Why 55 Houseplants
WHY 55 HOUSEPLANTSField notes on returning to self in midlife.
I'm calling this blog 55 houseplants because I needed a name that told the truth without trying to impress anyone.
Not a brand name. Not a reinvention headline. Not a promise that I'm about to become a new person.
Just a marker.
A way of saying: I'm starting right here.
The number is symbolic. I'm not going to keep a running plant count or pretend it's a metric. It's just a snapshot of my current reality—roots in jars, leaves turning toward windows, a living space that reflects how I've always been: someone who tends, someone who tries, someone who keeps small things alive even when she's tired.
And in midlife, that symbolism matters more than the accuracy.
Because this blog isn't about becoming someone else.
It's about coming back.
What this is (and what it isn't)
This is not a makeover narrative. Not a "watch me optimize my life" project. Not a highlight reel.
I'm not writing to persuade you of anything. I'm writing because there's a kind of clarity that arrives when you stop trying to perform your healing and start telling the truth about your life.
This is a living record of integration—what it looks like in real time when awareness becomes choice.
Some days that choice is big and clean. Most days it's small and ordinary. Sometimes it's just: I noticed I was pushing again.
That's what these posts are: field notes.
Not theory. Not instruction. Not "5 tips."
More like: Here's what I noticed. Here's the pattern. Here's what changed when I stayed with myself instead of overriding.
The kind of woman I am (and probably the kind of woman you are, too)
I've spent most of my adult life supporting other people—counseling, guiding, holding space, tracking patterns, listening for what's underneath the words. I'm good at it. It's real work, and it's work I respect.
I'm also someone who has lived in chronic responsibility for a long time. The kind that doesn't always look dramatic from the outside. The kind that gets called "being capable."
Capable can be a beautiful trait.
Capable can also be a hiding place.
Because when you're capable, people assume you're fine. When you're capable, you can keep going long past what is sustainable. When you're capable, you can disappear inside your own competence.
At some point in midlife, my nervous system started calling in what my personality used to override.
Not with a grand collapse. Just with a steady message:
We can't keep living like this.
So I'm practicing something different now. Not a new identity. A return.
The return I'm talking about
When I say "return to self," I'm not talking about a mystical version of you that you have to unlock.
I'm talking about the simple, difficult practice of staying.
Staying with:
hunger before it becomes an emergency
fatigue before it becomes shame
discomfort before it becomes a binge of distraction
emotions before they get turned into decisions
your own truth before you start editing it for someone else's comfort
I'm talking about the moment you notice you're about to abandon yourself— and you don't.
Or you do… and you notice it… and you come back.
That's the practice.
Not perfection. Not glow-up energy. Not "high vibe."
Just a life lived from the inside out.
What you'll find here
If you stay with this blog, you're going to see the same themes recur—not because I'm trying to build a niche, but because these are the actual pressure points of my real life right now.
Return to Self — The early warning signals. The pause. The moment I realize I'm pushing again. The small ways I come back without turning it into a new rule.
Capacity in Midlife — The truth about limits. The grief of changing standards. The choice to stop living as if you have endless bandwidth. The practice of choosing better holds.
Embodied Living — Food, movement, sleep, and the body's cues—not as a system to perfect, but as information. The body as vehicle, not a side project.
Self-Leadership in Real Life — Decision-making without clarity. Boundaries that don't require speeches. Integrity over approval. The quiet work of keeping promises to myself.
Relationships and Relational Energy — How dysregulation shows up loudest around other people. How I pause instead of fix. How I tell the difference between withdrawing and regulating.
Life as It Is — A real Tuesday. A stalled day. A day I did the hard thing without punishing myself. The ordinary moments where a life shifts.
If you're looking for constant instruction, this might not be your place. If you're looking for language that helps you recognize yourself, it probably is.
A note about honesty
I want to say something cleanly: I'm not going to overshare here.
Not because I'm hiding. Because this isn't therapy on the internet. It's not confession content. It's not a performance of pain.
The work I'm doing in public is meaning-making, not disclosure.
I will write honestly about patterns, capacity, nervous system reality, self-trust, and the ways midlife changes what I can tolerate.
I will protect the privacy of other people in my life. I will protect my clients entirely. And I will protect my own dignity—because that is part of returning to self, too.
Why plants?
Because plants don't respond to your aspirations. They respond to what is.
You can't "hustle" a cutting into rooting. You can't pressure a leaf into unfurling. You can't shame a plant into thriving.
You can only tend.
And tending is a kind of devotion I understand.
Sometimes I think I've been better at tending to everything outside myself than tending to my own interior life. This blog is me bringing that tending energy home—less as a project, more as a relationship.
Also: plants are proof that I live here.
That I'm not writing from a pedestal.
I'm writing from a real home, with real mess, real fatigue, real seasons, and little jars of water on the windowsill.
If you're reading this and you feel a quiet yes
You might be in the same threshold I'm in.
Not trying to reinvent yourself. Just trying to stop abandoning yourself.
You might be capable and tired. Responsible and disconnected. Intelligent and unsure why you can't seem to "get it together" the way you can for everyone else.
If that's you, I don't think you're broken.
I think you're done living on override.
And if you're done, you're welcome here.
What I'm inviting you into
Not a program. Not a persona. Not a performance.
Just a place where we name what's real.
Where we don't call fatigue laziness. Where we don't call dysregulation failure. Where we don't call self-abandonment "being strong."
Where we practice staying.
If you want to keep reading, start with whichever feels most like your current reality:
My early warning signals(what "off" feels like before it's a 10)
And if you want these field notes delivered quietly—no hype, no hustle—I send one short note a week. A companion page sometimes. A truth line often. A reminder to come back.
That's it.
Welcome to 55 houseplants.
