A Primer on Growth

“To see things in the seed, that is genius”
— Lao Tzu

There is an energy and hopefulness that goes with early spring. There is a color green that defies description because it isn’t just one color: it is all shades of green depending upon the light that shines through it. Yesterday I was sitting outside, looking up into the treetops—with their newly born leaves—a translucent pale green—and marveling at the leaves. The color green that’s not just green. But green plus light. Or green plus shadow. Or layers of these lights and shadows.

I began to think about how trees breathe in our carbon dioxide—the thing we breathe out—and as I looked up into the high grey branches of the huge Beech tree –with it’s small, emerging leaves I decided to intentionally breathe out to it—and then breathe in the fresh oxygen it was sending to me. I did this a few times when it occurred to me that I could do this and think of it almost as a game of catch. I would throw carbon dioxide up to its leaves and it would catch it, and then it would send oxygen back and I would catch it. This is perhaps the most fun I have had with a deep breathing exercise. Meditation and breathing exercises can seem so serious and austere. But playing catch—now that’s fun. If you can’t get outside—try a houseplant!

There is something about the green of spring that is so all encompassing. Where everything seems brand new. Where things are tender. Vulnerable. Unfolding. It’s not that these things aren’t happening during other parts of the year across the growing season—but in Spring it’s not a solo act, it’s a symphony. With each bit of growth and each bit of green playing their unique part so that the harmony surrounds you.

When I work with groups, I often have them begin using an old favorite introduction or check-in from my Girl Scout days: Rose-Thorn-Bud. You introduce yourself with your rose (something that going well, that’s in full bloom, that you are happy about or proud of); your thorn (something that’s hard right now, uncomfortable, not going well); and bud (something that’s new, that’s emerging, that is just appearing). Sitting outside yesterday looking at all that green reminded me of the introductions. Reminded me of how that question about the ‘bud’ is the one that most people find most difficult. They can usually find their rose and their thorn. But they struggle with what is new.

I don’t believe it’s because there aren’t new things in their lives but rather because our brains and sensory systems are overtrained to see a finished task or things in their full glory. We aren’t as good at seeing the tender shoots and we certainly aren’t as good at honoring or being excited about them. Spring has often been associated with the ritual of cleaning and getting rid of what is old. But Spring is also the time of year that can teach us best to see what is growing. What has just arrived. What is barely emerging.

What I know from my years of gardening is that new shoots need protection. They don’t like extremes of temperature or wind. They have particular needs. And they have their own timing. The new things that are beginning in our lives need much the same thing. Our new ability to listen and not interrupt. Or our new ability to slow down and be still. Our new ability to ask for help or do it ourselves. Our new ability to sit with ambiguity. To say no. To say yes. To say, ‘I don’t know.” Our new things need attention, protection, and more care than we usually give them. But they often need a different attention or care than we use on our more practiced abilities or our difficult habits. They need us to be softer, kinder and more patient. They wither under scrutiny or criticism. What you need to do with the tender shoots in your lives is what I did with my seedlings when I was growing flowers from seed: you need to greet them each morning with hopefulness and excitement. With a hearty welcome and a “I’m so glad you are here!” If you want to have roses in your life—then not only do you have to tolerate some thorns—you have to look on your seedlings with love and nurture them as best you can.

 © 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

First You Build Wings

When I was a little kid, and we would visit my grandmother in Maryland, we would sleep on mattresses on the floor in the workshop of her husband, Aubrey. He had this passion project of building an airplane out of wood and he had turned one of the bedrooms in the townhouse into a woodshop. On one side of the room was a workbench, neat and tidy with the tools on a pegboard. And the entire other wall was pegboard where dozens of pieces were hanging that would eventually become wings. There were tiny pieces that were glued together. And then pieces made up of those pieces and so on. If you looked at the whole wall you could kind of discern the progression—how he started with the smallest pieces and built each section—that eventually made up an even larger section. Delicate curved pieces that would eventually create something strong enough to fly.

Piece by piece and section by section is also how you heal from trauma. You say one small brave thing and then another. You try one small thing that frightened you and then another. The words feel so small. The actions seem small. Because the feelings and memories feel big. Too big to hold or describe. Too big to make sense to anyone else. So you take a deep breath and you do the small thing that you can do. And you do it again and again.

And that’s how you build wings. Whether they are for a hand-crafted airplane—or the wings you are finally using for yourself. Wings that allow you to get some distance from your trauma—have some perspective as you look at it. Wings that help you begin to move across the span of time. Wings that help you begin to inhabit your life—a life that is more than your trauma.

