Dandelions: a Love Letter to Fear
Hello!
It is a Saturday in October. I invite you into my middle of the night, which revolves around jazz music, passing trains, vanilla black tea, and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. For some reason, the miniature kind always taste better. Welcome to the Garden Space, where I explore the planting and blooming of human connection. I am still wading through the middle of my series on the many different facets of self love I house and embody, including love of metaphysical ideas, like excellence, like grief, and (today), like fear.
I didn’t want to write this, this was not on my schedule, but it burst out from the crust of me quite literally like a weed
I made a list of my fears (all centered around being controlled)
I remember what it was like being afraid as a child and being told that it was too inconvenient or that it didn’t matter
Fear is an emotion I am never really encouraged to feel through for fear that I will abandon my productivity
I was encouraged by a mentor to put a playlist that surrounded fear, invite fear inside, and listen to what fear had to say
Fear in my garden space springs up like eager and earnest, greedy dandelions. It is unfortunate and I sigh every time. Dandelions are unmistakeable in their nature and painstaking the time they require. Gloving myself, bending my back, making my peace with spending a day of my life ripping them out of my tender and fertile earth by the roots. This is the only way I know to deal with dandelions: take them out. Otherwise, they will take the entire garden in a breath— paralyzing and choking out the plants I sowed and watered on purpose, with purpose.
With some time, I believed I had developed a more radical politic when it came to dandelions, and fear, and weeds. In real life and metaphorically, I would pluck them from my garden and make tea. Boil the roots. Give a second life to the carnage of unceremoniously yanking them from the ground. The concept of a weed, in and of itself, is a white supremacist construct. The earth made room for all the things that came from it freely and with grace. We did not think of ecosystems as exclusively competitive until we cleared the earth to make room for crops to sell.
In my physical world, I grew more and more sympathetic to the plight of the dandelion. Forever a weed, never a flower. It’s mere presence the mark of a lazy, unmotivated gardener. Even associating with dandelions was made criminal. Allowing them to grow unfettered would, at minimum, stigmatize you in the company of real and experienced gardeners. At worst, you would be fined. Fined! Imagine.
As above, so below. The Garden Space is the place inside myself where I house all of my human connection; self to self, self to others, self to everything that has breath and some things that don’t. I can tell you now, Fear breathes. Fear picks a dandelion not just because they are hardy and recognizable, not just because they steal and stop the growth of the dreams I sow, but because of the way that dandelions seed. Fear comes down in full armor, red eyed and scaly like a mischievous dragon, and breaths all over my garden— except instead of fire, it’s weeds. No matter how wind hardy I make my foliage, no matter how I prepare my blooms, how many days I spend on my hands and knees ripping dandelion after dandelion up from the earth, a breath of Fear carries a thousand more seeds to a thousand more resting places across my flesh. My hairs stand up. I get goosebumps— each little mountain evidence of new seedlings of terror planted within me. I will never be without weeds. I cannot pretend like I do not despise the dandelions. Why can’t I just grow what I please without punishment? Why do I have to carry such cognitive dissonance? How do you love a weed?
The only way I have been taught to deal with fear is by eradication. Some said ignore it, but pretending I did not see Fear rearing its head, looking me dead in my eyes, mocking me with my own paralysis— it was mortifying. Dehumanizing. I don’t ever want to be controlled. Especially not by fear. I had a mentor say to me today, “sit down with fear. Ask it what it wants. Make a list of what you are truly afraid of— be honest. Let it say whatever it wishes.”
Had this messaging come at a time where I had more strength to fight, I would not have listened. I would have continued on my path of extinction. If I had more cleverness or more gumption or more strength, I would rise and try and slay this Fear Dragon. That did not work the first eightyleven times I did it. But maybe it would this time.
However, Today I am tired. Today I am too tired to fight and have no more time to spend being paralyzed by Fear.
Today I looked into the eye of Fear and asked what in hell it was doing here, insisting on growing. I had tried killing. I had tried repurposing. I had tried to see the point of the dandelions that starve my garden, and I could not find one, so I asked this dragon point blank: what do you want? And she made herself small to speak to me, Fear did. She shrunk down to a little baby. Maybe six. No more than six, actually. Still bobble-headed, barrette-clad, teary-eyed and fatigued. Tired of being put down and left behind. She was so full of life for being such a little child. When she opened her mouth to speak and I did not tell her to quiet herself, did not tell her to stick to a more profitable silence, when I did not treat her like an inconvenience, when I did not gaze upon her and tell her she had no right to exist in my space, she told me in earnest what she was afraid of.
