how a chick is born

i was having one of those nights when i just needed some reassurance that everything is okay, i'm doing well, strong enough to withstand whatever is put in front of me, and that recovery is worth fighting for...so i got out the letter than my inpatient therapist wrote me the last day of my stay the second time around...
in the letter she included a story about how a chick is born and i thought i would share it!

when in the midst of great change, it is helpful to remember how a chick is born. from the view of the chick it is a terrifying struggle. confined and curled in a dark shell, half-formed, the chick eats all its food and stretches to the contours of its shell. it begins to feel hungry and cramped. eventually, the chick begins to starve and feels suffocated by the ever shrinking space of its world.
finally, its own growth begins to crack the shell, and the world as the chick knows it is coming to an end. as the chick wriggles through the cracks, it begins to eat its shell. in that moment - growing but fragile, starving and cramped, its world breaking - the chick must feel like it is dying. yet once everything it has relied on falls away, the chick is born. it doesn't die, but falls into the world.
transformation always involves the falling away of things we have relied on, and we are left with the feeling that the world as we know it is coming to an end, because it is.
when forced with great change, we somehow must take in all that enclosed us, so when the new life is upon us, the old is within us.

oh how very true this is, and very telling of how i am feeling right now. fragile, like the entire world that i knew and was familiar with is now gone, and i am falling into the world, which is quite the process i might add. it is a scary freefall that involves trusting that the universe will be there to catch me when i land..
my therapist was a wise woman <3

- LB