If you are a parent then I’m sure that you will agree that we learn as much from them as ever we teach them.  My eldest has finished an intense 3 year degree and has just come home to us.  Obviously there was a lot of late night, cramming and adrenalin fuelled tension leading up to the end of term.  So it isn’t surprising that she is feeling very tired.  However, I think that her weariness goes deeper.

When we leave behind one phase of life and are hanging around in Life’s Waiting Room, profound tiredness is a common response.  It comes partially from the need to recharge and partially from the rawness of the feelings, and we retreat into this sleepy place.  The need to re-energise our system is valuable, but fear can trap us in this place and tell us that we are too tired to come out and face our future!  There is wisdom in the saying “Feel the Fear.. and do it anyway!” 

If you, or a loved one, find yourself trapped in a sleepy place, you need to find that gentle balance between sympathy and challenge.  In the end, the mother bird calls her chick from the nest.

“The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise”   Alden Nowlan