Imagine my shame.
Do you remember the first time an adult pulled you aside and told you not to blow the dandelions? I do. My sister and I were running about our backyard, wrapped an in idyllic childhood. I was never a child that could not wait to be an adult. I wanted the summer days to stretch forever. I had thick stems of dandelions gripped in my hands, dripping their white dandelion milk, cornrows done for the month so no one would be pulling at my hair from the root for a deliciously long while. I felt so much joy in picking the dandelions because they made it so clear when they were ready to be picked. I did not have to worry about the guilt that came with killing a flower so I could have something beautiful, even if it was only a skeleton of its former blooms. The bright yellow of dandelions was still gorgeous to me like sunflowers, like butterflies. Their little plumes floated on the breeze and reminded me of the good and sweet promises of summertime. Even in their death, they brought life. My grandmother hollers down from the terrace— don’t blow those weeds! Do not blow those weeds! I did not listen, but it wasn’t malicious. I assumed she was confused; dandelions were so clearly, unmistakably, flowers.
Past the tantrum, inside the dragon suit, a red-eyed little girl was sad I would not allow her to speak and tell me what she was so afraid of. She told me about how scared she is watching me navigate adulthood, how much negotiation and compromise that entails, how nothing is intact, easy, or black and white, how easy it is to be in a space of being controlled when you trade yourself in order to continue. She is right to be scared. This is scary. Why did I tell her to be quiet for so long? That was so deeply inconsiderate. No wonder she became a dragon. Now that I get a good look at her little face, she really kind of looks like me.
I don’t even know that I want to convince her to leave behind her fear. She is right! I have no intentions of leaving her behind. Anymore. I am sorry for all the days that I did.
My world will be full of dandelions. They are supposed to be here. If the dandelions choke out the things I have planted, then what? I tell this baby to shut her mouth? I will not take away the childlike goodness of blowing on a plume of dandelions and watching seeds sprout. Even if those seeds are not what I, the gardener, wanted. I am not just the gardener. I am the fertile earth that welcomes the seed and gives it room to sprout. I am the garden that accommodates all the living things doing their best to root and breathe. I am the fertile earth and I am the gentle hands that raise them up. I am just as much my fear as I am my dreams. I do not need to be scared of or abandon my fear. I will hold her hand through all the parts that I am afraid of too. Fear in her little body— her only crime is that she cannot compartmentalize. All she feels is the fear. I cannot just leave her here! My duty is to let her hold my hand and let her squeeze as much as she wants. Let her cry and weep and warn and wane. Eventually she will cry herself to sleep. And when she wakes up— when she wakes, she will see the pastures that I led her to, past the looming mountains, after the darkness of the wood. Maybe I can take her to a place where she can be a child free to feel as much as she wants to feel. Maybe when she gets through all of that feeling, she can breathe and blow out some more dandelions. And I will be nothing but grateful. Even if I never stop being scared.
To little ismatu, blowing dandelions, called everything affectionate but never their name:
May the Lord bless and keep you. May they cause their face to shine upon you. May you feel the green, the softness of the pastures you lie in and may they tumble on, long past your fear. May you be here, afraid of the stillness, afraid of the noise, afraid of the chaos and of the calm and blow your dandelions anyways. I want to surround you with such community that you forget fear itself is something you were once afraid of. You are as much fear as you are your dreams. They cannot exist without one another. When you see Fear, tell her hello. Tell her you like her hair. She really looks just like you. When you see fear and she demands you stand still, remind her that you feel your feelings the best when you move your body. Remind her to draw in a really big breath. When other people see you looking Fear in the eye and they scream at you to get away from that monster, remind her and yourself that Fear is only monstrous when she is abandoned and left alone to wonder what happened to us, who she cares so much about. Who among us does not become monstrous in isolation? Be there with her in all the doubt, all the confusion, the conflation and the sensations of who she really is. So what if she is a monster? So what if she is a weed? She looks just like you.
May you both be kept and never left behind.
—ismatu gwendolyn
10| Dandelions: a Love Letter to Fear