Pruning: “Taking clippers and cutting off branches and blossoms to allow the energy of the plant to serve other parts.” I’ve never been that fond of pruning.

I was out walking with a friend the other night. I timidly told her I was not very good at pruning. I also told her I understood it’s value from a gardener’s perspective. You know, things grow better when they have space and enough energy.  This can encourage new growth.

Then, I described to her a painting I did years ago, before I was married with kids. It was painted during my two-year commitment to an art therapy studio, group sessions with Marie-Jose Dhaese.  I was living a very energetic, friend-full, activity-full life. I still remember the experience of painting a shrub.  It was full of red blossoms. It created a lasting discovery. That’s what expressing yourself with art can do. We crystallize an experience, even as it is in the process of change. The exercise, actually was “paint yourself as a tree”. With some level of embarrassment, I found that I had painted myself as a shrub in full bloom. Later, when discussing it, I asked Marie Jose, “Will I ever be a tree?”  She  told me  honestly that she was not sure.  I’m not sure how I responded, but I probably exclaimed that I just want to be a tree! She held with love my experience, and my painting of a beautiful shrub. When she invited me to consider pruning the shrub, I panicked. How could I let go of some of the blooms?  Which ones would I cut off? It was a difficult but helpful exercise in discernment.

Anyways, when I disclosed this story to my friend, she grinned and said she knew someone else who was uncomfortable with pruning too. On the other hand, she noted, she thought she might have been born knowing how to prune. Gardens or life, I did not ask her which.  What I do know about myself, is that now, more than 25 years later,  although I am more tolerant of pruning, there is little delight in it. Oh, I understand in my head the upside of pruning. And, pruning out the dead branches is easier to identify and do. It’s pruning the pretty full flowers to allow other blossoms more space, and the plant or tree to gather more strength or sturdiness that is harder for me.

Perhaps, living in these particular times is like forced pruning.   We are being forced to change. Our  lifestyle, our habits and routines are  being cut out or shaped.  At least for a while. Indeed, it may be very demanding for us, and may not even  feel like the right time. Maybe a master pruner has got his hands on us. Is it possible that some part of our life is being trimmed away, cut out, so that other parts can bloom and blossom? Maybe it is happening consciously. Maybe it is still unconscious. It is helpful to make what’s unconscious, conscious. Prochaska’s model of change (Prochaska and DiClemente, 1983) reminds us that having things unconscious is indeed part of the process of change. However, it is only when we recognize consciously, our discomfort, our lack of skills or our unsaid dreams, that we can move through and into the process of change.

Back then, not only did I get in touch with how uncomfortable it was to cut out certain things and people from my life, I also realized I did not love and treasure being who I was. I was often wanting to be someone different.  Sometimes we need someone else to love us just the way we are. Ah pruning. Maybe I don’t have to ever love it. Maybe though, it is good to recognize when it is happening to us or when it needs to be done.