Vital for the Journey: A Wide-Open Heart

When playing it safe is no longer an option

It may seem odd to start a post about what is germinating in the dark with a picture of a huge, delicate summer flower; but bear with me for a moment if you would. For how else do we become that flower, if not for the dreaming of it in the womb of winter?

With the first truly hard frost this morning, the kale will have become sweeter, but the remaining calendula flowers in my garden and all but the hardiest plants that haven’t already succumbed to the cold will finally turn brown and wither. It is time for the plant world to hibernate here in the northern hemisphere—to go into the last of their seeds or into their roots that store their hard-earned winter food.

Now their dreamtime truly begins. The dreams of their seeds—where they will go, what they will become, what changes they will make for the next generation. The gatherings among the root communities focusing all their energy on building strength for the next season, dreaming of the blossoming to come.

It is a potent time, this dreamtime—this space that we are given to pull inside and gather our strength, focus our heart’s desires, and imagine what we are becoming. It is time to trust that we are held, and to know that our ancestors are beside us, guiding us when we ask them. Most of all, this is the time we are given to understand that we are meant to follow our heart and imagine how big we can be.

The flowers do this so well. They know how to be fully themselves and nothing more. As I sat down to write this post, I pulled the Rose Mallow card from my oracle deck—a big flower as large as a dinner plate that opens for only one day. The key words for this card are “wide open,” and Rose Mallow says to us, “I open myself wide to the world at first daybreak, flying with the angels on the wings of beauty and love. I want you to know the whole world is within your reach. Open to it with a brave heart and you will be carried and supported.”

Tears arose because the card was so perfect for this moment. Not only is it a timely card for this season of going inward to wait for what wants to be born, it speaks to me personally. The words “open to it with a brave heart” stood out because I became aware recently how sometimes I still hedge my bets and protect my heart in old patterns of lingering resentments and the resistance they engender. I have done this for so long, that I wasn’t realizing how they still sometimes slip almost unconsciously into my everyday life, particularly in my closest relationships, both living and dead.

Just as suppressing pain also results in suppressing all our feelings including joy, these old resentments can eat away at my ability to fully open my heart. I thought I had already worked through them, forgiven them—already let them go. But thankfully an actual hurricane stirred up my heart enough that the remaining blinders were blown open. The time for playing it safe is over. Perhaps that was part of the message of the hurricane, on many levels both personally and collectively.

When I originally sat with Rose Mallow, they also said to me that the secret to a wide-open heart is to make myself big, to throw my arms open wide, and take up as much space as I possibly can. Did you ever do the floating arms trick when you were a kid? Stand in a door frame and push the backs of your hands against the door frame for thirty seconds or longer, and then when you step out, feel how your arms lift weightlessly, making you feel immediately bigger and lighter, like you have wings.

This message of taking up space speaks to me personally because my old tendency is to withdraw when I feel hurt or threatened. When saying “YES” to a big dream, or stepping into something scary, it helps immensely to step fully into it, as completely and as largely as possible, with a wide-open heart. As Rose Mallow says, “open to it with a brave heart and you will be carried and supported.”

The trick of course to a wide-open heart—allowing our love, our gratitude, our awe, our joy to flow—is trust. Trust that we are held, and that our heart can hold both the love and the hurt, because we are held—by the flowers, by the Earth, by whatever name we give to the divine energy of life that supports us all.

May our seeds germinate together into the biggest, bravest dreams possible when we begin to sprout our deep longings, step through our fears, and bravely open our hearts to the world waiting for us, knowing that all who have come before us, both human and non-human, are cheering us on.

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Mary Porter Kerns is the author of The Flowers Are Speaking oracle cards and a soon to be published book by the same name. She teaches popular workshops on how everyone can connect and communicate with the flowers, with the next one beginning in January 2025.