THE FRUIT OF BEARING

Bearing isn't about success. It's about sharing. The proof is in our words.

One of the greatest moments in a child's life is the first word. Mama. Dada. We wait for it because we know something extraordinary has happened. Language has become a bridge to share what we know. Humans and trees are not the only ones with roots. Words have roots too.

Nature creates life. We create meaning through language. Across cultures and time, people have recognized that words carry a creative power. Different words create different worlds. Language is the collective sacred bedrock we build on.

I came to this work when I used words instead of a bucket and a brush to paint new dreams. Some words we grow up with. Others arrive exactly when we need them, carrying more meaning than their definition alone. One word changed mine the moment I heard it: fecundity. A word I had never heard before 2022.

The astrologer who read my Neptune and Mars lines also asked me, 'How do you feel about mortality, as in fecundity?' I had no idea what that meant." And she had no idea that I had rooted and birthed an entire life full of relationships, dreams, and passion in Oregon after arriving there as an only child with one person: my mother. Later, my grandmother joined us. Then there were three.

We talk constantly about fertility and mortality, but rarely about the generative force that lives between them. A seed does not become a tree all at once. It sprouts, grows, flowers, fruits, and leaves behind seeds capable of beginning the process again. Human beings are no different, except not only do we get to choose the seeds we leave behind, we get to create and birth reality beyond our biology.

Words. Ideas. Dreams. Long after we have returned to the soil we came from.

We are the fertile ground of creation itself.

The beginning of 2021 coincided with endings, beginnings, and choices to be made. Devine Color had ended in 2015. My five-year non-compete had finally ended in 2020. I could work with a paint manufacturer again and develop a new paint line. Everything looked like a beginning. During COVID, it didn't feel like one.

By the time summer rolled around, quarantine lifted, Scott and I were vaccinated, and we hopped in the car and took off on a meditation vacation, or what we call a Medication. We hadn't been on one in seven years.

Unlike a regular vacation, a Medication is a soulful search-and-rescue mission. Instead of getting away, you're going in. Your GPS is your intention. The journey is the destination. You get in the car and let go. The contemplative scenery relaxes your vision. Open roads are an excellent metaphor for open minds. The people you meet along the way always seem to have an offering you are meant to receive.

Our first Medication had been a spring break road trip to Manhattan Beach in 2014 with our youngest daughter, Mia, who was graduating from college that year. Devine was onboarding at Target the same week. We were going to be empty nesters in the very near future, a future I was still unable to see, not knowing I would be walking away from Devine in 2015 with a five-year non-compete.

I had just started to meditate and was excited to meditate every day. Then I was delighted to find out that a meditation coach, who lived next door, happened to own the Airbnb we rented. We hit it off so well that she invited us to join her and her neighbors to watch the sunset from her back deck. Our chance meeting and her encouragement helped me cement my practice.

On that trip, I also realigned with the stars. I discovered Kristin Fontana's evolutionary horoscopes in the Manhattan Beach local paper. Her thoughtful and empowering approach to stars and destinies filled a hole in my heart left by Walter Mercado, the beloved Puerto Rican astrologer I grew up watching with my grandmother.

Every week, I would sit with my grandmother and wait for him to call out our astrological signs.

“AH-RIES!”

My sign was always first. Walter called each one as if they had just won the jackpot. He championed you and your unique purpose with every word he spoke. His sign-off made it feel even more significant: “May you receive from me lots and lots of peace, but most of all, lots and lots of love.” To this day, I still read Kristin's horoscope aloud in the same enthusiastic manner and send it to my kids.

When I left Manhattan Beach in 2014, I was full of peace and love and ready to make meditation a daily practice.

Seven years later, in 2021, with our dog Atlas in tow, we chose to go to Carmel-by-the-Sea for a couple of days and then on to Santa Barbara. Sure enough, within an hour of arriving in Carmel and sitting down to lunch, we met a vibrant art dealer sitting across from us. She invited us to join her, her best friend, and her brother for a sunset bagpipe salute overlooking the Pacific.

