Latest / She Rose: Women Who Turned Pain Into Purpose / Why Patience Is an Active Choice, Not Passive Waiting | She Rose
Transcript
- You are not failing because you feel stuck; you are mistaking the stillness of your own roots for the stagnation of a dead end. Let me tell you about the last time I wanted to rip the soil out of my pot just to see if the seed was alive. We have this cultural script that tells us patience is a form of suffering. We treat it like a waiting room at the DMV or a doctor’s office. You sit there, you check your watch, you sigh, and you wait for someone else to call your name so you can finally move on with your life. We think being patient means holding our breath until the world gives us permission to exhale. But what if that definition is entirely wrong? What if patience isn’t something you endure, but something you do? It’s not a passive state of acceptance. It is an active, muscular choice to stay present in the mess without trying to fix it immediately. When we view patience as passive, we become resentful. We start counting the seconds, measuring the lack of progress, and judging ourselves for not having 'moved on' yet. But growth doesn’t happen in the spotlight of achievement. It happens in the dark, quiet places where nothing seems to be happening at all. And if we don’t understand that, we’ll keep digging up the seeds every day, looking for sprouts that aren’t ready to break the surface. I need to confess something to you, because I know you’ve probably felt this same urge. A few years ago, after I left the corporate world, I started this journey into holistic wellness. I thought I could accelerate the process. I thought if I just did enough work, read enough books, attended enough retreats, I would arrive at some version of myself that was fully healed, fully functional, fully radiant. I treated my own healing like a project management timeline. There were milestones. There were deliverables. And when I didn’t hit them, I panicked. I remember sitting in my garden one afternoon, staring at a fern I had planted three months prior. It hadn’t grown an inch. In fact, the fronds looked slightly browner than they had been in January. My first instinct wasn’t to water it or check the light. It was to pull it out. I wanted to see if the roots were rotting. I wanted to intervene. I wanted to force a result because my anxiety couldn’t tolerate the uncertainty. That moment was a mirror. I realized I wasn’t treating the plant with respect; I was treating it with suspicion. I was projecting my own fear of failure onto a living thing that simply needed time. And in doing so, I was doing the exact same thing to myself. I was pulling myself out of the ground every time I felt uncomfortable, looking for evidence that I wasn’t growing, instead of trusting that the growth was happening below the surface. Let’s sit with that distinction for a second. Passive waiting is resignation. It’s saying, 'Well, nothing is happening, so I guess I’ll just stare at the wall until it changes.' It’s numb. It’s disconnected. Active patience, on the other hand, is engaged. It’s watching the soil. It’s checking the moisture levels. It’s adjusting the light. It’s showing up, day after day, even when the visible results are invisible. Think about a blacksmith making a sword. He doesn’t just leave the iron in the fire and walk away. That’s passive. He tends the fire. He hammers the metal. He quenches it in oil. He folds it over and over. The heat is constant, but his attention is active. He is participating in the transformation. Your life right now is that forge. If you are going through a season of grief, or career transition, or just general existential confusion, you are not supposed to sit idle. You are supposed to tend to yourself. You are supposed to show up for your therapy sessions. You are supposed to drink the water. You are supposed to rest when your body asks for it. That is active patience. It requires energy. It requires discipline. It requires you to trust your own hands. When you realize this, the guilt starts to fade. You stop beating yourself up for not being 'over it' yet, and you start asking, 'What does this situation need from me today?' instead of 'When will this be done?' The question shifts from a demand for an end date to a commitment to the present moment. There is a biological reality here that we often ignore. Plants spend the majority of their early lives building root systems before they ever push a leaf toward the sun. To an observer, it looks like nothing is happening. The gardener might think, 'This seed is dead.' But underneath, miles of fine, white tendrils are spreading through the dirt, anchoring the plant, preparing it to hold weight. If you pulled that plant up to inspect the roots, you would kill it. The structure would collapse. The connection would break. This is why we must stop inspecting our own souls for immediate proof of progress. You might be in a season where you feel heavy, where you feel like you’re carrying a burden that hasn’t lifted. But that heaviness might be the weight of your roots expanding. You are becoming capable of holding more life than you could before. This is active work. Your nervous system is regulating. Your boundaries are hardening. Your empathy is deepening. These are internal structures. They don’t have a visible metric. You can’t post them on social media. You can’t track them on a spreadsheet. But they are real. And they are necessary. Without them, the first wind that comes along will knock you over. So when you feel like you’re not moving forward, ask yourself: Am I building depth, or am I just reaching for height? Depth is slower. Depth is quieter. But depth is what keeps you standing when the storm hits. And trust me, storms are coming. They always do. So how do we practice this active patience? How do we move from frustration to engagement? It starts with small, intentional pauses. When you feel that spike of anxiety—that urge to text him back, to scroll endlessly, to fix the problem right now—stop. Put your hand on your heart. Feel the beat. Acknowledge the discomfort. Say to yourself, 'I am here. I am safe. I don’t need to solve this in the next five minutes.' This is not giving up. This is gathering strength. It is choosing to let the emotion wash over you without drowning in it. I learned this through the simple act of watering plants, which I shared a bit about in a past episode, but I want to revisit it here because it’s such a perfect metaphor. When you water a plant, you pour the water slowly. You don’t dump the whole jug at once. You watch the soil absorb it. You wait for it to sink in. You don’t rush the absorption. You trust that the plant knows what to do with the water. You provide the resource, and then you step back. You create the conditions for growth, and then you allow nature to take its course. You can control the water, but you cannot control the sprout. That is the boundary we need to learn. We can control our actions. We can control our self-care. We can control our kindness. But we cannot control the timing of the outcome. When we release that illusion of control, we find a profound sense of peace. We stop fighting the current and start learning how to swim. It’s exhausting at first, this new way of being. But eventually, it becomes effortless. Because you are no longer fighting yourself. You are flowing with the rhythm of your own life. I want to invite you to try something this week. Pick one area of your life where you feel stuck. Maybe it’s a relationship, a creative project, or just your own sense of self-worth. Instead of trying to force it to change, try tending to it. Ask yourself, 'What does this need right now?' Maybe it needs silence. Maybe it needs a boundary. Maybe it needs a nap. Give it that thing. Then, close your eyes and wait. Do not check the results. Do not analyze the outcome. Just sit in the presence of your own care. Trust that by showing up, you are doing the work. The crack is where the light gets in, but only if you stay open long enough for the light to find you. You are a work in progress, and that is a beautiful thing. It means you are alive. It means you are growing. It means you are becoming. So breathe. Stay in the seat. Keep your hands on the wheel, but relax your grip. The road is long, but you are exactly where you need to be. And that is enough. More than enough. It is everything. I’m Bethany Cook. Take good care of yourself, and remember: you are rooting beautifully, even when you can’t see the leaves. Until next time.