.

ilysm - Marian