Grow Like a Palm Tree: Staying Creative in Uncertain Times

One of my favorite accounts on TikTok is devoted to gratitude (@today.iam.grateful).

In every video, the idea is something simple is highlighted and then he goes says why he’s grateful for it. It's really inspiring.

One day it was palm trees. And I stopped and saved that clip because…same.

I live in a place where palm trees are abundant. They aren’t rare or anything. Hardly anyone finds anything interesting about them. But the more I looked at them, the more I realized they represent a metaphor for creative life.

Palm trees are technically trees in common language — but botanically, they’re different from what we traditionally think of as “trees.”

So they don’t grow like most trees. They don’t form thick, intricate branching canopies the way oaks or maple trees do. Many palms are classified as monocots, closer to large woody herbs.

Most palms grow from a single trunk, straight upward, with leaves emerging only at the crown.

And my favorite palm tree fact is that they don’t grow in rings like other trees. You can’t cut one open and count its years.

Their growth isn’t measured in visible circles and they follow a different blueprint (but they still stand tall just the same)

And then there’s the surviving hurricanes thing.

Palm trees are famously resilient in storms because they are flexible. Their trunks are fibrous rather than brittle. Their root systems spread wide and shallow instead of anchoring deep in one central point, which allows them to absorb movement instead of snapping under pressure.

Yes they can and will bend, but they are quite sturdy. In Florida, we watch them during storm season. They always look like they’re about to collapse. And then the wind passes, yet they’re still standing.

This creative reprogramming is about learning how to stay rooted without becoming rigid.

Palm trees also don’t try to grow like pine trees. They don’t apologize for being tall and sparse and tropical.

That’s the part that stays with me.

Your creative ecosystem shapes you. Your background and approaches (whatever it is) whether it’s commercial design, crafting, junk journaling, hand-drawn fine art work, digital art, traditional materials, etc — when they begin to connect, they become your trunk.

The current season of your style sits at the top like fronds in the sun and those fronds will change as time passes.

Like a palm tree, growth sometimes it looks like rising upward, shedding what no longer serves you, bending when you have to, and trusting the structure you’ve already built.

I like to recognize the things that show you just how expansive everything truly is and lately, for me, it’s palm trees.

If this made you see palm trees through a creative lens, I actually turned this little metaphor into a palm tree sticker, a lil something you can “plant” inside your journal as a reminder to bend, rise, and trust your own blueprint.

You can find it here on Redbubble.

Sometimes we just need a small visual anchor to remember what we’re growing toward, even in uncertain, strange times. 🌴