For those of you that live in warmer parts of the United States, aren’t you lucky? For the rest of us that trudge through the winter, we are thrilled that the days are getting longer and the temperature is starting to rise. Just this week I saw some of the bulbs that Doc planted last fall peeping through the brown earth.

As I watch the geese down by the pond nesting and the trees starting to bud, I think about how this is a time of growth and renewal. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut, but spring reminds us to blossom again.

Sometimes Doc has patient’s come into her office and they tell her that they feel lost and don’t know who they are any more. It’s so painful, they think about giving up and going back to destructive behaviors to numb their feelings. I think somewhere along the line, they stopped growing into the person that they were suppose to be. Abuse, trauma, illness and loss are only a few things that can happen in life that lead us to curl up and hide from the world. The beautiful thing about recovery from illness or addiction is that we can start to grow in to who were meant to be. Yes, it can be painful to dig deep and work through the pain, but finding inner peace is always worth the journey.