Lilies

I bought some lily bulbs a couple of weeks ago, but the weather has not cooperated, so until today, they sat on my kitchen counter waiting. Today dawned cold, but the sun was out, so I donned a coat and took my little package of bulbs outside and planted them. While I worked the soil, I thought about the comparison of bulbs to my healing journey. I know it sounds like a stretch, but hear me out.

Sometime, a long, long time ago – probably in Holland, someone figured out how to plant bulbs so that when they are planted correctly we get beautiful flowers. In the hands of an experienced gardener who knows when to plant, how deep to plant, where to plant, when to dig them up and separate them, and how to place them right side up, a beautiful flower will grow after a season of dormancy.

However, if those same bulbs are put into the hands of an inexperienced gardener, they may be planted upside down, in soil too wet – which makes them rot, too close together, during the wrong season, or too deep or not deep enough, the flower quality then suffers if they bloom at all.

The bulbs wait until the right season to begin their journey. A person with D.I.D also waits for their healing to begin. The therapist can be compared to the gardener. There are some therapists, like the inexperienced gardener, who don’t have enough experience to treat D.I.D. Far worse is the therapist who doesn’t even believe that D.I.D exists. If someone without experience looks at a daffodil bulb and tulip bulb, they may confuse the two. This happens often with D.I.D. Often a person with D.I.D is misdiagnosed. No matter what a therapist or a gardener thinks, a tulip is never a daffodil. It is also common for a person with D.I.D. to have more than one disorder. I also suffer from PTSD.

A good therapist can nurture a person and help them bloom. Just like a bulb, it takes time. I found it very hard in the beginning to be patient. I wanted to be better now. I was scared, and I couldn’t see that after the hard winter, the flower would indeed bloom. Just as the gardener trusts the process of planting the bulbs, the person with D.I.D. must also trust that things will get better – but it is a journey. I have days when I struggle. Sometimes it is one step forward and two steps back. Mostly it is two steps forward and one step back – which is okay. I am thankful for good therapists and for the good folks on message boards who help me know that I am perfectly normal for a person who has Dissociative Identity Disorder. A year and a half after being scared to death of my diagnosis, I am happy with where I am. I am no longer afraid of the alters who dwell within now that I recognize they were just waiting for their time to bloom.

We can't see them yet - we only see their progress when the stems poke through the ground, but they are in the dirt being nurtured, growing, and waiting for the right day to unfold into glory.