Stop Waiting: What Five Generations of Flower Women Taught Me About Courage

I started my business the night I couldn't sleep.

I had just survived a stroke. I was days away from turning forty-three, and my daughter, Iris, two and a half years old, was curled against me in the dark. I looked at her face and saw generations looking back at me. Her grandfather's almond eyes. Her father's deep blue. A tinge of green that belongs to me and to my grandmother Fern.

And I heard my mother's voice. She had flown to my side after the stroke, sat with me, and said simply: Stop waiting. Life is too short.

So I stopped waiting.

I Come From Strong Women

My great-grandmother Lily left Norway and planted her family in Minnesota soil. Her daughter, Fern, raised my father alone after losing her husband when he was just six years old. She never remarried. She brushed my hair fifty strokes every night and took me with her to bring groceries to families in need. She taught me that strength and gentleness are not opposites.

My grandmother Opal Rose built planes at Lockheed in an era when women weren't supposed to. She was formidable, no-nonsense, and deeply faithful.

My mother, Barbara, spent 45 years in government technology. She earned her IT degree when very few women entered the field and went on to help implement vital-records systems used across the country. She also makes beautiful things with her hands.

Lily. Fern. Rose. Heather. And now Iris. I call us the flower women. None of them had it easy. Every one of them showed up anyway.

I Didn't Know I Was Being Prepared

My path has never looked like a straight line. I started in state government supporting school nutrition programs. Then I trained at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center and walked into a medium-high-security men's prison with the U.S. Department of Justice. It was a world built mostly by and for men. I served on the unit team, the command center team, and as the facility's conflict resolution officer. I learned to stay calm when nothing around me was, and to earn respect through consistency rather than volume.

Reading inmate case files, I kept seeing the same story: men whose trauma began when they were boys. That never left me.

From there, I worked in real estate, then managed a psychotherapy practice. Then I became a mother. At the time, each turn felt random. Looking back, none of them were. God doesn't waste a single season.

Today, I'm a full-time Behavioral Sciences student at Grand Canyon University, focusing on trauma and forensic psychology. My research has explored how childhood bullying connects to violence later in life because I want to help reach children before they end up in the places I once worked. And I'm the founder of Iris & Earth Market & Boutique, where I make handcrafted soaps, sponges, and stone vessel candles in St. Cloud, Minnesota, on the same earth Lily walked over a hundred years ago.

What I Want You to Know

You are not too late. I went back to school in my forties, as a mom, after a stroke. If you're waiting for the perfect moment, I promise you it isn't coming. The right time is the one you're standing in.

Your detours are your training. The prison taught me composure. Real estate taught me systems. The therapy practice taught me how healing actually works. Nothing you've lived through is wasted if you let it shape you.

Rest is not quitting. I live with a chronic illness, and some days my body sets the pace. There have been seasons when I had to step back to protect my health and my family. Wisdom sometimes looks like rest. Faith doesn't wait for perfect health. It moves with what you have, and the calling doesn't disappear while you heal.

You are carrying more than you know. Somewhere behind you is a woman who survived something hard so you could be here. Her strength is already in you. So is God's.

It Was Always for Her

I fought for Iris before she was born. I lost babies to bring her here. And the night my body reminded me that time is not guaranteed, I chose to build something that would outlast me. Something for her, and for every woman who came before her.

Whatever you've been putting off—the business, the degree, the hard conversation, the fresh start—let this be your sign. The women who came before you already showed up.

Now it's your turn. Stop waiting.

Heather Sommers is the founder of Iris & Earth Market & Boutique in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a Behavioral Sciences student at Grand Canyon University, and the writer behind The Flower Women on Substack.