Everything happens for a season
Everything happens for a season
Lesson #16 of 40
As I approach 40, I’m embarking on a year-long project to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned in four decades of life. This is lesson #16. You can read the full series here.
Fall doesn’t exist in Florida. This was something I should have known, but was still disappointed to discover when I moved to the country’s southernmost state. In hot, humid, muggy Florida, fall feels like nothing more than an extension of summer. There are no leaves that change color, no apple orchards to visit. The days might get shorter, but in the city where I lived — nicknamed the Sunshine City for its abundant, year-round sunlight — the shift seemed imperceptible.
Instead, Florida has hurricane season. The ocean waters grow warmer, ripe for tropical depressions and storms. Afternoons are punctuated by intense thunderstorms that end as abruptly as they begin. Residents take note of flood zones and evacuation warnings, while meteorologists enjoy their time as local celebrities.
I loved living in Florida. But I also love fall. The seasonal trade-off, swapping cute boots and cozy sweaters for galoshes and sandbags, felt like a cruel trick.
---
The shift from spring to summer, fall to winter, affects everything around us. Farmers divide their time between seasons of planting, growing, harvesting, and preparing to do it all over again. Healthcare professionals brace for flu season. Hospitality workers gear up for the tourist-filled on-season, then rest during the quiet off-season.
For most of us, though — in our everyday lives, beyond our professions or the weather around us — the seasons we experience are less distinct, less predictable. We go through seasons of growth, grief, love, healing, prosperity, and challenge. We experience seasons that we can’t yet name, seasons we’d rather forget, and seasons of immense sorrow.
We are buoyed by the knowledge that seasons pass, just as everything in life does.
---
My last hurricane season in Florida was my first as a mother. The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was the region’s most active on record. St. Petersburg, where I lived, was largely spared, or perhaps I was too consumed by my own swirling mix of living through a pandemic, pregnancy, and — boom, suddenly, parenthood! — to notice otherwise.
On Wednesday, November 13, the outer bands of Tropical Storm Eta made their way to central Florida. Billy and our three-week-old daughter huddled against the storm at home. My mom, just down the street, was wracked with worry in the tiny apartment she was renting for a few weeks. And I was in a hospital room a couple miles away — alone, battling my own storm of postpartum psychosis.
By then, I’d been in the hospital for three days. Three days away from my family. Three days of leaking breast milk, panicking as I pumped and watched that milk turn watery. Three days without a phone, television, or anything to write with. Three days covering my face with a mask anytime a nurse or doctor entered the room.
The room was just big enough for a single hospital bed. There was nothing on the walls, nothing to look at. But it had one small window, and through it, I could see the tops of a few palm trees. That Wednesday — the day I was scheduled to go home — I watched those trees whip in the wind, their sturdy trunks bending but not breaking, their fronds violently lashing the sky. I was too numb to cry, though I desperately wanted to. I sat mute as sheets of rain pounded against the building, wondering if I’d be able to leave the hospital after all.
Some seasons are not only difficult to live through, they’re difficult to talk about. Or, in my case, to talk or write about.
---
Anyone who has experienced a world-shattering loss will tell you how much they despise the phrase “everything happens for a reason.” Some losses — most, I’d argue — don’t happen according to some master plan. Some losses are preventable, but plenty aren’t. Life can be random and cruel. There is no reason. That’s probably the toughest lesson of all.
Everything does, however, happen for a season. And while some of those seasons are unfathomably difficult, they always have something to teach us. For better or worse, the hardest seasons tend to teach us the most.
I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. I do believe we can find meaning in everything we experience. I also know that sometimes that meaning can be difficult to uncover.
“Each season has its gifts,”
wrote in Keep Moving. “What did my life's hardest season give to me? Most of all, belief in my own ability not only to come back after a long winter but to grow stronger, more alive. Belief that change makes everything possible. Belief in my own spring.”---
Everything happens for a season — and every season has meaning. I struggled to find a pithy way to word this lesson; I feel okay about where I landed.
Right now, I’m in a busy season. (When am I not?) I’m splitting my time between two conferences this week, trying to squeeze in work and writing during quiet hotel moments. Billy is juggling work and solo parenting at home. When I return, we have a long list of projects to tackle. Time to rest, to do nothing, feels maddeningly elusive.
I remember a tweet I saw a few years back, an observation that adulthood is just saying “after next week, things will slow down,” week after week after week. Until we die.
I laugh, but hope that’s not true. (Though, a friend I had dinner with over the weekend said that exact phrase!) I like to imagine I’ll have a slow season soon. I can also imagine how uncomfortable that season might feel — how anxious I would be to fill my time, to prove my importance, to fill the silence. I consider that I might be the problem standing between myself and the slowness I crave.
---
Is Maggie Smith right? Are there gifts in every season? As I began writing this essay, I did some cursory research to see if hurricane season carries any benefits amidst all its destruction and chaos.
Some of the advantages are obvious. Hurricanes bring rain to drought-stricken areas. Just last weekend, the remnants of Hurricane Francine brought much-needed rainfall to Georgia, where I live. The plants in my yard, wilted and yellowing from weeks without water, are now much happier and healthier.
With their powerful winds and waves, hurricanes can break up bacteria growing in the ocean and stop the red tide that chokes the coast. They bring sand and sediment to barrier islands and disperse spores and seeds for thousands of miles.
Again, Smith knows what she’s talking about: “So often we think of loss as only destructive, but it is also generative — because every ending is also a beginning. When one thing vanishes, a space is created in its place.”
---
My daughter, who turns 4 next month, is starting to understand the concept of time passing, of seasons changing. Right now it’s summer, which will turn into fall, I tell her. We talk about what fall will bring: her birthday, Halloween, giant leaf piles, Thanksgiving. Then fall turns into winter. We grin at the idea of Christmas and the possibility of snow, though it’s a long shot. Here in Georgia, winter generally means chilly days, gloomy skies, and a lot of rain. Still, we dream about the possibility.
Then winter becomes spring, and spring becomes summer again! Time keeps passing. Seasons continue shifting. My daughter grows bigger before my eyes. Every day, she becomes less like the helpless baby I couldn’t wait to return to and more like a child who can explore the world on her own. She is inquisitive and curious. Right now, like so many 4-year-olds, her favorite question is “why?”
I haven’t yet told my daughter the story of how mommy had to return to the hospital after she was born. I don’t have the words yet. I haven’t fully made peace with it. I haven’t yet discovered the meaning hidden inside — the why of it all. But I know it’s there; I’m certain I’ll eventually find it.
When I do, I’ll share it with her. I’ll tell her how I did leave the hospital on that rainy Wednesday, how I couldn’t wait to snuggle her, how tiny she looked in her car seat, how the nurse who escorted me outside peeked into the backseat and gave us both a warm smile. How, in that moment, I felt like everything was going to be okay.
xoxo KHG
The season of rest will come Katie. I assure you. But it’s not likely until your daughter is older. Rest and toddler are two words that don’t go together. I remember feeling much the same way as you. When you’re in the thick of it with them it’s hard to imagine, especially when you’re desperate for a rest. But it will arrive eventually.
Thanks, Katie. I'll probably end up reading this piece again (and again) as I traverse a particularly challenging season of my own life, on multiple levels. In reading this, I was reminded of Viktor Frankl's work around meaning and the idea that we, as humans, are meaning-makers. I was also reminded of David Kessler's work on grief and his book Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. I don't (yet) have clarity on my meaning of my own current season (how could I, truly) but I trust it's there, even as *none of this* is happening for a reason.