Coming Up Roses
I've had time to bloom and I'm planting them roses instead. I'm changing my tune from when I said...
Witches, evil queens, good wives + lion cubs,
Some people find patterns in numbers, but that’s never been interesting to me. Instead, I find them everywhere else — in art, in behavior, and in the things people don’t say.
Qualitative pattern recognition is an incredibly useful skill that gets you absolutely nowhere in a society that values compliance over creativity. In practice, it’s quiet, lonely, and exhausting — but it’s just the way my neurocomplex brain works.
My theory? It’s why all the poets end up hiding out by lakes and in gardens.
Welcome Back to Summah Camp!
A weekly storytelling series about healing, remembering, and rewriting our lives through pattern recognition and myth-making. If you’re new, start with the syllabus then choose your own adventure.
I’m the Mahvelous Ms. B — former teacher, current human. I’ll be your tour guide this season as we journey through the deep end together.
This week’s episode is The Pattern. Let’s dive in. ⬇️⬇️⬇️
Girl, Myth, Legend
Growing up, my father shared his internal world with me often. He was a burnt-out poet trapped in the body of a tax accountant, so he didn’t always have the words for it. We mostly just laid around listening to music, watching movies and talking about books.
One of our favorite movies to watch together was Big Fish. It explores the legend of Edward Bloom, a larger-than-life storyteller whose fantastical tales blur the line between truth and myth. As Edward’s son tries to separate fact from fiction, he realizes the real magic lives in the storytelling itself.
My father was a lot like Edward Bloom and he got my myth started early.
Gypsy Rose Lee
It begins in daycare. Allegedly, I used to rip off all my clothes and scream during nap time — every time. The solution? Laugh at the baby and nickname her after a stripper!
Gypsy Rose Lee was a Depression-era burlesque star known for her wit, control, and perfectly timed striptease. She inspired the 1962 musical Gypsy, and though I’ve never seen it, it’s become a defining part of my personality. I most recently ripped off all my clothes and screamed to make a point on March 9th.
Ms. Rose Lee’s life was a tale of survival disguised as spectacle. Through it, she turned performance into power and reclaimed her narrative against all odds.
Rose Dawson
By kindergarten, I didn’t really want to identify with a stripper anymore, so I found a new Rose. For an entire year, I came home every single day and watched the Titanic. I wanted to be Rose Dawson more than anything.
I think it’s because all I’ve ever wanted is for someone to tell me it’s okay to be myself. Jack never tried to fix Rose or shame her for being larger than life. He saw her fully, in all of her fire and frustration, and made sure she knew she was enough.
So when he went down with that ship, she rose up like the tide — carrying with her the memory of someone who believed she could do anything. And because of that, she did. She built a big, wild, beautiful life in his honor.
That’s what always stuck with me. Not the tragedy, but the choice to keep going. To live fully. To have hope anyways.
Kesha Rose
Though fictional, Rose Dawson represents a long lineage of wild and free women who’ve chosen differently for themselves. Just like Kesha, my role model since 2010.
Do you remember when she dropped the dollar sign and changed her name to Kesha Rose for a little bit? Because I sure do. It was the moment she finally took control over her story — on her terms, in her voice, and no longer for anyone else’s comfort.
Releasing Praying in 2017 was more than just a comeback, it was a strategic power move. After years of legal battles with her former producer over abuse allegations, Kesha rose from silence to sing her truth.
And in doing so, she set herself free, leaving behind a blueprint for anyone else ready to do the same. Sound familiar?
“Picked Like A Rose.”
If you can’t tell by the women I’ve highlighted so far, there’s nothing I love more than a party girl who’s smarter than you and knows it.
Clara Bow was one of them. She was a 1920s silent film star whose fame skyrocketed after becoming Hollywood’s original “It Girl.” Known as a working-class outsider, Clara refused to hide her accent, her opinions, or her desire to live freely in a world that demanded silence from women.
Despite her charisma and impact, the industry cast Clara aside by her early thirties. They painted her as unstable and irrelevant, erasing her from the spotlight she helped define.
Taylor Swift, fearless leader of the burnt-out poets, didn’t just tell Clara’s story — she inherited it, then rewrote the ending in real time. By using the Eras Tour to canonize her life’s work, she safeguarded herself from the irrelevance Clara once faced.
Taylor reclaimed her power for herself, for Clara, and for every woman ready for a new framework.
Girl, Myth, Legend — Part 2
Just like in kindergarten, when I picked Rose Dawson over a stripper, I chose differently this December, too. After 33 years of explaining myself to people committed to misunderstanding me, I stopped and started building a life grounded in truth instead.
Through my healing journey, I’ve learned the only person I ever needed to convince was myself. Once that clicked, everything shifted. All it took was a million little patterns and this lyric:
I've had time to bloom and I'm planting them roses instead. I'm changing my tune from when I said, ‘If I die young, bury me in satin…’
— If I Die Young, Pt 2 x The Band Perry
Nothing hits like a confident reprise, am I right? I started digging through twenty years of notebooks and napkins — all the musings I wrote while living out endings that were never mine. They were inherited through silence, survival, and a long line of women who weren’t able to choose themselves.
It was messy, but it provided a beautiful gift: The space to start again, on my own terms. Now, from solid ground, I love myself enough to write new endings. Ones rooted in softness, guided by vision, and made with choice.
It feels a lot like the end of two decades and the start of an age.
To me, this is the power of pattern recognition. It’s not just noticing what repeats, it’s choosing to break the cycle once you do. It’s remixing your life into something free, beautiful, and fully your own.
Call it a delusion if you must, but I call it remembering who I was before the world told me who to be. We’ll talk more about that next week. As always, take what resonates and leave the rest!
<3 The Mahvelous Ms. B
PS. Click here for this week’s mixtape. I never promised you a rose garden, but I can teach you how to build your own —
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