The Courage to Grow: Lessons from a Little Sprout

Like all posts in the Inner Journeys series, this one is inspired by an Inner Voice session—a practice of tapping into intuition to uncover deeper wisdom. In this post, I share the lessons and insights from my own Inner Voice during a recent session with my friend and fellow Inner Voice Facilitator Em Strong. For those curious about Inner Voice sessions, I’ve also included the full audio of the session at the bottom of this post so you can experience firsthand where these insights originated and what an Inner Voice session is like.

This was one of those weeks where I got to be held as I went deep into connection with my own Inner Voice. My friend and fellow Inner Voice facilitator Em Strong anchored us and I floated off into a space where fertile soil and budding sprouts and a motherly protective energy spoke in metaphors for what I really needed to hear, to know, to see. In this post, I’d like to share what came through.

The session began with a visual of nutrient-rich soil, teeming with worms, ready to prosper and grow something new out of it. Suddenly, piercing the soil, a little sprout emerges, one that’s eagerly drinking in its new environment in total elation, feeling how good it feels to simply be in this new place.

It’s just the beginning, just the first stage, just a sprout, a young sprout.

The soil beneath this newly birthed sprout is so well-tended, the perfect foundation for all of the growth ahead. Jittery with excitement about all of the new that now surrounds it, this little sprout is fed by all of these new sensations. They feel good because they feed, they fuel, my Inner Voice says. The newly emerged sprout is absolutely fearless in all of the new. Only excited.

This new sprout can grow here. It will grow here.

Solid soil. Nurturing air. It has all that it needs to grow from here. My Inner Voice said the soil is like a starting line, the right starting line where a whole life can go on and take place, a whole growth cycle, a life cycle.

This little sprout, newly emerged, exists above ground blissfully ignorant and unknowing about what may be ahead, not even wondering about it. So focused on all of the new sensations instead. The newness is the sprout’s destination.

This little sprout sees no danger, sees no need to protect itself from anything.

Someone else could look on this little sprout so totally immersed in the here and now, enraptured by all that it’s experiencing for the first time, and want to rush in and protect it in its obliviousness. My Inner Voice said don’t. This time no.

Let it continue in its own way. Let it find out for itself.

A bubble of motherly protection suddenly appears around the sprout. It needs to be popped.

This little sprout needs to be allowed to experience for itself for the first time, my Inner Voice says. Let harm come its way. Or said another way: don’t protect it from the harm that might come its way. And don’t forget the soil underneath where it’s rooted, how fertile that soil is, how life-giving, how rich, how supportive that base can be.

This little sprout may not know, but it feels. It feels it all. It feels it all fully. That’s the only protection it needs.

It doesn’t know that it’s protecting itself by allowing all the feelings. But that’s what will go on to make its stem so strong. That’s what allows it to grow and to thrive. Without that ability, to feel it all, it’s weak. It can’t protect itself without it.

Then, addressing me, now the motherly protector inhibiting this new sprout’s growth and strength, my Inner Voice says: You can’t protect it either as much as you try. Let this little sprout be the way it wants to be, who it’s meant to be, who it can be if left to discover itself. Let it learn for itself how to be strong.

It says: There’s love in letting go. Handing over what you’ve taken away. Handing back. This little sprout can grow on its own. It doesn’t need your protection. In fact, the protection is what interferes with the experience this little sprout is loving so much. It’s blocking the sunlight, preventing the rain, stifling the air around it. Remove all that and it can breathe.

Let it explore. Let it experience for itself. Let it come to know on its own. Let it get hurt. Let it pick itself back up. Let it be strong. Let it find its own strength.

Let it see what it’s made of. Let it know its own fibers. Let it know them so intimately that it knows itself. Give it a chance to do that.

At this point in the session, a wave of emotion came up. I was sobbing. I never planned to sob that day, but this message, these visuals, and their meaning were true, a pattern I needed to recognize within myself, an impediment to my own growth, a new way of seeing how stifling trying to protect can be to growth and to life.

Then I saw the same motherly presence that was once stifling the sprout now fanning the air around it, no longer protecting it, but fanning it, feeding it, encouraging it, enhancing the experience that it was drinking in. The bubble gone and the sprout completely oblivious to where this new rush of air is coming from, so focused on the experience of it instead. That’s all it needed to focus on. The experience is what it’s all about.

Little sprout just gets to grow into who it is, on its own now, to live its life as it wants to.

Unimpeded. Supported. Encouraged. Full of passion. Full of zest. Full of an internal energy, a fire, that fuels it, keeps it going. It is itself. It gets to be itself. It gets to be all that it can be, all that it wants to be, all that it is. Completely unimpeded by anything that was trying to keep it safe.

This little sprout can grow. Now it can grow.

The session ends.

Closing Comments

I share these sessions with you because the messages within them aren’t just for me. They’re universal. There’s something here for everyone to take and apply. This one in particular had so many layers of lessons and reminders within it.

The message that really stuck with me is the gentle reminder that the ignorance and bliss of youth and new beginnings doesn’t need a protector watching out for what might harm it next. The more we protect what’s already protected by something greater than ourselves (the abundant soil from which it truly comes, call it God, Spirit, the Universe, whatever you’d like), the more we inhibit the very ones we love and the more those ones never get a chance to know themselves fully. I saw myself in this. I saw my relationship with my mother in this. I saw the way I’m being asked to now mother myself. Can I encourage? Can I fan my flames? Can I trust that I am abundantly supported and safe to live fully in the exciting experience of my life that’s happening right now?

Listen to the Inner Voice session that inspired this post:

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