It is April, and the world is in full bloom here in Central Florida. It feels like everywhere you look, life is bursting at the seams. It is hard not to get inspired in this season. Spring is a great time for change. We clear out the old, open up the windows, and let life breathe a little. As you start your journey of change—whether that be a new journey of recovery or reimagining your existing program—consider some lessons that the season can teach us about change, growth, and flourishing.
What looks like an end can be a new beginning. This winter was cold by Florida standards, and if you look around this spring, you can tell. After three days with 20-degree temperatures, the landscape looked pretty barren. I assumed all my sad, brown plants were completely dead until a friend told me a neat trick—scratch the stems and look for the green. I went around from plant to plant, and sure enough, beneath all of the dead leaves were little sprouts of new life and green beneath the brown exterior. We don’t acknowledge it enough, but this is often what growth in recovery really looks like—it looks like death. We lose parts of ourselves when we choose to get clean and sober. We lose an identity. We lose friends. We lose access to parts of life that other people seemingly manage with ease. Admitting you need help means never being able to pretend you can “handle it” anymore. There is a grief and loss in this process that has to be acknowledged, but what looks like an ending is really making way for a fresh start. We just have to be patient, lean in, and look closely for the signs of new life to blossom.
Don’t get attached to the sunny weather. One of the biggest temptations when making any changes in life is to get too attached to the thrill of the new beginning. In recovery, just stopping your use can yield some pretty great immediate results. You sleep better, you feel better, your relationships start to mend, and your finances improve. Just by stopping use alone, your life gets a little brighter—and that is great. Some refer to this period as the “pink cloud,” when it feels like you are unstoppable in recovery. This is a lot like the early weeks of the spring season. Everything is bright and beautiful after a long, dark winter, and we feel unstoppable. But what inevitably happens when the weather shifts, when allergies hit, and when the rain sets in? If we hinge our recovery on the bright, shiny days when everyone is celebrating the great progress we have made, what happens when everything settles—when we have to live a sober life and no one is celebrating? Maintaining change in the long term requires the ability to stay with the process while surrendering the outcome. When the sun is shining, we enjoy it and celebrate. When the rain moves in, we learn to appreciate the rainy days, knowing that none of this is forever. The only constant in life is change, and staying clean and sober means embracing the whole season, not just the sunny days.
Change starts in the darkest times. If you have ever planted a garden, you understand that time works differently when you are a gardener. You go out in the cold months, when spring feels years away, and start taking the small steps to prepare for what is coming. You get the soil right, order the seeds, start the plants, and keep an eye on the forecast. When all the preparations are in place, you plant each delicate seed in the warming soil and hope for the best. This is what a good gardener does—they understand that you cannot wait for all conditions to be perfect before you start the process. The process of growth starts well before the sun is shining. When working with individuals considering starting the journey of recovery, I often hear all the reasons why now is not the right time to get clean and sober. I hear about a future in which they are going to stop, when they are going to get help, and when they are going to make the choice to change their lives. They are always waiting for the next thing. There is always a reason they can’t commit to recovery now. There is an important lesson in planning for change like a gardener: it starts in the darkest, coldest times. If we wait until the sun is shining, it can be too late for the plants to flourish before conditions change again. In recovery, waiting until conditions are right may come at the cost of your relationships, your career, or even your life. Start now. Start when things are still hard. Do the next right thing, no matter how small, and watch yourself flourish.
_____
Katie Chapin, MCAP, LCSW, serves as Clinical Director at Foundations to Healing.
