I was pruning my roses this morning and got thinking of how pruning roses is like healing. At first there is a bundle of vicious stems with dead flowers on the end, but as we work through them it is easier to see where to cut and also how to get the stems out without being hurt too much. But then every so often there, as the rose bush being comes more sparse, a thorn gets us without being prepared for it.
I was more careful with the bush that has loads of little spikes on it than the one with sparsely placed larger thorns. And yet it was the larger thorns that caused more damage to my hands then the little ones because I was not taking so much notice. Again I think a great analogy with healing. We can often be more careful with the issues we think are going to be painful and then get side-winded by the ones that we thought would be easy to deal with.
So I would say to anyone who is starting on the journey of dealing with their trauma, issues, hurts and pains, that to being with it will be hard, and you will get side-winded at times when you thought you could deal with this, but it does get easier as time goes on.
Also come the summer, because I have pruned now, I will have a lovely flowering of the most gorgeous roses. I am noticing as I do more QEC, both with my practitioner and on my own, the “flowers” that are blooming in my “garden” are so much better than the ones I had without the pruning.
Oh and another analogy – I didn’t plant the roses in my garden. They were planted by the previous occupiers, or even before them. Lots of the traumas and issues we have to deal with are not necessarily ones we planted but were planted by our parents, by their parents into their soil, by people who passed through our early lives, things that happened to us. But it is us that have to deal with them now so our garden grows more fully.
The tools are in our “sheds”. We can do this.
Aspirational Adventures 