window on my world: Blooming in beautiful BC

“Bloom where you are planted”, a phrase credited to the Bishop of Geneva, Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622), could not be more appropriate to our Covid 2020 lives. The meaning of the phrase is essentially to do the best where you are, with what you have. The phrase with that meaning, is one which became part of my life about six year ago and is a concept I have struggled with for most of my adult life. I advert to my blog posts last summer on belonging, control, reflection and shame. Tom Longford in his blog on the phrase, urges his reader to consider that there is an element to where we are that enables us to bloom. He reflects on his passion for gardening, and his observation that plants do better in certain locations than others. I think ultimately how we bloom is a combination of where we are and how we embrace where we are.

In August I was in Naramata in the beautiful Okanagan Valley in BC with some of my Covid-bubble friends. One morning as we sat sipping our coffees overlooking the beautiful vineyards and lake, we started on one of my favourite topics of belonging and where is home. I made the comment that all of us on the trip were refugees of some sort: fleeing the war of the former Yugoslavia, escaping the reality of being a second-class citizen in Israel, or me searching for my home. One of my friends laughed out loud and said, “Siobhán, but you are the only one of us born in Vancouver”! He is absolutely right of course, but it takes more than place of birth or a passport to make a place feel like home. Vancouver is my home now more than any other place I have lived in my entire life, but it is not because as my mother used to say “blue-eyed blonde hair and born on the West Coast”, it is rather that for the first time in my life no one is trying to put me in a box!

A year ago, I was at the start of term at UBC after a summer of travelling around Europe visiting friends and discovering old and new places. I had a great time, and connecting with my global community is always a pleasure. There was a lot of movement in 2019, I moved into my first owned home, I went out in search of new people and new routines in Vancouver, and I embarked on my month-long trip to Europe. The year 2020 has provided me with a very different framework in which to live. Aside from dramatically changing how I teach and carry out my job as an academic and educator, it has physically harnessed me. If I had been told just a few years ago that life would place restrictions on my ability to move I would have descended into a visceral blackhole. My existence on this planet has been framed by moving. It had become an accepted and central aspect of how I lived my own life once I was old enough to make decisions. There was a sense that out there was something waiting for me and I just had to find it in order to uncover all the answers. The serendepic nature of life brought me to Vancouver for a job at the University of British Columbia just over seven years ago. Within only a short few months I was already looking at jobs elsewhere, planning the next move and the anticipation that the answers were there. Was it that I detested Vancouver or my job? It was neither, it was me. I will not repeat some of the personal events of the past 5/6 years which have had a major impact on pushing me to journey inwards rather than outwards to the next exotic location.

Back to last summer…I set out on my trip to Europe excited to be with so many people I cared about. I had a wonderful time. I got back to Vancouver, I felt lost and lonely. It was painful. But I was here – I had my own home, a great job and a growing circle of wonderful friends. I made a choice to try to ‘bloom where I was planted’. If any of you dear blog readers have ever made an active choice in your life to change a thought pattern, you will be able to relate to what I experienced. Something powerful shifts within you. Nothing in your external world changes, but the way you look at it changes forever. I spent Christmas in Vancouver with extended family and close friends. It was strange, but at the same time it felt right. I went to Miami in February for my birthday and for the gift of time with one of my favourite humans Caítriona. I had an incredible time, but I loved coming home. I remember getting off the plane after Miami with all the beginnings of what would become a daily rhetoric of Covid’ and feeling so grateful to be coming back to Vancouver.

Lockdown ensued and I moved from being a performer in a classroom to being a desk-monkey teaching and working online. It was a strange transition, but I did it. What struck me most as more and more closed, and we were confined to our homes was how little I felt impacted by this. Of course, I missed the ability to socialise, to go out and meet people, to have random interactions with people in coffee shops; but I did not feel trapped, I did not feel like I needed to run away, I felt the overwhelming power of calm and stillness gifted to me by not being able to move far.

I had been given a framework by life in which I had to make the most of what I had. Now to be fair being confined to BC in the summertime is a gift at any time, and being confined here during Covid when so many other parts of the world were experiencing extreme hardships made me feel so blessed. I embraced the physical beauty that the province has to offer from hiking, cycling and learning to open-water swim. I had picnics in the park in place of restaurant visits. I went for long walks with friends. I spent so much valuable time in my own company.

In early August I went on the trip to the Okanagan, as mentioned at the start of the post where we spent the time wine-tasting, biking and swimming in the lake. I rented a stationary RV (camper van) in someone's backyard and experienced a week of the semi-camping lifestyle. In late August I returned to one of my favourite places on earth, Salt Spring Island just off the coast of Vancouver. I spent three wonderful days disconnected from technology, reading and hiking around the island. Last weekend I embraced my discomfort and learned how to tent camp with two of my favourite Vancouverites, Sara and her incredible son Kian. We cycled onto the ferry taking all we needed for three days on the back of our bikes. It certainly challenged my boundaries being somewhere with one tap and two outdoor toilets among 17 campsites, but by the last day I was prepared to stay longer! Safe to say I have taken advantage of all the best BC has to offer me.

‘Blooming where I am planted’ has very much been about being in a part of the world that has so much to offer me, but it is so much deeper than that: it is my inward journey which only could have happened in a place that has not attempted to label me.