Let’s Talk  1. Here comes the sun

“Little darling It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter. Little darling
it feels like years since it’s been here”.                                                                                    George Harrison

      Spring is on its way again. Flowers are beginning to shoot and penetrate the surface after a long cold and hard winter underground – waiting patiently to re-enter into the ‘upper world’. Plants that have not completely weathered the storm below ground are beginning in readiness to grow. “The wheel is come full circle, I am here”. Things are of their time and conditions are right. Re-birth!

      Flowers and plants, if they could at all, might not characterise their situation this way. Not wanting to seem unduly pre-supposing in speaking for all plants – I imagine the plant’s take on this would be that a period underground is an integral and therefore a no less important and essential part of the life-cycle as a flower ‘concluding’ in a beautiful bloom.

      We as human beings strive for the light. Its attainment, or something along that continuum, is commonly called happiness, contentment, fulfilment, balance – we strive to be in tune with ourselves and the world we live in. However, our life situations often force us underground, lay us low and take us down into a period of uncertainty and apparent cold. We can feel lifeless, isolated from others and ourselves. We lack the Joie de vivre that should reflect the fullness of our existence.

      Clients, towards the end of counselling, will often mention that, painful though it was, they have come to gain an understanding and acceptance of 

the ‘cruel winter months’ as being a necessary pre-condition for coming out the other side. This is also accompanied by an underlying realisation that, 

contrary to appearance, positive movement was in fact present and that movement can often feel dormant because it is so incremental.

       In counselling it is the role of the counsellor to facilitate creation of the right conditions to enable the client to begin to realise the possibility of 

re-emergence from the dark and uncertainty.  This hope, initially located on the periphery of awareness is drawn intuitively towards the light.

      The corollary to the plant allegory, then, is that we ought, perhaps, to learn to take a more amenable and accepting prognosis towards what 

the psychological winter might represent or symbolise. This perspective allows the darkness in as an integral and no less important part of our growth 

and therefore essential for signalling change and making ready for the light.