One of the things I love about my walk and talk therapy is noticing the small changes, as we move through the seasons. I love finding the first tree to change colour, or start sprouting blossom, watching the goslings grow, the first crocuses pushing through the soil. It’s a constant reminder that all things change, and nothing is forever; to enjoy the good things while they last and remember that difficult things will pass. Usually, the changes are subtle and slow, one season slowly moving into the next until you look up one day and the leaves are all gone, or the flowers are blooming, but sometimes the change comes all at once. That’s certainly what happened this week when we had some surprise snow and suddenly, we’d gone from autumn leaves last week to a classic winter scene this week.
The same happens in our own lives too, some changes come slowly and others happen all at once. I’ve written before about how important training to be a counsellor and my own therapy has been to me in understanding myself and being able to reach my potential. Much of this happened so slowly that I didn’t realise how far I’d come and what I’d managed to achieve. It was made up of small adjustments and moments of clarity that built up over time, just like the changing leaves on the trees. Occasionally, however, there have been big changes that came all at once, like the snow that appeared over the weekend.
The most recent and most profound of these was nearly two years ago when my then therapist asked me if I was autistic. I immediately said I couldn’t be, I’d worked in the area for years and came from a very neurodiverse family, so I couldn’t believe that I wouldn’t have already known this if it was true. However, I was wrong, and that sentence was the snowstorm that brought the change. Over the following months the changes happened more slowly as I researched and listened to more stories from late-diagnosed women that resonated strongly with my own, and I decided to seek a formal assessment. I am so grateful to my therapist who held a space while I processed all the new information and what it meant, not only for who I was now, but for who I had been in the past.
Two years since the snow started falling, the landscape seems very different now. What started as a snowstorm I didn’t expect, has become a subtle movement through the seasons to a place of self-knowledge and self-acceptance.