The wings of the airplane took a very long time. I think I was in high school by the time they were mostly complete. And I think the wings I have built as I have been healing have taken a really long time too. But I can feel them, and I am grateful. Which is why it can feel so discouraging or disorienting to feel like you are starting over with small pieces again. Which is exactly what was required when Aubrey began building the body of the plane. Once again small pieces glued to other small pieces appeared on the pegboard.

As a therapist or a coach I so often hear, “But I already worked on that,” or “I already talked about that.” There is such frustration with the idea that there is more healing to be had in relation to something that was hard. That an old wound is sore—and maybe ready to heal in a different way. And as a client I have said or felt the same thing. It can feel like you are starting over. Or that you’re in some trauma healing version of a kid’s game where you have to go all the way back to start. It feels like you did something wrong—or that you didn’t do it right the first time. But this new phase of healing is actually a milestone. It’s not a failure. It’s an achievement. It’s hard to see that the wings you built with your hard work and persistence are exactly the reason you can do the work that you need to do today.

You had to build the wings first. And now you get to build the body. To take on the central part of your story. Your trauma. To more fully build the place that will hold you. To more fully understand what is at the core. To more fully inhabit all of yourself. Your trauma. Your healing. Your growth. And building the core will look and feel a lot like building the wings. Small brave conversation after small brave conversation. Small piece connected to another small piece. Patiently waiting while the glue dries. Patiently putting the pieces together. You have to find a way to remind yourself that working with small pieces, often painful pieces, is a triumph. Now you get to build the body. But first you build wings.

© 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

The truth of where you are now

“What I do know is that it can help to find the words to tell the truth of where you are now. If you can find the courage to name “here”—especially in the place you do not wish to be—it can help you be there. Instead of resenting another’s words of gladness and pain, it may be possible to hear it as simply another location. They are there and I am here/ At another point, we will be in different location, and everybody will pass by many locations in their life. The pain is only deepened when the location is resented, or even worse, unnamed.”
— Padraig O Tuama

Trauma is disorienting and isolating. You often feel lost and alone. Which is perhaps why I have continually reached for the language of landscapes—nature—geography to describe my experience. I wanted a location. I wanted to feel solid ground under my feet. I wanted to be able to describe where I was so that maybe, just maybe, someone could find me. So that I could find myself.

Whenever I would try to talk to my therapist about my experience –to find words to describe my feelings—the image that first came to mind was the child’s game, “pin the tail on the donkey.” A game where you are blindfolded and holding a paper ‘tail’ in your hand. And you are spun around and around and then let go—dizzy—and unsure of your direction—and the task is to walk to the picture of the donkey on the wall and put the tail on in the right place. To make the donkey whole.

But that feeling of being spun around –unsure of my location or orientation—feeling wobbly and off-balance—that feeling is how I felt trying to talk about my experience of trauma or my feelings.

I often tried to solve the problem of my inner experience of ‘spun around’ the same way that one would try solving the problem in the actual game of ‘pin the tail on the donkey’—by pretending I was fine. In the game you do your best to walk confidently and sure-footedly—toward the donkey—even when you aren’t sure where it is because you can’t see. You try not to act as dizzy as you feel—and you work hard not to fall.

When I felt ‘spun around,’ instead of saying how I felt—instead of saying what was true—I would think about how I ‘should be feeling’ or how I ‘wished I was feeling.’  Which left me feeling far away from myself and far away from the help that was being offered. I knew how I felt on the inside, but I didn’t like it, and didn’t want to be there. And I didn’t feel like I could say it out loud. So, my attempts at talking only increased my feeling of being spun around.

And then one day I translated that feeling of ‘spun around’ and called it lost. The image I had was being in some landscape—a forest or above tree line—and being completely surrounded by fog. My therapist asked me to describe the feeling of lost. Asked me, ‘what if lost were a place?’

And in that one moment: I said something true. I said I didn’t know where I was. In saying where I was, even though where I was --was the very definition of being no where at all, I felt found. I felt understood. Describing the experience as lost—setting my experience in a landscape—tethered me to the present moment—even if I was talking about the past. It helped me feel connected to myself. It helped me feel the help I was getting.

And most importantly, I learned how to say what was true for me in the moment. Say one true thing. This became my healing mantra. It didn’t matter how small it was. One true statement: lost, tired, anxious, confused. Saying out loud that I didn’t know what to say. Saying that my mind was blank. Learning to say One True Thing was the equivalent of stopping the ‘pin the tail on the donkey’ game—taking off the blindfold and stopping forward motion. The world stopping spinning inside. I could get my bearings. Saying ‘one true thing’ meant I wasn’t lost anymore, even if I felt lost. It meant for a brief moment I knew exactly where I was—and could communicate that to someone else. From lost to found in an instant.

