You're Not a Weed

I've been sick.

The creepy crud kind of sick — coughing, no voice, the works. I actually delayed recording this podcast episode because I could barely get a word out. My go-to when I'm down is warm tea with honey. I'm partial to Throat Coat by Traditional Medicinals — it's full of herbal goodness and it actually works.

But here's the thing that really got me.

On every tea bag, there's a little quote. And the one that greeted me on day one of being sick stopped me cold:

The difference between a flower and a weed is judgment.

That one sat with me for days.

Back to Grad School

My ADHD brain does this thing where one idea connects to another, which connects to another. So when I read that quote, I found myself thinking about Wake Forest University.

When I started grad school, the very first course we took was statistics. Counselors and math — you know how that goes. By the time we made it to our first in-person residency, we were convinced that statistics course had been designed to weed us out. To filter out the ones who didn't belong.

I remember my friend Jamie finishing my sentence: It was to weed us out.

Somehow our professors caught wind of that. And they said: you were already weeded out — you got in. And also, we don't really love that term.

Then someone said something that I've never forgotten:

You're not a weed.

I remember getting a little teary. Because it matters — it matters deeply — when someone who doesn't really know you yet chooses to believe in you anyway.

We've been licensed for ten years now. And my colleagues and I still say it to each other when things get hard:

You're not a weed.

The Weeds We Actually Need

That tea I was drinking? It was probably full of what most people would call weeds.

Dandelion — liver support and digestion. Nettle — minerals, inflammation, hormonal support. Red clover — lymphatic and hormonal support. Plantain. Chickweed. Plants that grow in the cracks, that nobody plants on purpose, that we pull from our lawns without a second thought.

And yet we steep them in hot water and call it medicine.

These plants are resilient. They're adaptive. They thrive in poor conditions. They support stressed systems. They don't need ideal circumstances to survive — they just find a way.

Sound familiar?

High-Capacity Nervous Systems and the Load They Carry

Healers are a lot like those plants.

We adapt beautifully to demand. We show up, we keep going, we carry enormous loads without letting anyone see the strain. And from the outside? We look like we're doing just fine.

Until we're not.

Because here's what's true: the nervous system does not fail. It protects. When the load exceeds the capacity, the body gets intelligent about it. The fatigue, the anxiety, the brain fog, the irritability, the shutdown — those aren't signs of weakness. They are biological responses that are doing exactly what they were designed to do.

And yet healers get labeled for it.

Burned out. Too sensitive. Not coping.

What if those traits aren't problems? What if they're adaptations — a nervous system that grew in an environment that no longer fits?

What if too sensitive is exactly what that sensitive nervous system needs to be?

The Parts of You They Called Too Much

I think about this a lot, especially for women. Especially for neurodivergent women who were diagnosed later in life — because that's me.

How often are we told we're too much? And then in the same breath, not enough?

You can't be both. That's not how math works.

But we believe it. And so we make ourselves smaller. We stay in boxes that don't fit. We hold back the parts of ourselves that might get us labeled, might get us yanked out, might get us discarded.

A mentor of mine gave me something I keep on my desk and read most days. It says:

The parts and pieces of you that hold you back are the things that your f** yes people love the most.*

Be big. Be bold. You are not everybody's cup of tea — and you are not supposed to be.

But your people? The ones who are waiting for you to show up and help them heal? They need that part of you. The exact part someone else called too much. The exact part that made you shrink.

What Parts of You Have Been Labeled the Problem?

For me, it's my mouth.

I speak truth. Sometimes it needs a little tone development, I'll be honest. But my intention is never to hurt. It's to be heard.

In the counseling room, I'll say: I'm about to say something you may not want to hear, but I think you need to. And the longer I work with someone, the more they come to depend on that — on someone who will say the thing nobody else will say, not to wound them, but to actually help them move.

Most of the time, what I'm saying is: stop keeping yourself small.

So I'll ask you the same thing I ask myself: what parts of you have been labeled as the problem?

And then: whose problem is it really? Because sometimes when those parts of us show up, they don't create problems — they just hold up a mirror. And that makes people uncomfortable. That's their work to do, not yours.

What If Your Nervous System Isn't Broken?

One of the most important shifts I've made in the last year is this:

I stopped shaming my body for its will to survive.

For most of my life, I was pushing. Going and going and going — and then collapsing. I used to plan a sick day into every vacation because I knew when I finally stopped, I'd be flat on my back with a migraine. My body was shocked by the stillness.

When I started somatic experiencing training, I thought I had body awareness. What I actually had was body adaptation. I was ignoring pain. Ignoring fatigue. Ignoring every signal my body was sending because I was too busy looking functional on the outside.

I've been on a health journey for five years now — functional medicine, neurofeedback, addressing root causes rather than symptoms. And a lot of that journey has been undoing years of pushing my body past what it could hold.

What helped me most wasn't a protocol or a supplement. It was a shift in how I talk to my own body.

Instead of why are you doing this to me, it became: thank you for trying to protect me.

Because that's all it was ever doing. That's all your nervous system is doing, too.

So what if it isn't broken?

What if it's just asking for a different environment?

You're Not a Weed

This podcast — the Brain Dump — isn't about convincing you of anything. It's about understanding you.

You may be too much for some people. You may not be enough for others. But those aren't your people.

Your people need exactly who you are. The full version. The unfiltered, adaptive, resilient, thriving-in-poor-conditions version.

A weed and a flower are the same plant. The only difference is who's looking.

And I'm looking at you — and I see a flower.

Connect With Me:

Listen to this episode here: Brain Dump Podcast on Buzzsprout

Connect with Sandy through: Foothold Counseling | Sandy Boone Coaching and Consulting | Instagram & Facebook

Until next time...take care of yourself. Be kind to those around you. And know that you are not alone.