I wrote the title to this post the day before yesterday.  I had had a long session with a client, explaining the process through which that client would be going, and the client felt drained.  I started to say, “It’s always darkest before the dawn,” and found myself thinking, “Well, sometimes it’s darkest just before the shit hits the fan.”  So instead of using the tired old metaphor, I  told the client that I would be there, every step of the way.

The use of metaphors, mixed or otherwise, seems to remind me of my mother.  She’d use encouraging words, heart-felt, well-meant.  And sometimes she just said, “You know, it’s not always going to be a bed of roses, so, you might have to learn to live with dandelions.”

Or did she say that?  In my memory, she did; these, and other colorful pieces of advice.  As I tell my neurologist every year, my mother for sure told me that if I walked every day of my life, I will walk every day of my life.  As soon as you stop walking, she warned, you’ll stop walking.  And I said to her, as every child says, to every maternal unit, “Oh, Mother!”  But I took her advice.  I kept walking.  I’m still walking.  I have no earthly clue why I am able to walk, but I can rattle off names of a half dozen people of my acquaintance who face greater challenges than I do and still get up every day of their lives, and keep on going.

It’s not always the dawn that follows darkness.  Sometimes it’s a bonfire, from the lantern that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over in the shed.  So keep your marshmallows handy.