Protea: Resilience, Strength & Courage
Proteas, named after the prophetic, shape-shifting Greek god of the sea, thrive in extreme environments. They represent resilience. What is our world if not an extreme environment?
For my 36th birthday, a woman that I knew for only a short while gifted me a protea - a South African sugarbush - a statement flower she’d purchased from a small local florist known for their unique arrangements and unusual blooms. She was an odd woman, also brilliant, a survivor, as generous as she was eccentric, and the gift suited her. I wish I had been kinder during the brief intersection of our lives, better able to appreciate her many gifts and quirks.
Ten months earlier, I’d left New York and moved to the Berkshires. I changed career tracks, leaving behind the labor union and its craft magazine I’d helped establish in exchange for a marketing role in literal greener pastures. I was riddled with anxiety and loneliness, living on my own while I waited for my husband and cats to join me. I loved New England and also struggled to find my footing in our new community where I experienced a mild form of culture shock.
In the first few weeks of my new job, I discovered that I disliked her style of management; I felt repressed by the daily to-do waiting for us on our desks each morning. It felt restrictive, though looking back I now appreciate the structure. Clear is kind. But at the time, I felt micromanaged, and responded with contempt. Even though I was having a hard time, it was no excuse for being an asshole. I know this. I will also give myself the grace I’d give a friend - we’ve all failed from time to time at being our best self. When I first moved here, I was far from my best self.
I switched jobs four times in less than three years, two positions (#1 and #4) for which I can thank this woman. She hired me out of NYC to work with her at a theatre company designing graphics. When I left 11 months later, she was kind enough to support my half-baked decision. When I showed up at her office barely two months after that, asking for advice about leaving job #2 for job #3, she graciously shared that sometimes to be true to oneself, you must betray those around you. At the time I was unable to fully appreciate her generosity. She didn’t have to help me, to act as mentor and friend, yet she did.
One morning in the spring while we still worked together, she pulled me into the women’s restroom. Tell me what is wrong, she said. I was stricken that day, barely held together. The night before my brother and I had been texting. He was having his own hard time, bed-ridden and shitting bloody diarrhea all over the carpet in the months he spent waiting for the medical clinic that accepted the uninsured to get around to treating his advanced Crohn's Disease and drug addictions.
I’d said something about having only one precious life, that we must all appreciate and savor it. At the time, my brother seemed tolerant of my unsolicited spiritual support - I truly meant well - until the middle of the night when my phone exploded with another sort of diarrhea, this one a hot rolling rant of verbal lashing. It was hateful, laced with violent accusations, a detailed chronicle of my every failing as both sister and human being. How dare you, he said. You are not my sister. The end.
Addiction, like Crohn’s, is a terrible disease. The addict is not the person you love or who loves you.
When I told her, she hugged me, fierce and full-bodied with her tiny frame and mammoth heart.
A few months later, I turned 36. It’s a pincushion flower, she said as she presented the alien bloom. It would take seven years for me to learn the symbolism of a protea, though I doubt she had any idea (rather it may have been the prickly imagery that resonated).
Resilience, strength, courage. Ability to adapt.
I would need these to survive and eventually thrive in my new life, and I would discover and cultivate each whether I wanted to or not. Life does not ask us which occasion we would like to rise to, we simply must rise one way or another.
Job #3, the one where I betrayed others in order to be true to myself, was a disaster, but one that came with many eventual blessings. For years I’d wanted to work in animal welfare, had been actively courting the industry in NYC. When I had the chance to speak to someone on the marketing team for the Humane Society of the United States, he looked at my resume and said I’d need much bigger clients before anyone would consider me a serious candidate. By bigger he meant Subaru, Coca Cola, Disney. I didn’t have a chance. So when a serendipitous opportunity arose to work for a local shelter, I leapt heart first.
I was sure this was my dream job. The only problem was I didn’t fit, no matter how I tried to reshape myself; I was reminded, on a near daily basis, that I did not belong. I didn’t realize there was a gauntlet to run, a sort of hazing to endure. Even if I’d known, I don’t think I’d have fared any better. Compassion fatigue plagues many care-based industries; challenging cultural environments are not uncommon.
My mistakes were many. I wore too much makeup and offensively-skinny jeans. I didn’t partake in weekly fast food lunches around the conference table. Once a splatter in the microwave from my pasta was blasted over the intercom as the person who cleaned it up thought the entire shelter, including the public lobby, should know about it. Response to my work was divided, too. I tried to focus on the fact that leadership was satisfied, but I was always aware of an undercurrent of distrust. Refusal to collaborate nearly sabotaged some projects.
So I wore less makeup. I ate french fries and wilted deli salads. And when the janitor was let go for budgeting reasons, I took on my assignment without complaint like everyone else - mopping the back hallway and kitchen areas, which doubled as animal holding and quarantine space. I scrubbed cabinets, organized storage rooms, and washed dishes. I kept the microwave clean, too.
A couple of weeks later, the shelter manager stopped me as I was mopping. There are complaints, she said. The floors are too wet. She took the mop and showed me how to twist the fibers before squeezing the excess liquid. It was a useful tip.
I’d always liked the manager; she took the time to teach me things, was both patient and exacting. Her standards were high, something we had in common.
