Let the heart grow back
What a desert flower taught me about soul-compromise and the quiet cost of overfunctioning.
This line from The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje has followed me like a whisper I can't ignore. Not because of biology. But because of the metaphor. Because something in me recognized it not just as beautiful — but as true.
“There is a plant he knows of near El Taj, whose heart, if one cuts it out, is replaced with a fluid containing herbal goodness. Every morning one can drink the liquid the amount of a missing heart. The plant continues to flourish for a year before it dies from some lack or other”
— Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
I know now that my experience with stress related burnout isn’t only a story about physical collapse. It’s a story about soul-compromise.
About what happens when something essential to who we are is cut away — often not in violence, but in slow, silent adaptation.
I’ve come to see myself as that kind of plant.
Not because I gave up — but because I kept giving, long after something vital in me had been removed.
I poured into others. I steadied rooms. I absorbed chaos. I translated discomfort, held shame, and filtered emotion. I became what others needed. And the strange thing is — I was good at it.
But the water I gathered wasn’t for me. It was what pooled in the hollow.
And maybe you’ve lived that too: becoming a version of yourself who is praised, needed, even depended upon — while something inside you, slowly and quietly, is… no longer being fed.
It’s not burning out. Not quite. It’s something harder to name.
A loss of inner ecology. An internal root system that is no longer in dialogue with the deep soil of your own desires.
The body might hold. The function continues. You may even shine.
But the self — the deep self — begins to fade.
And one day, without drama, you notice something is gone. Not because it breaks — but because it stops singing.
That’s what this desert flower meant to me.
Not a warning. Not a tragedy.
A mirror.
A quiet invitation to ask: What am I offering that I no longer grow from?
And deeper still: What would I need to reconnect with my own roots not just to give, but to live?
If you know the hollow space, if you have gathered water not for thirst but for function — I see you.
You are not broken.
You are simply overdue returning to the place your soul calls home.
Let the heart grow back.
Let the water be for you, too.
Disclaimer: These are my personal reflections and inner observations, written during the years I’ve spent slowly healing from a long-term stress-related burnout. In that vulnerable space, true masterpieces like Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient, have offered more than inspiration — they’ve served as quiet companions and guides. They helped me reflect. Helped me look inward. Helped me begin to find words for what I once couldn’t explain.