What Plants Can Teach Us About Therapy, Patience, and Change
Featuring an excerpt from “Wait and See” by Dagem Lemma, LCSW (he/him)
Photo by: Dagem Lemma, LCSW
Healing rarely moves at the speed we want it to. Sometimes, the work is not about forcing change, but learning how to stay present long enough for change to unfold.
In his essay “Wait and See,” Dagem Lemma, LCSW reflects on plants, his mother, therapy, and the quiet wisdom of patience. Through the story of a struggling Money Tree gifted by his mother, Dagem considers what it means to care for something without being able to control the outcome.
Below is a brief excerpt from the piece:
“No choice but to wait, Dagiye,” she said to my panic. I realized too long after—as I’m writing these words, in fact—that she is an authority in waiting without options. Well-versed in holding ground and tapping into inner resilience, my mother offered a lifelong of lessons to ease my plant care anxieties.
She was right, too, and her wisdom sits with me as I’m sitting with a client. Restless at the pace of change and feeling stuck, he’s resenting having to wait. I draw closer and tell him about my mother—that no amount of green thumb circumvented the patience required by her plants; that her green thumb was more in her heart because when she watered her plants or her children, she did so with a warmth akin to the sudden brightening of a room on an overcast day.
The lesson in plant care, I say as much to myself as to my client, is that you’re offered an invitation to presence, not a fast track to some picturesque outcome. The lesson my mother embodies is that faith demands presence, and patience demands hope.
Dagem’s reflection reminds us that therapy is not always a fast track to a fixed destination. Sometimes, it is a practice of presence. A place where we learn to notice what needs care, what cannot be rushed, and what hope asks of us while we wait.
Read the original blog here.
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Dagem Lemma, LCSW NY/CT (he/him)
Dagem Lemma, LCSW (he/him) received his Masters in Social Work from New York University. He has worked at NY Health and Hospitals and Visiting Nurse Services before devoting time to individual and group psychotherapy at LBT. His specialties are men's issues and immigrant concerns.
