The Act Of Unfurling

Dear Ones,

There is a ten-year-old giant Monstera deliciosa in my kitchen unfurling its leaves, unrolling each spear like a ceremonious scroll.

Each new leaf begins tightly wrapped within itself, hidden inside a green spear that looks almost too small to contain what is coming. And yet inside that narrow shape already exists the full design, with every split, every curve, every opening waiting in folded form.

Then one morning, almost without announcement, it begins.

The leaf loosens.

Slow-moving and green-breathing, it starts reaching outward into the blue-open world. At first it hangs there, limp and vulnerable for a while, soft and uncertain, before gradually darkening, strengthening, turning toward the sun-warmed window.

I have become strangely emotional watching this happen.

Perhaps because humans are not so different.

We also spend long periods folded inward.

We carry entire selves inside us long before they become visible to the world. We walk around containing unopened things:

a grief not yet spoken,
a courage not yet required,
a creativity not yet trusted,
a version of ourselves waiting quietly beneath the surface.

And when growth finally comes, it rarely arrives dramatically.

It comes slowly.
Leaf by leaf.
Choice by choice.
Conversation by conversation.

The Monstera does not force her leaves open before they are ready. She does not compare her unfolding to the plant beside her. She simply responds to water, food, and light.

There is wisdom in that.

Especially now, in a culture obsessed with immediacy, performance, and visible transformation. We are encouraged to bloom publicly, rapidly, convincingly. To become something before we have fully formed.

But some things cannot be rushed without tearing.

Tenderness like this requires protection. The leaf emerges from the stem folded inward for a reason. It is not weakness. It is design.

Even the holes in the massive leaves, the beautiful openings called fenestrations, are not flaws. They have a purpose. In the wild rainforest, they allow wind and rain to pass through without destroying the plant. Did you know that in the wild this plant also produces an edible fruit said to taste sweet, like a blend of pineapple and banana?

What appears delicate is actually adaptation.

Survival.

Intelligence.

Humans carry these kinds of openings too.

The losses that changed us.
The heartbreaks that softened us.
The years that hollowed out space for empathy, wisdom, compassion.

We spend so much of life trying to hide our openings when perhaps they are part of what allows us to survive the storm.

I am in my third act of life but I am still full of things waiting to unfurl.

I can feel them beneath the surface sometimes, pressing gently against my edges, like new ways of seeing, new ways of loving, new versions of myself not yet fully formed.

At my age, people speak as though becoming is over. As though we arrive at the last act and are somehow supposed to be fixed and finished.

But I do not feel finished.

I feel root-deep and beginning again.

I feel parts of myself still reaching toward the light, still loosening, still learning how to open.

Lately I have been thinking that maturity may simply be this:

becoming less afraid of our unfolding.

Trusting that what is meant for us isn’t that far reaching as it already exists somewhere inside us, folded carefully beneath the surface, waiting for the right season of light.

And perhaps the real work of a life, and of writing, especially poetry, is not becoming someone else entirely, but slowly learning how to unfurl into who we already are.

When I am searching for answers and meaning in my life, I always find it in nature. This is a poem I wrote last year about unfurling wildness.

Listen here:

The Dahlias Don't Ask

The dahlias don’t ask.
They arrive resplendent,
unfurling into wind,
spinning symmetry
into bloom.
Nothing here is measured.
It grows by instinct,
by memory,
by some old whisper
in the soil.
This is where I come
when I need reminding.
Even in disorder,
design.
And I, too,
a wild thing,
unpruned.
-mary ann burrows 

My Blessing For You:

May you trust your unfolding.

May what is folded within you loosen gently toward the light.

May your openings become places where wisdom enters and love passes through.

And may you remember that becoming does not end simply because the years move forward.

Some souls are still unfurling right to the very end.

With love,

Mary Ann

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