Circularity of Humanity
I think about the reasons a lot. As a therapist - creative psychotherapist - I see reasons as an essence, sometimes the core of my therapeutic work with clients. It's more often than not that reasons are the roots of a rather painful growth. Reasons to be cheerful are not what we dwell on naturally in my work space.
It's the reasons to be cheerful that often need to be looked at as little seeds. Seeds in need of careful planting and tending to, and watering, and nurturing. Seeds for which the ground needs to be prepared - balanced and ready. They need watched; they need listened to; given attention required to facilitate the growth - to become a believable thing. A thing. That thing we want them to be.
Ah, I wanted to write about something else. But this needed put down for a certain - although maybe slightly illogical or rather, in-obvious context.
I have become a therapist, as many do, following a personal series of events; rather unfortunate ones, as I saw them at a time. I became - trained or trained myself to be a therapist to attend to others with care and caution. With the same care and caution I've been taught and warmly advised, maybe warned even - to look after myself. I cherished my work, it gave me strength, it gave me purpose (yep!) and inspiration. Every stone I found became a symbol; every shadow forming by the undergrowth - a reference, a reflection - a thought stored for later. I started looking at the world and all I could see was helpful. The world became a library of references, my wisdom to be shared in the therapy room. Operating on the symbolic and image level as an art therapist, nothing seemed to be more universal than what can be found outside. Nothing more relatable, beautiful yet plain and common. Cycles of life and death; strength and weakness; blooming and decay; fluidity and friability. Where better to look for it all. I grew my garden, and my garden helped me to grow. How ordinary.
Oh wait. I then had to move and abandon, just before the harvest, the first ever fruit I grew from seed. The unfortunately fortunate, profoundly frustrating yet hugely formative events followed. As they tend to do. Added to the growing in-grattitude list.
I have become a mother. To become one, I had to leave behind a few more gardens I was tending to. When it's planned, it becomes a part of the process and as such is much easier to handle. At the same time planting and tending to the seed and it's needs became more real than ever before.
Just yesterday, I have become a therapist again. And something surfaced. Something became clear. Circularity of women's engagement in the world is what has finally made sense. The rhythm. The design. So many of the processes I went through in my life so far had a circular nature. Spiral nature. Spinning nature. Re-doing, unavoidable returns, re-learning. Not so much the strict repentition, as each re-acting brings the newness in. At the bottom of it all - the cycle. The cyclical nature of the feminine. Or maybe just human.
I now take much more notice of the organic nature of our structures, the schemes I look for in my life with no shame. Striving for support. Transferability and applicability of lived and observed. And finally, the true meaning and deeper understanding of the good enough mother (thanks Winnicott). Mother re-applying her mothering without repetition. Giving in to the most faintest of intuitive clues (probably loosely rooted in the depths of the shared experiences, somewhere in the stores of the collective unconscious). With that reason to be cheerful, at the core of it - the watch I can keep over the healthy growth.
*I now work at the Self Space, London as a Creative Therapist and continue to mother - with a prospect of home-educating. How will I handle it all? Well, it will all fall into place.
Polly Miskiewicz