This little frog was given to me a few years ago by a long-term client. Through much of her distressing life circumstances, this client has done everything she can to hold on to hope.
As a psychotherapist of more than 20 years, I have received many little gifts of thanks from my clients but somehow it is only this little frog (now named Freddie) that I have ever displayed in my office.
To this day Freddie Frog still sits there, in prime position, proudly exhibiting his message of hope.
Often, during the course of a psychotherapy session I will point to, and talk of, Freddie‘s gift – because in the midst of the never-ending human struggle with Life, it seems to me that when all else is lost, hope is often the only thing that can motivate us to keep placing one heavy foot in front of the other.
Paradoxically, when I reflect back to a client on their lack of, their loss of, hope, almost always the client releases their tension, relaxes their posture, and I see a visible “lightening” in their whole demeanour.
That’s some of the magic of psychotherapy – when something important, even a devastating loss, is deeply acknowledged and validated, people often seem better able to move on, to move forwards in their lives.
In 1891 the great American poet Emily Dickinson, who herself often struggled to hold on to hope, wrote a poem, Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul / And sings the tune without the words / And never stops – at all.
In 1993 the one and only Paul McCartney wrote and sang of the perennial human longing for “hope of deliverance from the darkness that surrounds us“.
In 2022, to this very day, so many of my clients, and I too, still often struggle with the loss of hope, forgetting Freddie Frog‘s critical message.
But, day after day, when I enter my office, there Freddie is: tirelessly, solidly, endlessly broadcasting his 4-letter inscription – reminding me, reminding us all, of that “thing with feathers, perching in our soul, that sings a tune without words, and never stops at all”.
So thank you (you know who you are) for your precious gift – for Freddie, and for your life-affirming reminder to me, to my other clients, to us all, of the need to hold on to hope.