I lived in France for several years in the early nineties, first in Dijon and then in Paris. In Paris, there was a local newsletter for expatriates that listed all the activities around the city for English-speaking foreigners. One woman ran a monthly workshop called “Bloom Where You’re Planted.” Its purpose was to help foreigners adjust to the bureaucratic mechanics and cultural idiosyncrasies of French life.

I never attended that workshop.

Instead, I essentially gritted my teeth through the three years I lived in France. I could see that other Americans absolutely adored France and French people. They took French lessons, they got themselves French lovers or spouses, they completely embraced all that is wonderful about living in France, and they demonstrated a cheerful resignation about all the nuisances and irritants that are part of life there. “Yes, those things are a hassle, but so what? We’re living in France!” Such was the attitude of the successful “transplants.”

I didn’t successfully transplant myself to France, and I never bloomed where I was planted. And yet, I learned something from that experience. Looking back, I can see how I was both cowardly and impatient with myself. My culture shock went on much longer than it had to, because I kept fighting it. I concluded that because I wasn’t adjusting and wasn’t happy there, that there was something wrong with me and that France just wasn’t a good fit. But my defeatist attitude became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since I gave up on France first, it gave up on me because I stopped trying to dig deeper. I stopped trying to reach out, I stopped trying to learn more French than just what it took to get by in daily life for survival purposes, I stopped making friends…I even stopped working at my job and began working at home with my now ex-husband! He refused to learn any French at all, so my resentment grew deeper as I was “forced” to do all the translating for him and face the immense French bureaucracy alone.

I’m writing about this today because even in America, we often find ourselves living in neighborhoods, towns and cities that just don’t jibe with us. They clang. They grate. They unsettle. They challenge. Many times, things aren’t easy for us in these “foreign” places. We don’t “get” the local people or enjoy participating in what is important to them. In Pahrump, for example, popular activities include drinking in bars, going to church, riding horses or dirt bikes or ATV’s, attending rodeos, or having family get-togethers with lots of kids and barbeques. Unfortunately, I don’t do any of that stuff, nor do I want to. I have tried, though!

But since I’m older now (and bought a house), I’m less likely to just crumple up the page of my current life and toss it in the wastepaper basket. Instead, I’ve stuck it out here for six years so far. I’ve built a business, had a great experience being a teacher and then a Principal of a boarding school for troubled teens, qualified as a paralegal, made a handful of friends, and met and married my dear husband, Lew. Somehow, I’ve managed to bloom where I’ve been planted, but these blooms have been hard-won, much like the blooming cactus featured in the free calendar on my wall, courtesy of my local electricity co-op.

Like a cactus, you might not bloom that often. You might have had to develop some protective spines and prickles, just to survive where you are. You might have experienced long periods of drought, or relentless sun that magnifies your every nook, cranny and imperfection. Your form might have morphed into something you don’t even recognize, just so you could adjust to some insurmountable obstacles—like a tree becoming misshapen as it grows around a boulder. But you are still here. You are you. You are unique, and when you stop gritting your teeth, when you let go of your expectations of how your community “ought” to be, that is when you are free. You are free to bloom where you’re planted.