Growth, Interrupted

What a mint plant taught me about letting go

This one starts in the suburbs, at my parents' house in Maryland, where I was house-sitting and watering their plants.

But somewhere around Day 3, something shifted. I wasn’t just watering anymore. I was taking care. Of life. Of herbs. Of things that were rooted. And as a natural caretaker, something about it felt weirdly fulfilling.

Then a neighbor came by. She looked at one of the mint plants and pointed to the top, where small white flowers had started to bloom. "You know," she said, "if you don’t cut off those white buds, you stunt their growth."

I looked around and realized that my parents had these beautiful mint plants growing wild around the house, full of white buds. Uncut. Stunted.

I went to town with the clippers. Snip snip snip. White buds everywhere.

And then it hit me.

This. This is my problem. I am the wild mint plant.

I look strong. I smell good. I’m still here. But my growth? It’s been stunted. Not because I don’t want to grow. But because I had some cutting to do.

In this metaphor, I can see how the white buds are the things that look like they belong. But they actually signal the end of a cycle.

Here’s what I’m cutting:

• Outdated and unsustainable ways of doing business.

• Clients I keep around too long, even when the work is misaligned, because I feel loyal or think I can fix something broken.

• Favors I keep doing for free in hopes they will lead somewhere, such as introducing someone to a contact, rewriting a weak pitch, or helping with something they aren’t paying me to support.

• Long email responses I write out of habit, when I could have said, “I’m not available for this right now.”

• All the times I hope it’ll change. (spoiler alert, it usually doesn’t)

Using the shears doesn’t mean I failed.

Mint grows back. Even stronger. Even fuller. Even more itself.

But only when you cut the white buds.