Beautiful?
I saw some beautiful white flowers this morning. They looked wonderful with the pink of the roses and the purple of the balloon flowers.
Unfortunately, as pretty as they were, they had to go. Wild morning glory. Completely infesting the flower bed. Vines were tangled around the beauty bush and rose bush. The roots are spread throughout the bed and into the surrounding grass, linked together in tangled strings and never going where one thought they should.
It took an hour for a 3x5 (or so) bed, and I still didn't get quite all of it (that's above ground). As I was pulling and digging, I thought this was a great analogy for the therapy process.
Most of us have things in our lives that look ok or even pretty good. But in reality, they are weeds, bad habits of inattention, of idolizing our stuff, of defensiveness, and/or of hiding our true self from others. And, for most of us, the roots go deep and they spread, connecting all the parts of our lives though remaining largely unseen.
But at some point those things take over, choking out the real beauty in our lives.
The process of weeding requires time. It's harder when the weeds have been growing too long, not to mention getting watered. Sometimes some innocent flowers get damaged in the process, as hard as we try to be gentle. But the end result is a bed ready to let the "good" plants grow.
Like morning glory roots, the roots of our problems - mental illness, trauma, negative life experiences - never quite go away.
(That is, not without completely digging up the bed, including all the good stuff. In human lives we don't really want to go that far. We believe even "bad" stuff in our lives can turn out something good somehow.)
But keeping on top of our weeding job makes the process easier and quicker each time. And the result is quite satisfying.
Need help getting ahead of your morning glories? Like any good hard work, it's best done with trusted companions. We love to weed and help you turn out something beautiful. Give us
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