Art dealer? Sunset? Déjà vu.

Our first Medication marked the beginning of the end of Devine Color and the dream as I knew it. This one marked the beginning of a new dream I believed in and a destination I was unsure about.

We were meant to meet.

Over wine, looking at the Pacific Ocean and listening to Outlander's theme coming from a bagpipe, I asked her to share the most transformational growth period she had ever seen in one of her artists. She spoke of loss instead. Some didn't have the financial support to keep going and had to get regular jobs. Others fell ill.

All had grown except those who focused on what was already successful instead of tending to new ideas. Without new ideas, an artist cannot grow. It was as if she had been waiting for me to show up so she could say this.

“Sing me a song of a lass that is gone; say, could that lass be I?”

Yes, it was.

I stopped doing art when Devine became successful.

And what I mean by art is not creative work. I mean new, soul-bearing seeds of self-expression meant to grow, reach their full potential, and nourish the souls of others with humanity and connection.

You must incubate, plant, nurture, and protect these new seeds. This process takes time, tending, and trust. From that process, new ideas sprout, stronger roots form, and new possibilities emerge. Not because what came before was less than, but because what came before becomes the soil, mulched from experience and wisdom.

The mulchier the soil, the more fertile it becomes. The more fertile it becomes, the richer the bounty you can share with others and the world.

When we left Carmel for Santa Barbara, we drove through acres of farmland and vineyards instead of taking the scenic coastal route. Any road, less traveled or not, taken in the name of your fullest potential is never the wrong one. On this trip, I saw fields of seeds sprouting and growing in different stages, destined to feed bodies, much like art is destined to feed souls. This was the route I needed to see that day.

By the time we arrived home, I understood what the art dealer had given me: the gift of her knowing. Her knowing confirmed mine.

My dream was not over. It had simply outgrown its container. And like every seed before it, it was asking for fertile soil.

I beelined toward my knowing.

One word changed the way I saw the life I had already created and the life still waiting to be born: fecundity.

Devine Color was not the only seed I had to sow. Its success was not the end of my creative life. My dream had outgrown its container.

The nature of life is not preservation. It is creation.

Nature creates life through fecundity, the capacity to create abundant new life. Most people think of it as a biological process: how many offspring a creature can have during its mortal life. In humans, fecundity is also the capacity to create ideas, dreams, relationships, art, businesses, communities, and lives that nourish others long after we are gone.

The same is true for every dream. Dreams begin as seeds. Some are planted. Some are abandoned. Some sprout but never mature. Others grow into something so successful that we stop planting altogether. We often think of this as success. Sometimes it even leads to a life of retirement.

It is also where many ideas quietly die. Not because they failed. Not because they stopped being produced. They are no longer being tended or watered.

Success can convince us that tending what already exists is enough. But nothing about our biological baggage, or life on Earth, suggests this. Every living thing creates life. Every living thing dies. But only humans can choose what kind of life they create.

This is why birthing matters. Building assembles something from the outside. Birthing brings something forth from within. A dream is not simply constructed. It is carried, nurtured, protected, and eventually brought into the world.

The question is not whether you are capable of creating. The question is what wants to be born through you.

Fecundity is our ability to create abundantly.

I had no idea I still had so many seeds to sow.

What we create becomes something we can give. What we give carries what we know beyond ourselves. Like fruit carrying the seed of what comes next, what we bear is not the end of the cycle. It makes another beginning possible.

Bearing isn't about success. It's about sharing.

Bearing is what happens when what we know becomes something we can share.

When we know together, we do better.

Gretchen.  Send this to someone you know. 

Author Note

I came to this work not through therapy or a doctorate, but through a bucket of paint. I didn’t hear a calling, and I wasn’t particularly gifted at art. Color became my vehicle for self-actualization not because I loved decorating, but because using paint colors to make myself feel at home changed how I felt about the world.