It’s a spiral…
I cannot begin to count the times, or variation of ways, one of my clients has said to me:
Didn’t I already work on this?
But we’ve already talked about this.
I should be over it.
I worry bringing this up AGAIN cause I am think you will be frustrated with me!
Why is this still a problem?
I thought I made so much progress until ___.
Why do I still feel like this?
I just took 100 steps backwards!
I also cannot count the times that I have said similar things to myself on my own healing
path.
I remember the first time this frustration really hit me. I had found a yoga teacher
training that became even more so about my own self-learning and growth then it did
about the yoga. I was feeling confident in myself and all the ways I was growing until it
hit me. A situation I encountered hit a “wound” that I had done so much work on. It took
me out at the knees. Although I knew that specific wound ran deep, I felt defeated. Why
was this hitting so hard?! I thought I was over it!
I was sharing a frustration with a friend, and she said, “oh honey, it’s an onion.” This
stopped me in my tracks. It felt both true and confusing all in the same moment. She
explained that some wounds are deep enough, we peel layers of them over time. This
clicked for me. As much as I hated it.
I would come back to the onion every time it felt like I had taken steps backward. Every
time a wound blocked my ability to see any progress I had made. And I was so grateful
for this analogy because it turned out that I wasn’t the only one with an onion. Or a field
of them. That description quickly became a standard for me in my work as a counselor.
Helping my clients understand that although in the moment it felt like no progress was
made (or progress was lost)….it was still there. They were just peeling more layers.
When I was designing the logo for River Rose, I was not finding anything that felt right.
Then one day a spiral walked into my world and everything in me said “YES THAT’S
IT.” My rose became a spiral that weaved its way into a river. And as I was reading
about spirals and their significance, the onion transformed.
Spiral means “winding in a continuous and gradually widening (or tightening) curve,
either around a central point on a flat plane or about an axis so as to form a cone.” It
can symbolize life, evolution, growth, development, rebirth.
Man, oh man if this isn’t exactly what is happening on a healing journey. Just like the
onion peeling layers, a spiral is taking us deeper into something. Giving us the
opportunity to come back to something over and over so that we can know it
completely.
I know it feels like you are “back to the same old place.” Or talking “again about this
thing that you really should be over by now.”
You might be in a familiar place. But I promise you that you are experiencing something
familiar as a new person, in a slightly different way. Noticing new things about it.
Learning even more about yourself and the world.
We are all on a path somewhere. Inward or outward bound. Maybe both. And we grow,
evolve, and develop with each step. When we come around the curve to a familiar
bend, we are still on a different part of the path in a new place. My hope is that the spiral
(or even the onion) can be a reminder that you ARE moving forward. Even if it doesn’t
feel like it.