Remembering and renewal can go hand-in-hand. Where I grew up, Memorial Day coincided with larger traditions of Decoration Day. While the official holiday is to remember our veterans who died, my mom spent the day visiting every cemetery in which our relatives are buried. She’d remove last year’s old, faded, plastic arrangement from each grave and replace it with a new one.
This morning I am at my mother’s house, the one that now belongs to me and my sister. I walked down the road to the farm homesteaded by my great, great, great grandmother looking for wild strawberries. When I was here a few weeks ago they were in full bloom, so I was excited by the possibility of picking the small, juicy berries. I remember when I was 5 or 6 picking berries off these stems and popping them in my mouth right there on the spot. They were delicious.
Today, there are no berries, just a few stems chewed flat at the top most likely by the rabbit I saw bounding across the yard. While I feel disappointed about the berries, I had an enjoyable walk past an incredible display of verdant fields and a roadside of hearty weeds topped with delicate flowers. All around me I saw growth, change, renewal.
It’s common to become attached to things that feel familiar – not just furniture, paintings, dishes or clothes, but attitudes, beliefs, and emotions. Sometimes loss or change will cause us to grasp onto the familiar with a death grip and hold on for dear life. Stay in an emotional spot too long and soon enough you’re in a rut. Ruts can be deep tracks that we subconsciously follow. While they give us a defined path which can look like a way forward, they also limit us to that path which can sometimes mean we’re stuck.
When we’re stuck, there is no renewal. There’s no room for new growth because our physical, spiritual, and emotional space is full of the familiar. Remembering how things used to be can be a method of hanging onto the past and keeping us stuck, but it doesn’t have to be and nature is a great reminder of that.
I know what it feels like to move into the familiar groove of feeling alone, not really lonely, just alone as though I must carry any burden by myself. The only reason this is a reality for me now is that I easily slide into that familiar groove. I do it in spite of many layers of healing. It was my reality for so long at so young an age that I have many layers left to heal.
The good news is that not only do I have a healing process I trust, I see examples all around me of the renewal that happens naturally when we stop interfering.
I see it in the sticker bush that in two weeks has grown from two feet tall to 5 feet tall.
I see it in the blackberry bushes that in the same two weeks have shed lively flowers and begun to create fruit.
I see renewal in the dandelions that spread their seeds on the wind. And I’m seeing all of this renewal on the farm where I grew up, the same farm where I spent most of my days walking through the fields and sitting in the woods…alone. It is a place of many memories. It is a place of renewal and growth.
Sometimes we remember how great things were because those are the things that left the biggest impression. This can either keep us stuck in the past or encouraged for the future. Sometimes we remember only the bad things. This can keep us stuck in our pain or give us a starting point for healing and renewal. Staying stuck in our memories or connecting with our memories to heal and move forward begin in the same place. It is the place of choice.
When I interviewed Life Coach Mack Arrington for our Cooking2Thrive interview series, he pointed out a moment at which I was “at choice”. It’s an expression I’ve heard from other life coaches and it’s exactly the time/place where memory and renewal intersect. Memorial Day is the perfect time for renewal to begin.
