Flowers Growing Toward the Light

By Dr. Lena Miller

I believe we can change the world for the better, because I was fortunate enough to have a childhood and life experiences that prepared me with grit, resilience, and the ability to manifest my visions. I grew up in one of the most notorious communities in San Francisco: Bayview - Hunters Point. While the community has a reputation for being violent and dangerous, when I was growing up, it was a very tight knit, working-class neighborhood that taught me the value of community, culture, and resilience. However, when the crack era hit the community, everyone was impacted. Much of the tight family structure eroded, and too many parents succumbed to addiction, leaving grandparents to raise the children. Many people lost their homes and began to fall into poverty and hopelessness. For many of my peers, selling drugs became one of the only viable sources of income, but it ultimately resulted in jail and death. I was fortunate enough to go to college, and I vowed to dedicate my life to heal some of the trauma my neighborhood had endured. I started a nonprofit to support my community, and last year, I was named one of the most influential people in San Francisco. 

My early experience and exposure to the unfairness and injustice in life taught me that when life gives you shit, your only choice is to use it as fertilizer. And you need to use that fertilizer to plant flowers that grow toward the light. That lesson has guided my entire career.

My primary role is CEO of Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit social enterprise that puts citizens returning from incarceration to work addressing homelessness and its related problems in America’s cities. Our team helps people struggling with addiction, mental health issues and the trauma of being cast aside by society.

I founded Urban Alchemy with my friend Bayron Wilson, also from Bayview Hunters Point, who went to prison for many years and came out with valuable skills and a dedication to making his community better. For him, that prison term was fertilizer. We realized we could use the flowers growing from the fertilizer of long-term incarceration to make San Francisco better. At the same time, we could offer jobs to people who struggle to find them but have unique, valuable skills.

Over the past seven years, we’ve grown faster than I could’ve imagined. We now have offices in Los Angeles, Portland, Austin and Birmingham. We run interim shelters, perform outreach to unhoused neighbors, operate community-based public safety programs, clean up the streets, and more. 

Part of the way we’ve grown so fast is by never forgetting where we came from. Many of our workers serve in the same neighborhoods they grew up in. We’ve built a culture that supports returning citizens and is centered on empathy and transformation. The reason we named the organization Urban Alchemy is because Alchemy of the Soul is a key part of what we do. We help our employees, guests and neighborhoods use adversity to transform into something better and stronger.

In the same way I grew from the fertilizer of Bayview-Hunters Point, Urban Alchemy has grown from the most challenged neighborhoods in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Our Practitioners have grown from incarceration, addiction, homelessness and mental illness. Unlike the perfect manicured roses grown in greenhouses, the flowers in our garden are a little scrappier, maybe less aesthetically pleasing, with little pieces missing that have been eaten away. But unlike those pristine greenhouse flowers, we know how to survive pests, poisons, droughts and floods. We aren’t perfect or manicured for mass consumption. We are real and resilient, and our beauty is in our thorns as well as our flowers. 

To me, resilience requires accepting life’s challenges. Rather than having a “woe is me” attitude, you need to analyze those challenges for lessons and opportunities. 

People ask me if being a woman has made my accomplishments more difficult. The truth is, it hasn’t. I shake off the challenges created by being a woman and embrace the opportunities. There are people who say women are more emotional. Maybe that’s true. But I choose to dwell in the emotions of determination and empathy.

When you’re in the muck, you have to keep growing toward the light. Focus on how you can use your challenges to grow, and take comfort that you are part of a beautiful garden that relies on interconnectivity, whose roots are buried deep. When one of us learns new ways to thrive, the whole garden emerges and blooms. While cut flowers in a vase represent ephemeral beauty, the garden offers more.

All of the lessons and patterns of life can be observed in the garden. Life is about connectivity, reciprocal relationships, and the ability to improvise and transform so that we can continue to evolve. Our struggles and adversity are what keep us growing and producing future generations. While cut flowers in a vase may delight the observer, the flowers in the garden enduring pests, the hot sun, floods and winds are a lot happier. They may be struggling, but they are alive. They are reaching toward the sunlight. After all, despite their beauty, the flowers in the vase are dead. As long as we are alive, we must keep reaching for the light! 

Connect With Dr. Lena

www.linkedin.com/in/lena-miller-30265b241