The other morning, I was out watering my garden, half-awake, coffee in hand, doing the quiet little rituals that ground me before the day gets loud. While I was out there, I started trimming the “suckers” off my tomato plant, those small shoots that grow in the crotch between the stem and a branch, stealing energy without ever producing fruit of their own.
Two days later, I walked outside and gasped a little. An influx of tomatoes had turned red almost overnight. There were more of them than before. The whole plant looked healthier, fuller, more alive.
And I heard my gardening guru friend Erin’s voice in my head, the way she always says it: “You have to get rid of the suckers.”
She’s talking about tomato plants. But she might as well be talking about our souls.
When we trim away the suckers in our own lives, whatever’s quietly feeding off our energy without ever giving anything back, we create space. Space for oxygen. Space for new growth. Space for our own spirit to rejuvenate, undistracted, undrained.
We don’t always realize how much a sucker is costing us until it’s gone. That’s true of the dead, diseased leaves on a tomato plant. And it’s true of the people, habits, and old stories in our real lives that quietly sap our light without adding a single thing back.
🥸 Energy suckers, both of them, just wearing different disguises .
So today, I’m asking you the same question my garden asked me: what are your suckers? What’s growing in the in-between spaces of your life, taking nutrients meant for your bloom?
Trim them. Gently, but truly. Not out of anger, just out of care for the fruit that’s trying to ripen.
I promise, you’ll be shocked at how much brighter and more abundant you become once you stop feeding what was never meant to flower. 🌿
And hey, if my tomato plant can figure this out, so can we. Now if only someone could explain that lesson to the pickle worms currently feasting their way through every last one of my zucchini! They’ve rendered the whole crop useless, RIP to my summer squash dreams.
One garden lesson at a time, apparently, and this one wasn’t for me to solve. 😅