Why didn’t you say something sooner?, I asked. I was puzzled and hurt. Why the complaints? Why not just teach me how to use an industrial mop?
Rather than answer she said, You’re supposed to be cleaning the staff bathroom, too.
I knew the bathroom hadn’t been assigned to me. I’d even asked the executive director for absolute clarity and he’d assured me that someone else had agreed to clean it. I tried to explain this to her.
Nope, she said. We all thought you were refusing it do it.
Suddenly my hurt was replaced by fury. I cleaned that bathroom until it sparkled, and did so every week. I spent two and half years in job #3, sitting in my car each morning psyching myself up to enter the building, fighting off tears that would eventually catch up with me in that bathroom. Sometimes I’d rush outside and hide in the shrubbery running along the property line so no one would hear me gasp as I battled another panic attack.
I did try standing up up for myself, though doing so felt like it might actually kill me. One morning I knocked frantically on my neighbor’s door and begged for a Xanax - I need it, I explained, to make it through a day where I planned to officially confront the staff matriarch who’d said to me on the day I signed my employment paperwork that I looked like a princess, that I’d never survive. The bathroom, I had been told, was hers to clean.
I did survive. I couldn’t appreciate it then, but I was growing stronger, incrementally more resilient. I learned how to work with animals for photography shoots, how to train dogs and collect samples of feces for parasite testing, how to scruff cats and blow into their nostrils to help them swallow medicine. I drove animals to Albany to film Pet Connection. I watched a volunteer vet spay and neuter a dozen cats, their tiny organs opalescent beneath the fluorescents in a closet turned make-shift OR. I cleaned up a lot of pee. I helped manage an often-misinformed and sometimes-vitriolic public opinion in the local media and on socials. Along the way I made a few close friends and adopted a dog, and I watched a lot of animals find homes. They made all of it worthwhile.
As I approached the end of my time at the shelter, I was befriended by a board member. She met me at one of my lowest points, letting me unburden my heart in her kitchen while she fed me pizza and wine. Her friendship and tutelage were a life raft. Rather than insist I hang on and tough it out, she told me, gently and firmly, that it was ok to move on.
One afternoon when everyone left for lunch while I frantically prepped for a gala, I realized I was done. Sitting on the stained carpet in my shared office amongst a sea of signage, auction forms, and prize baskets, I decided I didn’t have to stay and deal. It was ok to admit defeat and move on. Sometimes cutting losses is the kindest, most courageous thing we can do for ourselves. I applied for job #4 - for which I received a positive recommendation from the woman who gifted me the protea - and was hired a few weeks later.
The day I left the shelter, the staff matriarch came into my office, closed the door, and apologized.
I was wrong to freeze you out, she said. Her eyes were studded with tears.
It’s ok, I said. And it really was. I was ok, finally. She tried to convince me to stay, that I’d proved my resilience, gauntlet complete. No, I said gently. I’m moving on. I stood and we hugged, as though I was passing along that embrace I’d received during job #1, offering the grace and forgiveness that had been offered to me.
In New York I was an art director, managing editor, and communications manager. I moved to the Berkshires to be a graphic designer, then hospitality marketer, then communications manager in animal sheltering, and finally, marketing director at a regional tourism and economic development organization. Each move required adaptability in skill, strength of spirit to align myself with new cultures, and courage to stick out the hard days that knocked me on my butt. Sometimes into a puddle of dog pee.
New years are times of reflection, though really anytime may be the perfect moment to look over our shoulder and marvel at how far we’ve come. It’s easy to fall prey to self-recrimination, to indulge in a cringe session over our less stellar decisions, actions, and comments, but if we are our missteps then we are also our achievements, our goodness and dogged desires to realize our potential, to brush our fingertips through the glittered stardust of our dreams. After all, isn’t that why we’re here? To climb the sky and find our place in it?
I do not know what trials await, what challenges march in our direction. Hardship is part of life and it will demand, in exchange for passage, the cold, hard cash of resilience, strength, courage, and adaptability.
Proteas thrive in extreme environments; 90% of their species can be found in the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa, a hotspot of biodiversity. They are named after Proteus, the prophetic Greek god of the sea who could shape-shift in response to adversity. The flowers are able to withstand and even benefit from frequent brush fires, the seeds of some species being set free by the flames.
We’ve all been through fire, asked to make many shapes of ourselves. So I offer this bloom for our shared adventure called 2024, and for all the adventures yet to follow. You are braver than you think, and stronger than you believe. Let us all cherish magic when it reveals itself - the shimmering cascade of light falling across the frosted horizon, the crackle of good conversation with friends, the delight of a well-cooked meal, the warmth of a body, be it a platonic hug or the act of making love. Let yourself be struck with awe, by art, by music, by an alien flower resembling a pincushion. Indulge in it all. You’ll need the fuel for what’s to come.
Happy New Year, sweet friends.
Elizabeth, your candor and the beautiful way you tell your story continue to move me. Thank you. Wishing you great courage, strength of body and mind, and many happy days in 2024 and beyond!
Again, tears. This may be my favorite - or it may just be that this was the right message at the right time. Either way, thank you.
xoxo