Last weekend I used my trauma-informed approach to help support people at a Suicide Grief Retreat in a beautiful part of Herefordshire. As I did when I provided support at the retreat in April earlier this year, I referred to my acorn / oak tree analogy - a comparison that I find particularly comforting when I feel that my life is absolutely falling apart. And today the acorn picture came up as a memory on my Facebook feed - I couldn't help but think to share the idea as a blog.
Have you ever picked up an acorn and really looked at it? Looked at the way that it’s beautifully made. Smooth, perfectly shaped, topped with a tiny wooden cap that looks as though nature employed a miniature milliner. It feels complete. Finished. Whole.
But if the acorn’s success is in becoming an oak tree, it can't stay an acorn. Not even a little bit. In fact, everything that makes it recognisably an acorn has to disappear, has to be destroyed.
The Tragedy of Becoming Something Else
Imagine if acorns could think. I suspect many would spend their entire lives thinking:
"I'm quite happy as I am, thank you. Why risk splitting apart? Why leave the safety of my neat little shell?"
Reasonable questions. Yet inside every acorn is something far bigger than the acorn itself.
The mighty oak doesn't arrive by adding a few improvements around the edges. It grows because the acorn breaks open. The shell cracks. The original form is lost.
It looks like destruction. From nature's perspective, it's growth.
The Same Thing Happens to Us
Most of us love the idea of growth, whether it’s personal growth, professional growth, emotional growth, spiritual growth.
We buy books about it, listen to podcasts about it, find inspirational quotes on social media.
Then growth arrives, involving change, and suddenly we're less enthusiastic. We feel vulnerable, less certain about our behaviours and actions. Change is tiring, we have to learn new skills and try them out – it’s a frightening feeling that we don’t know what we’re doing.
We grow out of a role we identified with, move away from relationships that felt familiar. There are parts of ourselves that we don’t recognise and that feels unsafe. Some of our beliefs no longer serve us well.
We like to cling to the familiar.
The Bit Nobody Puts on the Motivational Posters
We tend to celebrate the oak tree – its strength, majesty. It’s rooted, firm, impressive.
Nobody frames a picture of a partially split acorn lying in damp soil having an existential crisis. But that's the transformation into the uncomfortable middle. The stage where the old self no longer fits but the new self hasn't fully emerged.
Mess, confusion, loneliness – wondering whether things are falling apart when they're actually falling into place.
The difficulty is that growth doesn’t come with a map, we just have to trust that the cracking open has a purpose.
When Loss Creates Space
Sometimes life removes something we desperately wanted to keep.
- A job ends.
- Children grow up and leave home.
- A friendship changes.
- An opportunity doesn't unfold in the way we imagined.
There’s an experience of hurt and grief - evidence of love, effort and investment.
But occasionally, with the benefit of hindsight, we realise that what felt like an ending was also a beginning.
The acorn doesn't become an oak despite losing its shell. It becomes an oak because it loses its shell.
That's an important distinction - many periods of growth require us to release something we’re attached to that can no longer carry us forward.
Trusting the Tiny Beginnings
One of the remarkable things about an oak tree is that the entire potential exists within something small enough to fit in your hand.
A reminder that big transformations often begin quietly….. like an acorn sending out its first root:
- A single conversation.
- One different choice.
- Five minutes of daily meditation.
- Turning up to yoga when you'd rather stay under a blanket watching detective programmes and eating biscuits (or crisps....or both).
- Introducing yourself to a potential coach.
What If You're in the Cracking Open Stage?
If life currently feels uncertain, uncomfortable or as though something familiar is being stripped away, perhaps you're becoming.
Perhaps the version of you that got this far has done its job brilliantly, and you’re now at the something larger stage.
Like the acorn which can’t see the oak yet, you’ve noticed that you’ve lost your shell.
None of us enjoys life's cracking-open moments, but they can carry the seeds of possibilities we couldn't have imagined while we were busy trying to protect the shell.
The next time you see an acorn, remember that its greatest achievement isn't staying beautiful and intact.
Could This Be Your Acorn Moment?
If you're going through a period of change, uncertainty, stress, burnout, or feeling stuck between who you've been and who you're becoming, you don't have to navigate it alone.
The truth is that cracking open can be uncomfortable.
When an acorn begins its transformation, it doesn't receive a detailed manual entitled "How to Become a Majestic Oak in 67 Easy Steps." It simply grows through the uncertainty.
People are much the same - sometimes we need space to think. Sometimes we need support to make sense of what's changing. Sometimes we need someone to help us see that what feels like everything falling apart may actually be the beginning of something new.
That's where coaching can help.
Through burnout and stress coaching, we can explore what's keeping you stuck, identify the strengths you already possess, and develop practical strategies to help you move forward with greater clarity, confidence and resilience.
The goal isn't to turn you into somebody else. The goal is to help you grow into the version of yourself that's already waiting beneath the shell.
The memory that flashed up on Facebook today was from 9 years ago - a period of feeling like my world was cracking open.
The oak tree was never created by staying comfortable - if you feel like you're standing in your own acorn moment, I'd love to help - learn more about Burnout & Stress Coaching.
I'm no finished product, there will be more acorn moments for me. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is trust that there is more to us than we can currently see.
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