Growth
This week’s photo is two in one. A double exposure of a branch of ivy growing along my kitchen wall, layered with an image of a growth chart left behind by the family who lived here before us, just behind our basement door.
I knew I wanted growth to be this week’s theme. It felt fitting for spring. But I struggled to narrow it down, both for the image and for this reflection. Growth can mean too many things.
At first, I thought of tree rings. The way growth leaves behind a pattern over time. Ted had recently told me about coppicing, an old woodland practice where trees are cut down in the winter so that new shoots grow back stronger and straighter. Growth, in that sense, is not always upward. Sometimes it begins with cutting back.
From there, my mind moved to the marks growth leaves behind. Rings in wood. Stretch marks on skin. Evidence that time has passed and something has changed.
Then to trees again, just beginning to bud. I found myself wondering what that feels like, if it feels like anything at all. Is growth uncomfortable? Pleasant? Gradual enough to go unnoticed?
And then to the nostalgic growth charts of childhood. Pencil marks on a wall or doorway, measuring inches over years. A simple way of marking time. Growth, in that sense, feels more tangible. Something to be tracked, compared, and remembered.
It made me think about how growth is often seen as inherently good. Something we pursue, measure, and expect. But growth is not always straightforward. It takes energy. It comes in cycles. It can pause. It can shift direction.
And sometimes, growth can even be harmful. We often reference this quote by Edward Abbey when critiquing our culture:
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
So I found myself circling the idea rather than settling it, trying to make sense of something that is not always straightforward- something that can be physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
I think that is why I could not choose just one image, instead layering two different ways of marking growth. One wild and uncontained, the other careful and recorded.
Both telling a similar truth: that something is always changing, whether we are paying attention to it or not, and that sometimes, only when we look back do we realize how much growth has taken place.
