“Maybe, just maybe there’s some life left in these roots.”

—

I left to go on vacation for five days with my family. All of our housekeeping boxes had been checked and listed out - feed the dogs, give them cuddles, get the mail, etc. Everything was well in hand. At least, that’s what I thought until I returned.

The days were long and hot while we were gone - a fact that now greeted me at our door in the form of my shriveled Japanese ferns. We’d gotten them just a few weeks prior as strong adolescent plantings. Their beautiful, lush, dark green leaves and numerous fiddle heads promised a viable, healthy plant. Then, in a snap of the fingers, they were hit with five days without water in the grueling heat. I cradled their now brown and crunchy leaves in my discouraged hands.

Being someone that gets attached to plants - picking them on their personality and naming them as such - I was disheartened by the death of my beautiful ferns. Examining their stems, I brought them inside and sat them in our kitchen sink. “Maybe,” I thought to myself, “just maybe, there’s some life left in these roots.”

For the next few days I nursed them with small showers and filtered sunlight, being careful not to let the soil rot. I pulled the dead stems from the soil and plucked the dried leaves from the stems that held the most promise of maintaining life. My beautiful ferns were now poor little scraggly leaves on jagged stems surrounded by uprooted soil. I wasn’t sure if they were going to make it.

Especially amidst this pandemic, many of us small business owners know the sinking feeling of coming to the realization that something in our business - maybe even our business itself - has shriveled up. It seems like our once flourishing or growing businesses were on the incline to maintaining sustainability and then *wham*, we get hit with this intense and immediate upheaval of a pandemic that puts the pressure on us and takes away our lifeblood.

[Take a deep breath here if you need it. Lord knows, I did.]

The new growth on our Japanese fern, Hope. | Winston-Salem Brand Photography | Jasper & Fern

This drought has been hard to navigate for a lot of us. Many of us have been reduced, called to eliminate what no longer works and called to cultivate new growth in areas that aren’t necessarily our strong-suits or where we have our wealth of knowledge. I’ve seen my fellow small business peers roller-coaster about in this new work. I’ve seen them struggle and seen them triumph. I’ve seen businesses flourish and others close their doors forever. I’ve experienced it myself.

It’s been a tumultuous and demanding few months, many of us yearning for the strain to break.

I realized this morning, while pulling a few more dead stems from my ferns, that we’re all in the recovery process; a course that, no doubt, will continue to be long and arduous. This process though, carries hope and opportunity for growth in the right direction, just like I’ve seen with my ferns. After a month of vigilant care for my ferns, five new fiddle heads have begun to unfurl, a few stems have started to recover and green leaves have been growing steadily while the soil has started to become healthy again. It’s hard to ignore the parallel. We, as businesses and communities, now have an immediate opportunity to find new was to serve our clients, new ways to connect on a human level with each other; more opportunities to be compassionate, showing love and grace; more opportunities to step in and help our neighbor, to nurture and provide support in our immediate circles.

All these opportunities, the ways in which we can impact our community, will eventually spread their growth and begin to overlap borders, bonding in strength. The days will still be long and hot outside, but we can adapt together to create an environment that will continue to promote growth.