The Ability to Come Alive

Last week we were doing gardening. My husband handed me some dried up flowers from our garden from the previous year, they looked lifeless. Looking at them one would think that they had nothing to offer.I pulled off the petals and searched for the seeds inside. As I found the seeds and put them in the ground I could not help but think that many times relationships may feel like a dried flower. The constant laughter sometimes gives room to silence, the warm embrace to distance, words of appreciation and love to criticism and blame.

The beauty about nature is that it has an inner renewing and rebuilding strength that defies judgments and appearances. When in contact with water, good soil and sun the dead seed sprouts into a beautiful new and blossoming flower.
Relationships also, love has more strength than we can see and the apparent dead bond many times just needs to find its seeds deep inside through careful examination and safe connections. There is much in a love story worth recreating. The help of a professional Imago therapist can increase both awareness of self and connection with a partner. Throwing away the “dried flower” is like saying to the person we were formerly connected to “you have nothing to offer me”. Smart relationships look at the dried “thing” and say: “it does not appear or feel good right now, but I will look for the seeds that are just waiting to come alive again”. Be the water. Be the soil. Be the sun. Spring and summer always come.