One true thing helps you heal from trauma in small, manageable increments. I have found that since the shift away from the pandemic back into our busier lives—people have needed a way to talk about their experience of stress and trauma during the past three years. So much of coping during the pandemic was focusing on how you wished things were happening or how you wished you felt. Lots of people I have been working with have had a hard time expressing what they actually felt. Or how to hold what happened—the bad—the good—the all-of-it. In organizations I have been having work teams talk with each other in small groups about what was hardest for them during the pandemic. What they lost and what they may have gained. And somewhere in there they get to say one true thing. And have that one true thing witnessed and heard. There is noticeable and palpable relief.

What if lost were a place? What is all of your inner experiences were landscapes to be explored or even astonished by? What if creating a map of your experience started simply with saying one true thing?

© 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD


Fracture|Fractal

“I want a word that means
okay and not okay,
more than that: a word that means
devastated and stunned with joy.
I want the word that says
I feel it all all at once.”
— Rosemerry Wahtohla Trommer

I, too, want a word that means okay and not okay. Because I am: okay and not okay. As many of you know, I usually write in metaphor. Especially when it comes to trauma. Finding words or for the inner experience of fragmenting or shattering can be hard—so I like to find images or experiences to expand the language or conversation. But today, uncharacteristically, I am stating a fact: I have actually fractured my legs. I broke both of them last week in a hiking accident. So, in that very real way of being hurt, and having my life turned upside down, I am not okay. This spring and possibly this year will not be what I planned. I am not able to do the things that usually bring me joy—like walking in the woods or working in my garden-- and I am not able to live my life in the way I was living it, in the places I was living it.

But I am also okay. There isn’t a lot of pain involved with my injuries and I am able to be as mobile as one can be with two broken legs. It’s not life-threatening—just an inconvenience. I have work that I enjoy and much of it can be done remotely. I am, as Ann Lamott would say, okay in every real and important way.

But fractal is the word that keeps coming to mind when I try to find a word that means okay and not okay—a word that means devastated and stunned with joy. fractal (n.) means "never-ending pattern," from French fractal from that has the same Latin root fractus as the word fracture.

Fractal is a word that begins as broken and somehow morphs into something resembling harmony. Fractal takes fracture and brings order to the pieces. Fractal says broken or seemingly disparate pieces are not only part of a whole, they are also part of a beautiful whole, they are part of an order. Fractals link the small and the big. They say both parts are necessary.

Mathematically-- Fractals have a dimension (D) between 1.3 and 1.5 which is the ratio of large coarse patters to smaller, fine ones. Examples of this in nature are a coastline to dunes, a trunk of trees to branches, and branches to leaves. Fractals are repeating patterns of things.

And my fractures have revealed the patterns, the fractals, the repeating patterns of protections and defenses I had used for so many years. Patterns I tried to change, but which hid below the surface always slightly out of view. The self-reliance. The inability to ask for or accept help. The need to keep my difficulties or work hidden. The patterns get revealed when there is a crack: when you can’t use them anymore.

Many of us saw our patterns more clearly during covid—our old coping strategies or routines were different. The ways we managed our work, or our stress simply weren’t available. You see your protections, your defenses most clearly when you suddenly can’t use them.

Many years ago a Nor’easter blew down the 6 foot cedar fence in front of my house. All 40 feet of it.  The grey fence lay there on the sidewalk like a wooden boardwalk and suddenly my house was in view of the road, cars rushing by, and I could see everything. It felt like I was living in a different house.

And today I am also living in a new house—literally and figuratively. But unlike in years past, I find myself more curious—kind of looking around and figuring out how to inhabit the new space—inside and out. My legs are braced and held by the support of casts. I have all sorts of supports for my legs to keep me as non-weight bearing as possible. But supporting my legs has meant support for me as a whole person—and I am being held—braced—contained-- by the kindness of family and friends. It is a different kind of cast—but it may be the one that heals what was most broken.

One of the original psychology writers, Michael Balint, talked about the kind of fractures that are unseen, and unhealed, but which drive so much of the way we live our lives and connect (or don’t) to others. He called this kind of fracture the basic fault. And his treatment for it, long before the relational theorists came to be, was to create an environment of care and connection. To not interfere. To trust the person to lean into support that was kind and non-judgmental. To create a container and let the person heal their fault.

But really, it’s not easy to heal these old fault lines. Especially in today’s busy and fast paced world. We get good at not doing or trying the things that would reveal that fracture. We don’t let the help or support or the light in. Those faults, those fences stay up. Until a Nor’easter blows them down. Until you fracture both your legs.

Until something cracks enough to let the light in—and you find yourself supported enough to heal what is shattered—inside and out.

© 2023 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD

For more poetry by Rosemerry Wahtohla Trommer visit her blog: A Hundred Falling Veils