Family Issues Archives

Transitions and Growth
By Nancy Miller, Ph.D.

Easter, Passover, Spring... it's that time of year for reflecting on your values, your beliefs, and your heritage, whatever your religious and cultural affiliations may be. Spring is the time for planting new seeds, and of seeing the return and growth of seeds planted one or many years ago. It's a good metaphor for thinking about your own growth - for the renewal of some of the seeds of your own lives that may have been lying dormant, and for the planting of some new seeds to nurture and grow.

When you are the parent of a child with special needs, your own needs and interests often tend to go underground and lie dormant for a while. Sometimes it's by necessity - there may simply be too many urgent demands for medical and other interventions for your child, too many needs of other family members, too many work demands. Sometimes your own needs may simply get neglected because they don't seem so important any more, or you are too fatigued, or depressed, or distracted to pay much attention to your own interests and talents. Sometimes activities such as working on a hobby, or reading a novel, or playing the piano may seem like "trivial pursuits" that feel selfish.

On New Year's Eve a lot of us make resolutions about how "this year is going to be different..." About this time of year, most of our resolutions have been forgotten or abandoned. Spring is the perfect time to begin again! The trees are beginning to come to life again, with especially exuberant blossoms after the heavy rains this year. Maybe there's a message in that, too: sometimes the heavy storms and prolonged rains of our own lives create something new in us that may never have developed otherwise.

Consider your own growth, your interests and talents that may be lying dormant. Are there interests you've stuffed into a closet, projects that are packed into a drawer, piles of books you never have time to read? Are there places you haven't been in a while - a hiking trail, a museum, a cafe with delicious muffins somewhere?

Think about the changes your personal "El Nino" storms have planted in you: maybe you are ready to try something you have never done before: painting, or writing, or dancing, or learning to play a musical instrument. Some of our best creative energies evolve from feelings of loss and grief. Some of the most profound music ever written and greatest painting put on canvas would not have happened without life changing events that required seeing the seasons of life in whole new ways.

As I write this, I'm sitting by a window where a birds' nest was built several years ago under a rafter just outside. There is a lot of clattering going on right now, as the nest is being remodeled by a crew of busy sparrows. Every spring we watch them renew their nesting traditions, and it is always a reminder of the wonders of spring, and the rebuilding and renewal of the seasons of our own lives.

The trees are blooming, the perennials are budding, the grass is growing.

What are you doing this spring?

 

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