The Pine Tree and the Permission to Imagine

I didn’t grow up in a world where imagination was encouraged.

We weren’t given storybooks or dolls. Play was allowed, but only when the work was done, and even then, it was often structured, supervised, and brief. We were raised to be responsible — to train our minds, discipline our bodies, and serve the group.

But in the yard of Timothy’s House, there was a pine tree that changed everything.

Solomon and I claimed it as our own — a tall Eastern White Pine with branches soft and tiered like steps into the sky. That tree became our kingdom. Moss-covered trails turned into secret passageways. Waterfalls and castles lived in the folds of our minds. We ruled a world only we could see. It wasn’t rebellion. It was something gentler. Something truer. It was becoming.

That tree gave me something I didn’t yet have language for — permission to imagine. Permission to create something beyond what had been handed to me.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was building the muscles I would need later:

To dream while standing in a reality I didn’t choose.

To make beauty with my own hands.

To name what I longed for, even if I couldn’t yet reach it.

We talk a lot about the power of imagination for children. But what about women? What about the woman who knows she was made for more, but feels too weighed down to dream? What about the mother who’s tired of performing and longs to simply be? What about the entrepreneur building something from scratch, still wondering if it’s allowed to feel like play?

This is your reminder that imagination isn’t childish. It’s creative resistance.

It’s the first spark of vision.

And it might be the key to writing the life you were meant to live.

-Jasmine