Before the bloom, before the dazzling colours and ripe fruits—there’s the soil.

Rich. Hidden. Often overlooked.

Creativity doesn’t sprout from nowhere. It rises from the deep, dark, quiet spaces where we nurture what’s not yet visible. The ideas we haven’t spoken aloud. The moments we stare out the window, half-lost in thought. The morning pages, the yoga practices that crack open silence. The tears we shed when no one’s watching. The questions we carry like stones in our pocket. That’s the compost. The sacred decay. The inner world where the seeds are planted.

And oh, how impatient we can be.

We want inspiration to be fire and lightning. But most of the time, it’s more like roots—growing slowly, invisibly, below the surface. It asks for devotion. For tending. For a kind of love that isn’t performative. Just as a gardener shows up to water even when there are no buds, the artist must show up to the page, the mat, the practice… even when nothing blooms yet.

There is artistry in what no one sees. In the stillness. In the softness. In the choice to stay with the process, to nurture it, to believe in it—especially when it’s quiet.

So let yourself become the soil. Hold space for the messy, the dormant, the tender unknown. You never know what wild and beautiful thing is getting ready to rise.