I am a late bloomer.
That’s what my mother used to tell me. It was a frequent refrain during my adolescent years, when I remained stuck in the awkward Ugly Duckling stage for far too long. My inner swan was trapped beneath layers of puppy fat, frizzy hair and an overwhelming lack of self-belief.
Throughout those years I stood on the side-lines, watching my beautiful friends whipping their flowing straight locks in the Bulawayo breeze as they gathered in girly gangs, dressed in halter-neck tops, geometric patterned flared trousers and clumpy platform shoes.
I wore discount clothing from Cash Wholesalers. I did not dare to bare my midriff in slinky halter-neck tops. Firstly, I couldn’t even find my midriff and secondly, I needed a hoist to lift my bust. (In those days, that area was referred to as “the bust”, or, sometimes, “the bosoms”. Neither is flattering.)
I was also unsure of what I wanted to be when I was grown up. If mathematics was involved, I would not even consider that career path, despite my father’s best efforts to drum his innate mathematical ability into me at every opportunity. I wavered between becoming a nurse, a teacher, a DJ (never having set foot in a club), a social worker or an actress. But most of all, I wanted to be a nun.
This conflicted with my parent’s hopes and dreams for their eldest daughter. I saw it as a perfect escape from real life and a chance to do good to those less fortunate than myself. I was a very kind Ugly Duckling. The cherry on the top was that a nun’s habit is pretty much one size fits all. No midriff-showing required.
The nun dream ended when I met Arthur, a boy with hair frizzier than my own, whose strongest expression of love for me was to push me into a swimming pool. I began to realise that there was a world out there that may not be compatible with my urge to embrace nunhood.
Over the years I continued to lag behind expectations, wrapped in a cloak of limiting beliefs that made me feel warm and safe. I reached some highs, achieved some accolades, but knew these were always not quite soon enough or not quite brilliant enough. My times of blooming were brief, like desert flowers that bloom once a year, astonish passers-by, and rapidly fade and wither.
My life choices were centred around values beloved of nuns: serving the poor, helping the weak, feeding the hungry, teaching the uneducated, being kind to the downtrodden and loving the unlovely. The downside of this focus is that being nice does not generate a generous income. You cannot become rich by training lay teachers in the slums of Manila or by bonding with women in Outer Mongolia over a cup of mare’s milk.
In this world, being successful is not often equated with service. On the contrary, success usually equates with financial prosperity. As a nun in spirit, this put me in a quandary. A few years ago I began to feel I had more to offer but did not want to chase the prosperity dream. In any case, my peers had forged ahead of me years before. They had become what they had dreamed. They owned businesses and ran companies and lived in spacious homes and holidayed in exotic locations. They had business backers and a healthy relationship with their bank manager.
In the eyes of the world, they had bloomed. I wasn’t even in bud.
My limiting beliefs were an enormous hurdle, and life got in the way of crossing it. Over the years emigration, divorce, children’s autism diagnoses, financial hardship, family issues, illness and the raw pain arising from the deaths of my parents, first husband, close friend and my son within a short time frame, battered and bruised me. Far from blooming, I felt crushed, like rose petals pulped under an unforgiving boot.
And then I discovered coaching, and my coach gently drew me to the point where, one day, I found within myself the power to bloom. I rose up, looked at myself in the mirror, and instead of an Ugly Duckling staring back at me, I recognized the swan waiting to emerge from its untidy cloak of feathers. It was time to start acting like the swan I truly was.
I had no backing. I had no friendly bank manager. But I did have a dream of building a business that would uplift and empower people while also earning me a living.
Yes, I was a late bloomer. I was sixty three years old when I began EnRich – which makes me old enough to mix my metaphors and bloom like a desert flower facing the sun even as I shed my downy feathers.
Now, at last, is my time, and I believe the best is yet to come.
As always, some coaching questions…!
In which areas of life are you a late bloomer?
What is stopping you from doing what delights your heart?
What limiting beliefs are holding you back?