She Was Always the Toughest on Me

My mom has been hard on me my whole life.

Not cruel. Not cold. Just — unwilling to let me be less than I was capable of. She saw something in me before I could see it in myself, and she refused to look away from it, even when I wanted her to.

Growing up, I didn't always understand it. I wanted softness. I wanted someone to tell me it was fine, that I could stop, that good enough was good enough. She never said that. Not once in 37 years.

What she said instead was: you can be whoever and whatever you want to be. And then she stepped back and let that be entirely my choice.

I chose San Francisco. Then Portland. I put 2,000 miles between us and stayed there for twelve years. I made a million decisions she probably disagreed with and never said a word about. She just kept showing up — in phone calls, in wisdom I didn't ask for but needed, in a kind of love that doesn't flinch.

I've been thinking lately about how nature works the same way.

The sun doesn't apologize for being relentless. The wind doesn't soften itself because you're tired. The storm comes whether you're ready or not. And if you're new to growing things — new to listening to the land — it can feel like punishment. Like the world is against you.

But if you stay. If you're patient. If you actually listen —

You start to see it differently. The hard freeze that felt like loss was protecting the roots. The dry spell that felt like abandonment was building depth. The storm that knocked everything sideways was making room for what needed to grow next.

Nature had a plan. She always does.

My mom had a plan too. I just had to live long enough, and wander far enough, and come home changed enough to finally see it.

I came back to Georgia. I started Hamilton Farms. I put my hands in the dirt and learned to grow things, and somewhere in that process I heard my mother's voice in everything — in the patience it takes to wait for a bloom, in the faith it takes to plant something you won't see for months, in the way beauty doesn't announce itself. It just arrives, quietly, when the conditions are finally right.

She told me I could be whoever I wanted to be.

I wanted to be this.

This Mother's Day, every arrangement I cut is an act of gratitude — for the women who were tough when it was easier to be soft, who believed when it cost them something, who loved without making it small.

If your mom is one of those women, she deserves flowers that were grown the same way she loved you —

patiently, intentionally, from something real.

Preorders close Wednesday, May 6 at 6pm. 50 bouquets. Order your mama one here.

— Courtney